If there is one thing that does not make me laugh, it is lowbrow body function humor. Fart jokes, penis jokes, bathroom jokes, female anatomy jokes, jokes about animal reproductive or digestive functions ... If it's south of the navel it's not funny to me automatically. Usually.
But I gotta come clean: AMAZONS FOR 2 ADVENTURERS has one of the funniest wiener jokes I've laughed at since Julie Haggerty used the manual inflation valve on the automatic pilot in AIRPLANE. The basic premise of the gag was of course vulgar and simplistic, but it made sense given the nature of the situation, was executed with an absolute minimum of setup time (someone grabs a hat as they are marched out of a hut nude from the shoes up) and the payoff was a belly laugh that was so boisterous that it got the upstairs neighbor's dog barking at quarter to four in the morning. There are other fun moments in the film, many of which might have seem like manic good time broad comedy to Italian & West German theater goers in 1974, which is when this film was made as well as by and for whom. Long and the short of it is that if you enjoy the Bud Spencer/Terence Hill brand of comedy, know who Salvator Borgese is and enjoy an eye dazzling parade of perhaps 200 of the most delightful breasts ever bared for a motion picture camera, this movie is for you. Even though Mr. Borgese did not appear in it: If you are down with Sal Borgese you are down with lowbrow Italian action/comedy, or you should be, or vice versa.
It's far from a perfect movie: Fistfights with wisecracks between punches can only go so far as being entertaining unto themselves and having a nerdy clueless Italian guy around as a pratfall-inclined straight man is always problematic. I also didn't quite get the wing walking scene, the jokes about collecting teeth, and winced when the film opened up with a really cruel trick-shot gag involving a poor native snake ... Come to think of it, what IS it about the Italians and their treatment of nature's humbler forms? I thought we were the Barbarians. Once you get over the shock of this pre-credits title guffaw the film settles down to a somewhat unlikely tale about two gringos who go to some South American banana republic where they beat up all the slimy bad guys while scam-jobbing their way into a fortune in Amazon treasure. As played by Spaghetti Western regular Alberto Dell Aqua and the late Wolf Goldan, this Mutt n' Jeff team may not have the chemistry of Spencer/Hill but they make up for it with a kind of sleazy panache that sets this film as more of an adult oriented effort. To sort of underscore that fact is the presence of Rinaldo Talamonti, a frequent actor in dozens of Italian sex comedy romps. This is a movie for grown ups who have not lost touch with their ability to be silly.
Thematically the movie is 2/3rds setup and then payoff, payoff, payoff. Once you get to the Amazon village any boredom is jettisoned at the nonstop, jaw dropping, mind-boggling display of bared breasts. Every shape, form, configuration or variation on the formula of two breasts + a decent figure is celebrated in exhaustive detail, with a stunning array of attractive supporting "actresses" trotted out to fill every part of the picture frame when space is available. And when it isn't, they just heap them one on top of the other. And yet amazingly the film is entirely "harmless" (unless you are an unlucky snake, I guess) and in "good taste". There's nothing going on that you won't find in a handy old copy of National Geographic or a high school health sciences class film on dating.
Like Blake Edwards or a risqué young Woody Allen, the movie is funny before it goes for naughty, and even then does so to get laughs more than cheap eye candy. Eventually the plot asserts itself for a rather pallid conclusion, but it's a small price to pay. This is a movie to watch with your 17 year old nephew some weekend when he's stuck hanging around the house while your sister is in Baltimore, he'll worship you like Fonzie for the rest of your life.
7/10
