GIALLO IDENTIKIT #007 [AMUCK! vs MANIAC MANSION (comparing two cuts of Silvio Amadio's film from 1972)]

US label Code Red recently released a shortened version of Silvio Amadio's AMUCK!. Unlike the previous Eurovista DVD, it restores the film to its 2.35:1 OAR, but the cut provided, entitled MANIAC MANSION, is about 13.5 minutes shorter than the Eurovista version.

Title card and example of the 4:3 cropped image from the Eurovista DVD (more comparisons below).

[This is the twenty-fourth post in a continuing series discussing and analyzing all the Krimis and Gialli I've seen. As with every post on this site, SPOILERS SHOULD BE EXPECTED.]

Shortly after I reviewed Silvio Amadio's AMUCK! (via the horribly cropped Eurovista DVD), I heard about the release of an OAR version of AMUCK! by Code Red. The additional wrinkle, though, is that the Code Red release was an alternate cut of the film (titled MANIAC MANSION) and had no restoration done to the a/v (though having it in the original 2.35:1 is a huge bonus). For a while now I've been meaning to sit down and catalogue the differences between these two cuts. I've now finally sat down and watched the two discs side-by-side in their entirety. The rest of this post is devoted to a list of the differences between the two cuts of the movie, with accompanying description of the material missing from the shorter, MANIAC MANSION version of the film.

For the record, the running time on the Code Red MANIAC MANSION cut is 1:24:46. The Eurovista AMUCK! cut runs 1:38:21. And please note that the timestamps below are approximate, as close as I could get them using two different laptops running both discs simultaneously. The timestamps below refer to the footage (and the duration of that footage) that appears on the Eurovista full-frame DVD but that DOES NOT appear in the shortened MANIAC MANSION cut that has been released by Code Red.

As a rule, the cuts do not involve any of the infamous scenes between Barbara Bouchet and Rosalba Neri (or Bouchet and Patrizia Viotti), but generally follow the pattern of removing not censored material but narrative texture, nuance, and whole chunks of characterization. The net effect of these cuts is to present a film that feels like it adds up to less than it otherwise would. Here's hoping somebody like Camera Obscura will have the means to do one of their signature, extras-laden restorations and finally give this great, lost Giallo the release it deserves.

Eurovista cropped image.

Code Red image.

[CUTS]

1:18-1:29 (~11 sec)
On the Eurovista AMUCK! cut, Barbara Bouchet's arrival at Rosalba Neri and Farley Granger's villa cuts to a closeup on a reel-to-reel playing inside the villa. We hear Granger's voice dictating his latest novel, and the sound of (presumably) Bouchet typing off-screen. The camera swings back a bit from the reel-to-reel and then closes in on Bouchet at the desk typing.

In the MANIAC MANSION cut, this scene is missing these seconds and begins instead with Bouchet at the typewriter. The MM version also omits that portion of Granger's dictation that we hear when we see the reel-to-reel.

2:44-4:00 (~1 min 16 sec)
In the MANIAC MANSION cut, Granger's cocky, self-congratulating introduction to Bouchet is shortened. It loses a discussion that Granger has with her while showing off a piece of art that he's been hunting for five years ("The Bacchanale").

The cut comes just before he says to her: "Come, I'll show you something ... Now you see that nail? I placed it there exactly five years ago. I knew what I wanted then, it's taken me five years but I've got it now." As his dialogue continues, he hangs the compact piece of art (it looks like a drawing or etching in the Eurovista print).

Interestingly enough, we not only lose Granger's lecture to Bouchet on art and aesthetics, we also lose the transition to the next scene, which finds Granger, Neri, and Bouchet eating a meal (being served by butler Umberto Raho). They playfully discuss Granger's literary reputation (and work) and Bouchet's opinion of it.

In the MM cut, we lose all of this and instead go straight to a scene that starts with a closeup on a fireplace. When the camera shifts, we see that its fire is being watched by a seated Rosalba Neri. Outside the villa, the gurgle of a boat can be heard. In the AMUCK! version, this fireplace shot follows directly on the short dinner conversation that occurs between the three.

6:38-7:36 (~58 sec)
After we get the scene of the Venice Police Commissioner quizzing Granger about the disappearance of his previous secretary (and Bouchet getting caught eavesdropping on the conversation by the red herring butler played by Raho), the AMUCK! version cuts to a shot of Neri and Bouchet walking through the streets of (presumably) Venice. During this scene Neri decides to go to the hairdresser, and Bouchet leaves to go run errands before meeting back up with Neri in "two hours". After she splits up with Neri, we see Bouchet mail a packet of letters and make a phone call to an unknown party. We then watch her, along with a crowd of people, climb the stairs to one of Venice's walkways that are built as bridges over the canals.

