Waves of Lust (1975)

wo carefree youngsters, Irem and Barbara, are invited for a weekend cruise on a yacht owned by Giorgio, a ruthless and cynical industralist, whom is married to Silvia, a disturbed woman whom allows herself to be physically and mental abused by this devil-may-care man. Silvia then forms a love triangle with Irem and Barbara whom conspire against Giorgio, whose misogyny and paranoia pushes him over the edge into murder.

This movie is kind of a cross between an Italian giallo, with it's murder plot and jaded European bourgeois characters, and an Italian "terror" film like "Late Night Trains", "Terror Express" (which also featured actress Dionisio) or "House by the Edge of the Park" (also directed by Ruggiero Deodato). It's not quite as nasty as your typical "terror" film, and the emphasis much more on swinging 70's sex than rape/revenge or other violence. It also somewhat resembles the later Australian film "Dead Calm", which may not be a coincidence as the the popular Charles Williams novel that that movie was based on was actually written back in the 1950's and was being kicked around at about that time in Europe and America as a possible Orson Welles project.

But while "Dead Calm" was about sexual tension, this movie is all about sex. The beautiful Silvia Dionisio (who Deodato later married, and I don't blame him a bit) spends more time with her clothes off than on, as does the unknown actress who plays the industrialist's long suffering wife. There is straight sex, lesbian sex, three-way sex, attempted rape, sexual humiliation--the whole nine yards. The half-baked murder plot doesn't occur until the end, and seems pretty perfunctory. But it is good to have a nasty burst of violence to kind of cleanse your palate after sitting through what is almost too much gratuitous sex. Of course, this film not nearly as nasty or harrowing as Deodato's later "Cannibal Holocaust" or "House by the Edge of the Park", but it's probably more fun to watch. And it does show the emergence of some promising exploitation talent in its leading lady and especially in its director.