LET’S GET PHYSICAL: BLACK VELVET (1976) ½ *

“E-‘MAY’-NUELLE”

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on March 1st, 2008 under the title Black Emanuelle, White Emanuelle)

BLACK EMANUELLE, WHITE EMANUELLE (1976) ½ * - The Video Vacuum — LiveJournal

(Note:  This review was originally considered too saucy for Blogger, so I'm just posting a link to my original review from my LiveJournal days.)

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: BLACK COBRA (1976) ***

“E-‘MAY’-NUELLE”

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY 

Laura Gemser stars as Eva, a dancer who goes to Hong Kong to perform a sexy snake dance.  There, she meets a pair of brothers named Jules (Gabriele Tinti) and Judas (Jack Palance) who become smitten with her.  Judas is a rich, eccentric snake collector who’s better with snakes than he is with people.  He soon becomes obsessed with Eva and longs to possess her.  Soon, he makes her his kept woman, but problems arise when she falls in love with another woman. 

Hey, wait a second.  Gemer’s character is named Eva, which is a form of “Eve”.  She has a snake.  Palance’s character is named Judas.  Tinti’s character’s initials are “J.C.”.  So, if you can’t already tell, it’s all very Biblical.  I can’t remember if the part where a guy gets a snake shoved up his ass is in the Bible or not though.  Maybe. 

Black Cobra is another concoction from Joe D’Amato and Bruno Mattei, and it’s a little different than their usual fare.  It’s fast-moving, well-acted, and slightly classier than their typical output (only slightly).  It’s especially fun seeing Palance slumming in something like this.  He gets a great scene where he takes Gemser to his home and frightens her with his snake collection.  I mean, we’ve all been there before.  Right, guys?  We bring a hot date home, and she runs for the hills as soon as you show her your snake. 

D’Amato gives Gemser plenty of opportunities to strip down, dance with her snake, receive full body massages, and take showers.  Even though it’s not part of the “official” Black Emanuelle series (which is already unofficial to begin with), there is a scene set in a lesbian only club that’s just like Porno Nights of the World, and the part where Tinti uses a snake as a marital aid is kind of like Emanuelle Around the World. 

I’m not sure if the presence of a star like Palance put D’Amato on his best behavior or what, but he equips himself nicely when he’s trying to turn out a more “legitimate” product.  Don’t let words like “classy” and “legitimate” fool you.  This is still chockfull of nudity and even some scenes of animal cruelty.  (A mouse is eaten by a snake and a snake is skinned alive and eaten.)  However, the film is more psychological than exploitative,  and is easily one of the best in the “unofficial” Black Emanuelle series. 

AKA:  Black Cobra Woman.  AKA:  Erotic Eva.  AKA:  Hot Pants.  AKA:  Emanuelle and the Deadly Black Cobra.  AKA:  Emanuelle Goes Japanese.  

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: WOMEN’S PRISON MASSACRE (1982) ***

“E-‘MAY’-NUELLE”

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on July 17th, 2007)

This is one of the sickest women in prison movies EVER! It was directed, under a pseudonym by Italian schlockmeister Bruno Mattei and stars Laura Gemser as Emanuelle. (It was released in Italy as an Emanuelle movie.)

During the opening credits, Emanuelle stars in an artsy fartsy prison play and promptly gets a tomato thrown in her face, inciting a riot. The next day at lunch, the main bitchy prisoner, Albina challenges Emanuelle to an arm wrestling match, then later tries to beat her up in the bathroom and Emanuelle rips off Alibina’s wig and beats her with it! Meanwhile a gang of male prisoners led by Crazy Boy (Gemser’s real life husband Gabrielle Tinti) are transferred to the women’s prison. They get loose, take the warden hostage, and hole up in a cell block. The gang revels in torturing, killing and raping the female inmates. One guy, Blade uses a razor to cut the girls up. In one of the most sickest acts of revenge ever witnessed on celluloid, the girl takes his razor, puts it in a cork and sticks it up her coochie with the razor facing outward. Then she seduces Blade and when he rapes her… UGH! You won’t even notice the lackluster prison break finale, cuz you’ll still be cringing from the penis slicing scene.

