Inside Amy

If you really hate boring, garden-variety sex films like I do, you should check out this early directorial effort by cinematographer Ron Garcia. This one isn't as surreal and bizarre as his wonderfully weird "The Toy Box", but it is just as disturbing. "Inside Amy" is the cautionary tale of a schlub lawyer who convinces his beautiful wife to join him on the swingers circuit. He turns out to be a dud, however, while she is very popular with both the husbands and the wives. This no doubt really happened many times in the 1970's and resulted in many a messy and painful divorce--this being a movie, however, our hero reacts quite differently (hint: an alternative title to this movie is "Swinger's Massacre"). The theme of this movie would be played for laughs in 80's comedies like "Eating Raoul" and "Terrorvision" and treated more seriously in recent retro-70's films like "The Ice Storm", "Boogie Nights", and "Auto-Focus", but it's refreshing to see it addressed here in a film of the time(even if in a rather implausible and exploitative manner). Aside from the mass murders in the last half of the movie, this is actually a very realistic sex film. It's not one of those hilariously moralistic exposes about the "consequences" of sex (abortion, disease etc), but unlike the typical brain-dead sex flick, it's also not afraid show the negative aspects of sexuality--jealously, insecurity, loneliness, guilt, remorse. (If it weren't for these things, real life probably would be a lot more like a porno movie). It's not a movie for everybody perhaps, but it's a lot better than your usual plot less, emotionless, and meaningless schlup-fest.