Italian genre king Ruggero Deodato began making a name for
himself with this popular thriller/skin-flick about cat-and-mouse games between
two couples – one decadent and rich and the other apparently socialist – during
a weekend yacht excursion. It’s easy to
dismiss Deodato as pure shameless exploitation, (and many do), but there is almost
always a curious politically-charged undercurrent that stays in the mind
too. In this case, a sadistic, fascistic
factory owner (John Steiner) relishes bullying his guests, while one or more of
them seems to be plotting his murder. Isolated
on the boat, the four people pass the time debating politics and seducing each
other, intellectually and physically.
The blurred lines of morality combined with a twist ending make this
film a nice companion piece to Deodato’s later House on the Edge of the Park (1980), which also describes class
warfare beneath the veneer of a sleazy thriller. To his credit, Deodato certainly has an eye
for beauty – (that may not sound like an extraordinary thing, but so many
exploitation films from this period are stocked with some of the
nastiest-looking people, a problem only exacerbated by all the screen time devoted
to bare skin).
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