In the MM cut, Bouchet on the bridgeway is the next scene we get, a few seconds after it has already started. We cut to Bouchet halfway up the bridge. There she stops and asks a man for directions. After that she proceeds to another bridgeway, where she meets the Police Commissioner, shows him a picture of the missing secretary (her friend, and the real reason she's taken the secretarial job in Granger and Neri's villa; her role is played by Patrizia Viotti), and relates the contents of the last letter the woman sent Bouchet before she disappeared.

Eurovista cropped image.

Code Red image.

8:50-9:17 (~27 sec)
The cuts here involve the voice-over that occurs as the Police Commissioner reads this last letter. The v.o. is the missing woman reading the contents of the letter while the camera cycles through abstract (and upside-down) reflections of Venice in the waters of the canal. A whole chunk of the letter (and accompanying v.o. and reflected shots) are simply missing from the MM cut.

20:55-20:28 (~33 sec)
During the party scene (in which Bouchet's character gets a glimpse of her lost friend, via the homemade "Little Red Riding Hood" stag film that's being shown), we lose the dialogue between her and Granger that starts: "It's about time I introduced you to Eleanora's friends" that leads to his "I'm just a composite of what they are" speech, in which he compares himself to the "doomed" city of Venice. As with the other cuts in the MM version, they don't seem down to censorship, but instead serve to remove narrative texture, nuance, and whole chunks of characterization. The net effect is to make the film add up to less than it otherwise would.

26:36-27:11 (~35 sec)
In the AMUCK! cut, the second dinner conversation between Granger, Neri, and Bouchet is extended. This extension begins at 26:36, with a shot of Raho (as butler) serving more dishes on the table and Granger asking Bouchet, "You're a New Yorker, aren't you?". And then proceeding to ask Bouchet if she knew the missing girl, who worked for the same publisher as Bouchet's character. This dinner scene goes on for ~35 seconds longer all told, until the scene cuts to a shot of Granger and Neri boarding their boat to go into Venice (which is where the MM print picks back up).

29:01-29:56 (~55 sec)
Bouchet's search through the villa's locked basement (while Granger and Neri are gone in the city) gets truncated starting at this point. The cuts include footage of Bouchet discovering a woman's dress and knocking over a taxidermied owl as she wends her way through the items stored in the basement. As is the tendency with the cuts, the flashback featuring Bouchet and Viotti dallying naked under the waterfall isn't cut from this sequence.

38:47-40:22 (~35 sec)
In the MANIAC MANSION version, Granger finding the keys that Bouchet stole cuts to another scene with the reel-to-reel, where Granger dictates his "new story" (that is actually a description of how he's going to kill Bouchet, and how he did kill Viotti's character). In the AMUCK! version, the movie at this point cuts to Bouchet trying (and failing) to use the boat to get into the city (presumably to tell the Police Commissioner what she found in the basement), trying (and failing) to use the phone in the villa, and watching from a window as Granger and Neri themselves leave in the boat.

42:40-43:50 (~1 min 10 sec)
The MANIAC MANSION makes a strange cut here that seems to be a mistake. Bouchet, listening to the reel-to-reel, looks up when she hears a ringing phone. Before she can answer it (or see if anybody else has), we cut to what looks like the same scene of Granger and Neri leaving the boat dock from earlier (I can't confirm it's the same, but it looks very, very similar). After they leave, we get Bouchet, no longer sitting in a chair and listening to the reel-to-reel, but at the phone and dialing again, trying to contact the Commissioner.

In the AMUCK! cut, the initial ringing of the phone continues and Bouchet leaves her seat to answer it. She watches Raho answer it instead, and is called to the phone to talk to Granger. He tells Bouchet that he and Neri will be staying in Venice for dinner and won't be returning to the villa until late. And *then* we get Bouchet back at the phone, trying to contact the Police Commissioner. But the repeated "connecting" scene showing Neri and Granger leaving by boat does not appear in the sequence on the Eurovista DVD. (It seems like the boat footage was clumsily reinserted and/or reused in an attempt to cover the cuts that were made.)

Eurovista cropped image.

Code Red image.

