LET’S GET PHYSICAL: EMANUELLE IN BANGKOK (1976) ***

“E-‘MAY’-NUELLE”

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:  

(As posted on September 15th, 2007)

Sometimes writing the plot synopsis of a movie is kinda tricky because you don’t want to give away certain plot points or little surprises. Other times you want to let everyone know about this one great part to get their attention because that one scene is about all the movie has to offer. This synopsis is quite simple: Emanuelle (Laura Gemser) goes to Bangkok and gets naked and has sex. A lot. I mean seriously, that’s what it’s all about. No plot. No motivation. Just Emanuelle. In Bangkok. Having Sex. Why they didn’t just call the movie Emanuelle in Bangkok Having Sex a Lot is beyond me. (Maybe it wouldn’t fit on the marquee.)

But I’m getting off topic here. Where was I? Oh, anyway, so Emanuelle goes to Bangkok and has sex. A lot. First with an anthropologist (played by her husband Gabriele Tinti), then with a host of others, all the while randomly getting naked every chance she gets. Then she gets a sexy massage from an Asian chick who gives her a bath in a very imaginative way: she jumps in the bubble bath and then rubs herself against Emanuelle’s naked body. Genius. Then she gets naked for her bellhop (who gives her a massage) before going off to watch a stripper pour candle wax all over herself. Next, she participates in a pot fueled orgy before getting ANOTHER massage, this time from studly Ivan Rassimov (who would later go on to star in Emanuelle Around the World and Emanuelle in the Country). And so on, and so on, and so on. At one point she gets gang raped, but her promiscuous level is so high that I’m sure all they had to do was ask.

All this plays against positively one of the goofiest musical scores in the history of cinema. Seriously it sounds like the banjo player from Deliverance teamed up with The New Christy Minstrels and tried to reach that New Age Enya market or something.

Director Joe D’Amato does a credible job with his first entry in the series and gives the fans exactly what they want to see, namely Emanuelle getting naked and having sex a lot. (Sample of a typical scene: Emanuelle walks into a room and disrobes. She notices someone in the next room all hot and heavy. She bones them. Repeat.) He would go on to direct FIVE sequels (some unofficial, but if it features Emanuelle naked it counts in my book), the most infamous being Emanuelle in America, which is still the best. Emanuelle in Bangkok may lack the later sequels’ sleaze factor and general WTF quotient (although we do get to see a snake fight a mongoose), but it can’t be beat for the sheer amount of gratuitous nudity. I mean you can’t help but like a movie where the leading lady can’t keep her clothes on for more than 48 seconds at a time. (It gets an automatic four-star rating if you have a masseuse and/or bathing fetish.)

The dubbing is of course atrocious but adds to the flick’s charm. The dialogue is just as bad, especially when Emanuelle cries out, “I feel naked without my camera!” I mean Jesus Christ lady; you’re naked for 70% of the movie, what’s one more second? But it’s Rassimov gets the best line when he tells Emanuelle, “You’re not like them; you’re different. You understand how to control your ecstasy.”