L'isola delle svedesi (1969) User Reviews

I love Amadio!

[BandSAboutMovies · 5/10 · 10 May 2022]

After another in a series of fights with her lover Maurizio (Nino Segurini, Beyond the Door, Amuck), Manuela (Eva Green in her only movie) leaves him for the island where her friend Eleonora (Catherine Diamant, Devil In the Flesh) lives alone. Seeing as how this is a giallo, their friendship soon flowers into a relationship much deeper.

Maurizio follows her with the hope of winning her back. And when she chooses him, things get violent.

Directed by Silvio Amadio (Amuck, Smile Before Death), who wrote the script with Gino Mordini (The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine) and Roberto Natale (Bloody Pit of Horror), this film makes the most of its location, its small cast and cinematography by Joe D'Amato.

Also known as Island of the Swedes, Twisted Girls, No Man's Island and Island of the Swedish Girls, it has a great body painting scene and an ending that takes from The Most Dangerous Game just as much as Franco did for Countess Perverse, but it comes as a natural outgrowth over the frustrated passions within the characters.

Very few of Amadio's films are available in great quality, which is distressing, and I'd love to see a box ray set of this, Amuck, So Young, So Lovely, So Vicious... and Smile Before Death.

ISLAND OF THE SWEDES (Silvio Amadio, 1969) **

[Bunuel1976 · 4/10 · 8 September 2006]

Scouring the late night Italian TV channels yields a couple of intriguing (if utterly obscure) titles every week and this is certainly one of them; what drew me to it, apart from the involvement of Amadio - later director of the notoriously sexy giallo AMUCK! (1972) - was also the film's lesbian theme which was quite novel at the time.

Anyway, the film deals with a heterosexual couple having the latest in a long series of arguments, with the girl (Catherine Diamant) leaving lock, stock and barrel to live on an island owned by her sexually ambiguous best friend (Ewa Green). The latter has one last, unsuccessful attempt at bedding the mainland stud before her companion arrives, whereupon they embark on frequent (and completely) naked outings to the beach. Unfortunately, their idyllic existence is occasionally disrupted by Diamant's fiancée and the aforementioned stud. Ultimately, Diamant gives in to her "normal" cravings until Green makes good use of a shotgun which had previously seen no active service but which is soon being fired away in all directions in an unexpected Zaroff-like manhunt...

The film features a lush score by Roberto Pregadio but, unfortunately, variations on the main theme are used practically all through the picture whether the music is attuned to the current sequence or not. Furthermore, the thing is almost half over (at least in the trimmed version I watched) before anything remotely interesting i.e. titillating happens but, as I mentioned earlier, the chase finale - complete with a twist ending - almost makes up for this deficiency. The girls, of course, are attractive - Green in particular who, however, has the lesser amount of nude scenes!

Weird title, OK movie

[lazarillo · 13 March 2010]

Italian director Silvio Amadio is most famous for two superior giallo thrillers he did in the early 70's, "Amuck" and "Smile Before Death". After that he directed a number of potboiler melodramas and at least one sex comedy with Italian lolita Gloria Guida (only one of which--"So Young, So Lovely, So Vicious"--is currently available in English). This movie was made before all of those, but it shares some elements with his later work. Like all of his later movie it is certainly a "sexy" film (at least by late 60's standards).

After a fight with her male lover, a beautiful girl (Catherine Diamante) goes to stay with a friend (the also-beautiful Ewa Green) on her private island where "no men are allowed". The friend is aggressively bisexual (as beautiful women usually are in these movies) and they soon develop a lesbian relationship. Their idyll is spoiled, however, when the male lover shows up. But the friend has a high-powered rifle that she won't use on pesky seagulls, but she might use on pesky men. . .

There is real lack of drama in this film, as the other reviewers said, until the very end at which point the drama becomes VERY drawn out. The two actresses are pretty, but they are simply not as compelling as the ones Amadio worked with later like Barbara Bouchet, Rosalba Neri, or Jenny Tamburi (or even Gloria Guida) and they often tend to kind of fade in the scenery. But what nice scenery it is! I can't fault the cinematography or the cinematic style at all. Unlike the other reviewer, I found Catherine Diamante more appealing than Ewa Green because, while the latter looks like an arch-European fashion model, Diamante has a more of a girl-next-door quality (and she does the same running-through-the-woods-while-throwing-off-all-her-clothes scene Gloria Guida would later make more famous in "Quella Eta Malizia").

I still can't figure out, however, the Italian title which translates to something like "Island of the Swedes". Ewa Green could be Swedish, judging from her first name, but she doesn't LOOK very Swedish. The Italians had all kinds of weird ideas about the Swedes though (see the Italian "mondo" movie "Sweden-Heaven or Hell?" sometime). Maybe they thought of all Swedes as a bunch of sexually voracious, gun-toting, bisexual lesbians? . .