This was sort of a sequel to Mattei’s Violence in a Women’s Prison. Gemser somehow manages to keep her clothes on for this one, but the sheer amount of sleaze, bad dubbing, and hateful dialogue (“I’ll bite your nipples off! And I’ll do it too”!) more than makes up for it.

AKA: Emanuelle Escapes Hell. AKA: Blade Violent.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: VIOLENCE IN A WOMEN’S PRISON (1982) ** ½

“E-‘MAY’-NUELLE”

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on July 17th, 2007)

Laura Gemser once again plays Emanuelle, fearless reporter and tireless fornicator. This time, she checks herself into a hellhole prison (is there any other kind?) to expose the corrupt warden who cruelly violates her prisoners and makes them participate in her lewd voyeuristic sex acts. The standout scene is when Emanuelle is sent to solitary confinement and is attacked by an army of mealy ass rats. There’s also a pretty good scene where she throws a bucket of poo on some guards too.

Too bad director Bruno (Night of the Zombies) Mattei doesn’t push the envelope a bit farther. He gives us some lesbian scenes and a dash of sadism, but there are countless other women in prison flicks out there that would gladly give us higher sleaze content for our money. I mean what can you say about a women in prison movie that doesn’t have ONE shower scene? Mattei and Gemser returned the next year with the much better Women’s Prison Massacre.

AKA: Chicks in Chains. AKA: Emanuelle Reports from a Women’s Prison. AKA: Emanuelle in Hell. AKA: Women’s Penitentiary 4.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: EMANUELLE AND THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE (1978) ***

“E-‘MAY’-NUELLE”

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on February 28th, 2008)

Laura Gemser returns as Emanuelle in the fifth and final installment of the series from Italian sleaze guru Joe D’Amato.  This time out, Emanuelle takes on the white slave trade but BEFORE she does that, she masturbates while she watches her friend fuck a black mechanic, goes on an African safari, has a lesbian tryst in the shower, balls a wealthy prince, smokes a hookah in India, has a threeway, watches a nude photo shoot in New York and makes love in a darkroom.  THEN she decides to do an expose about white slavers.

 

When she tries to escape (with the help of a friendly transvestite) she gets captured and nearly gets lobotomized by the evil doctors at “The Clinic”.  Fortunately, she escapes in a laundry basket, hops aboard a ship home and balls the crew to pay for her voyage. 

 

With Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade, D’Amato delivers a rather tame entry in the durable series.  I’ll admit that watching Emanuelle in America probably jaded me (Who could forget the immortal horse masturbation scene?), but EATWST has a feeling of been-there-done-that (D’Amato even takes to recycling whole scenes from Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals) that knocks things down a notch or two.  Having said that, D’Amato does film THE definite transvestite Kung Fu fight in a bowling alley scene in the history of the cinema, so that’s worth something at least.

 

Although it takes Emanuelle FOREVER to get to the damn slavers, once she does things start to perk up considerably.  (Like my penis.)  Despite the relatively low sleaze quotient in this one, Gemser looks amazing as always and there is plenty of female flesh on display to make any fan of the series happy.  Gemser’s husband and frequent co-star in these movies, Gabriele Tinti has a small role as a slaver.  There’s also a great stream of consciousness theme song called “Run Cheetah Run” that has to be heard to be believed.  Here’s just a sample: 

 

Run cheetah run on the prairie, Shamu rapid cheetah is here.  

 

You feel his breath on your back; your heart is breaking, his clothes lapse.

 

His clothes LAPSE?!?  I’m sure something got lost in the translation there, but “Run Cheetah Run” is a hilarious oddity that will probably stay in your head longer than anything else in the movie. 

 

AKA:  Emanuelle and the Girls of Madame Claude. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: SISTER EMANUELLE (1977) ** ½

“E-‘MAY’-NUELLE”

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on September 20th, 2007)

The sex starved Emanuelle (Laura Gemser) is back in the habit literally this time, renouncing her sinful ways and becoming a nun! Say it isn’t so! The story has Emanuelle and a wrinkled up old nun transporting a teenage trollop named Monica (Monica Zanchi) to a remote convent where they hope to instill her with the word of God. Monica will not be so easily converted though, and she quickly starts seducing people left and right, starting with her bookworm roommate. When a wanted criminal (Gabriele Tinti, Gemser’s real life husband and frequent co-star) hides out in the convent, Monica wastes no time hopping in the sack with him. Together, he and Monica conspire to set Emanuelle’s cooled loins afire.

