LET’S GET PHYSICAL: EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS (1977) ***

“E-‘MAY’-NUELLE”

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY 

While Emanuelle (Laura Gemser) is undercover in a women’s mental hospital, she witnesses a patient bite off a nurse’s nipple.  She does some digging and learns the patient was an escapee from a long thought lost tribe of cannibals in the Amazon.  She then takes a trip down river to do a story on the tribe, and naturally gets more than she bargained for. 

The Emmanuelle series had already dabbled in horror and gore with the snuff scenes in Emanuelle in America.  This time around, director Joe D’Amato leans heavy into the gore with this entry meant to capitalize on the cannibal movie craze of the late ‘70s.  While it doesn’t have the hardcore inserts that the past couple of Emanuelle sequels had, the cannibal gore makes up for the lack of sleaze. 

The film benefits from a disciplined plotline as it lacks the hodgepodge travelogue aspect of the previous entries.  Despite this, there are still some sluggish bits in between the highlights.  In fact, it probably works better as a cannibal movie than an Emanuelle skin flick, if only because there’s so many characters in the expedition that Emanuelle winds up getting lost in the shuffle at about the halfway point.  

The expedition scenes feature all the stock footage shots of animals you might expect from a jungle picture.  However, there are some eerie moments along the way like Emanuelle hiding her camera in the head of a creepy doll and every time she presses the shutter, its eyes close.  There’s also a memorable scene where Emanuelle Interrogates the prisoner in a straitjacket by fondling her.  The gore includes castration, eyeball eating, nipple ripping, gut munching, heads on spikes, spearing, disemboweling, and a man is cut in half during what can only be described as a game of cannibal tug of war.  We also get a snake attack, a narrow quicksand escape, and assorted cannibal traps.

Although her role is somewhat diminished in comparison to other films in the series, Gemser still looks great.  She even gets to bang her real-life husband Gabriele Tinti a few times before finally heading down to cannibal land.  Once there, she bathes nude with a hot beauty while a monkey wearing sunglasses looks on.  If that doesn’t scream “must see”, I don’t know what does.

AKA:  Emanuelle’s Amazon Adventure.  AKA:  Bloody Tracks.  AKA:  Trap Them and Kill Them.