51:49-51:53 (~4 sec)
Just a few seconds of a reaction shot (including dialogue) from Dino Mele (who plays a friend of Neri and Granger) is missing from this "seance" scene. Mele says "We all have to die," and Granger, somewhat annoyed, responds "Very funny." Though these few seconds are missing from the MM cut, it almost seems like they haven't been cut, but that the reaction shot and dialogue merely weren't spliced in, so that the shot that gets interrupted by the dialogue in AMUCK! just ends up running without those interruptions. It happens so quickly, it's a little hard to tell.

52:51-54:15 (~24 sec)
In the MM cut, Neri is taken to her room after the seance and Bouchet gets up and examines a gun that mysteriously moved across the room while Neri was having her episode. There is a cut here, and we get a shot of Granger in a boat throwing duck decoys into the water (before Neri's episode, he was insisting that Bouchet go duck hunting with them the next day; this is also the reason why the gun was in the scene).

In the AMUCK! version, Granger returns to the drawing room after putting Neri to bed. He lights a cigarette and the camera cuts back to Bouchet, still examining the shotgun. He tries to brush off Neri's strange behavior (she channeled the spirit of the missing woman and warned Bouchet that she would soon die) by giving Bouchet a mini-lecture on "parapsychology". The scene ends with Granger making a pass at Bouchet and Bouchet telling him goodnight.

1:01:05-1:01:16 (~11 sec)
The AMUCK! version has the Police Commissioner, who has just rescued Bouchet from the swamp, toweling off his head before going over to Bouchet, in bed, to tell her why he knew she'd be out there duck hunting. The MM version omits the toweling off and begins the scene with him already on the bed, talking to Bouchet.

1:04:58-1:06:17 (~1 min 19 sec)
The AMUCK! version includes a scene here of Granger, Neri, and Mele arriving in Venice by boat. At the dock they discuss a vacation to the Red Sea. This cuts to Granger and Neri walking by the water and discussing the Commissioner's interest in Viotti's disappearance.

1:07:17-1:07:29 (~12 sec)
The MM version omits a short return to Granger and Neri walking through the streets of Venice.

1:07:46-1:07:51 (~5 sec)
The MM version cuts short a scene showing the Commissioner saying goodbye to Bouchet on the dock. In the AMUCK! version, we get a closeup on Bouchet's face as she looks, defeatedly, toward the ground. And then a zoom past the retreating boat and toward the skyline of Venice.

1:09:31-1:09:51 (~20 sec)
Here the AMUCK! version shows a suspicious glance being exchanged through a doorway between Bouchet and Raho. The MM version omits this and cuts to Bouchet putting Granger's latest tape on the reel-to-reel.

1:11:03-1:11:40 & 1:11:42-1:12:15 (~1 min 10 sec total)
The AMUCK! version shows Bouchet, wet from just coming out of a pool, toweling herself off. She has a conversation with Granger (he is at the pool with her), and he talks of falling in love with her. The MM version skips this part of the conversation and begins the scene a bit deeper in. It also omits a reaction shot of Granger laughing after a couple at the pool shoves Neri into the water, which leads to more dialogue on his part about the "role" that Neri plays in his life (and his suggestion to Bouchet that Neri was really behind the murder of her friend).

1:13:00 & 1:17:10 et al.
NOTE: During the flashback to Viotti's death (which begins right around the 1:13:00 mark), there are a handful of instances that seem to be second-long (or less-than-a-second-long) cuts that show up in the MM version. They happen so quickly (and sporadically) that they're a bit hard to pinpoint.

The MM version also cuts some split-second inserts (like repeated closeups on an ashtray [which occur first at ~1:17:06], an empty glass [first at ~1:17:10], and repeated closeups on Neri's face as she makes love to Viotti's killer). It also omits several seconds of Viotti sinking to the floor as the music from the playing record ends (this omitted section starts at ~1:17:21 and ends on the Eurovista disc at 1:17:31).

1:21:59-1:22:31 (~32 sec)
Part of the scene of Granger restless in his den (before he goes to Bouchet's bedroom and makes love to her) is cut in the MM version. It consists of him pouring himself a drink as the camera closes in on his face. Additionally, we get a cut back to Bouchet sitting up in bed, lighting herself a cigarette.

1:29:11-1:29:35 (~24 sec)
Bouchet goes to the door of her bedroom to investigate a scream she just heard. In the AMUCK! version, she hesitates at the door when her phone rings. Neri is on the phone and asks Bouchet to come to the living room. The MM version omits this altogether.

Leonard Jacobs

February, 2015

ADDENDUM 02.08.14: The ever-reliable Mondo Digital has a review up of the Code Red disc. Their review provides a number of interesting tidbits about the history of AMUCK! on home video. Well worth a read.