There’s a lot of sexual tension between Zanchi and Gemser, but it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that Emanuelle’s gonna end up turning into a slut again. While the sex scenes are plentiful, there’s really little variation between them or the actors (most of them are lesbian scenes involving Zanchi) and lack the flair (and sleaze) of previous installments. And although the film is stylish and features a lot of Zanchi in various states of undress, it’s also very episodic and sluggishly paced. It also loses points for tossing out one of those annoying “it was all a dream” endings too.

Emanuelle fans will be disappointed to learn that since Gemser spends most the movie in a nun’s habit (it takes about a half hour for her to finally show a little skin and well over an hour to get a little something-something) it leaves little time for her to get naked, but I suppose it’s worth it because she’s so damn hot. Even though she spends most the movie as a spectator and not a participant, Gemser is still radiant as always. Zanchi is also very hot and usually ends up getting naked in nearly every scene, so that’s a plus. Of the badly dubbed dialogue, the older nun gets the best line when she says, “Bladder trouble is God’s punishment for sinful flesh!”

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: EMANUELLE AND THE PORNO NIGHTS OF THE WORLD (1978) ** ½

“E-‘MAY’-NUELLE”

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY 

After a one film absence, Emanuelle (Laura Gemser) came back for this second sequel to Porno Nights of the World.  She begins our journey of perversion with a drive down the Las Vegas Strip.  Once she’s back in her home, she tells us about seance where the spirits possess the female participants into disrobing.  We then witness a black magic ritual that ends in an orgy, an adult carnival with midway games that give away blow-up dolls instead of kewpie dolls, a magician who makes audience members’ clothes disappear, and a stripper whose costume is made up entirely of ribbons, and her customers must pay to pull each strand. 

In a scene reminiscent of Emanuelle in America, a stripper named Lady Godiva lets her horse get into the act, if you know what I mean.  Trans exploitation star Ajita Wilson (who starred in Porno Nights of the World No. 2) makes a cameo photographing an orgy.  Next, Ajita takes in a lesbian live sex show.   There’s also a private club where a male bodybuilder causes the clientele (mostly a bunch of old ladies) to writhe back and forth in ecstasy, a behind the scenes look at the making of a porno that ends with filming a scene where an actress plays hide the snake literally (perhaps a callback to the infamous scene in Emanuelle Around the World), an S & M club where a woman escapes her ropes before banging two guys dressed like gangsters from the ‘40s onstage, a club in Montreal that specializes in “bubble bath boxing”, a sci-fi themed nude ballet, a televised striptease competition where the rowdy crowd pelts the losers with rotten vegetables, and a coed nude beauty contest. 

My favorite bit had an unhappy housewife bringing her husband to Tokyo to receive a penis transplant.  This scene contains some really fake looking prosthesis and phony looking gore during the operation.  The stereotyped dubbing on the Japanese doctors is hilariously bad too.  Another highlight is a cabaret act featuring “Snow White” and her four dwarfs.  (Gemser explains the other three “Got jobs as short order cooks”!) 

The most tasteless scene occurs in the New Guinea segment where tribesmen go through great lengths to ensure their bride is a virgin on their wedding night.  Footage of the (obviously faked) wedding night is intercut with real shots of piglets being beaten and butchered, which was totally unnecessary. 

Once again directed by the duo of Bruno Mattei and Joe D’Amato, Emanuelle and the Porno Nights of the World may not be as entertaining overall as its predecessor, but it is a little bit more consistent from segment to segment.  It also benefits from a snappier pace and some humorous commentary by Gemser.  (“What would you do if a flying saucer landed in your cabbage patch?”)  If you go into it knowing what you’re in for, I’d say you probably won’t walk away disappointed.

AKA:  Emanuelle and the Erotic Nights.