Emanuelle alrededor del mundo

Emanuelle Around the World (1977) Soft version

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Joe D'Amato and Laura Gemser made this flick right over the notorious Emanuelle in America and really took a step back content wise. In the film Emanuelle travels around the world learning different sexual things while sleeping with as many people as possible. The company that released this film released a soft version and a XXX version. This is the soft version and it certainly is soft; meaning, there's very little nudity, which is somewhat shocking considering the subject matter. Not to mention the fact that the previous film went as far as to show a woman stroking a horse!!! I've heard the XXX version of this features some pretty wild stuff but I'll get to it later. Back to this version, it's pretty dull from start to finish, although there's a really bizarre moment with George Eastman (Rabid Dogs, Erotic Nights of the Living Dead) playing a character dressed up as Jesus. He bangs Emanuelle only to have her tell him that he came too quickly. I guess D'Amato isn't a fan of Jesus? The sex scenes aren't erotic, which is the main downfall here.

Emanuelle Around the World (1977) XXX version

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Alternate version of Joe D'Amato's Emanuelle film isn't any better or worse than the soft version I watched a few weeks ago. In the previous review I mentioned that the film's sexual content was rather low even for a softcore film but here's a more extreme version, which features three different scenes. The two orgy sequences are shown with some hardcore scenes here, which isn't anything new. The next added footage serves for the more shocking nature, which was explored in the previous film Emanuelle in America. There's a scene where two girls are sexually tortured with a snake and a German shepard. In the softcore version this was just hinted at but here we get to see a lot more action, which should turn anyone's stomach.

Once again, Laura Gemser stars as sexy reporter Emanuelle, whose latest assignment takes her to India where a Tantric sex guru (George Eastman) claims to have discovered the secret to an everlasting climax. Although the guru proves to be a fake (he can't hold back forever with our heroine on the job), the feature leads the intrepid newswoman to discover the existence of a white slave ring, a scoop which takes Emanuelle bumping and grinding her way around the world, before returning to New York to find an even more shocking story involving top US politicians.

Although Joe D'amato's Emanuelle Around the World isn't as notorious as his earlier sleaze-fest Emanuelle in America, never quite managing to match that film's gruelling faux-snuff footage for sheer nastiness, it still packs a punch with hardcore sex footage, several non-explicit but still fairly harrowing gang-rapes, fun with fruit, and one particularly jaw-dropping moment in which a leering Chinese man introduces a bound, naked woman to his pets: a snake and a randy Alsation dog (Fido is so pleased to make her acquaintance, he gives her his bone).

Of course, sultry star Gemser never gets involved in any of the hardcore shenanigans herself, preferring only to actively partake in the usual assortment of simulated sex acts for which she is renowned: lesbianism, soft-core coupling and self-gratification. In addition to allowing Gemser to romp with almost everyone else in the film, the erratic story also provides D'amato with the opportunity to pad out his film with dull travelogue style footage and boring incidental characters (Italian exploitation favourite Ivan Rassimov is completely wasted in a pointless role). The result is a film with an unfocused and rather muddled style—easy-going and uneventful one moment, completely reprehensible the next—but one which still manages to be a fair bit of fun if you dig crazy 70s filth.

6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

I gave this movie an overall 5/10, but it's very episodic, and I'd like to mention that there's one gem in there, the "temple" or "Guru" sequence which starts exactly 15 minutes in and lasts for about 20 minutes. Firstly because it's sexy (okay, most everything with Gemser in it is). Secondly, because it's shot beautifully - the temple itself as well as the proceedings. But what I liked most was the excellent sense of humour, with real gags - something not frequent in "erotic" movies and mostly absent in porn. The humour is building throughout the sequence, starting with Emanuelle encountering an only half-convinced believer girl, then rudely disturbing a mass meditation/orgy (by joining and bringing a guy to orgasm prematurely), then observing the proceedings in the "training hall" which are really a hoot, but this all gets topped when finally, of course, the skeptical Emanuelle gets her hands on the Guru himself ... I don't want to spoil anything here but their encounter and its aftermath form one of the funnier moments in film history and would fit equally well in a Monty Python movie. Usually with this kind of movies you expect to laugh out because it's "so bad it's funny" - in this case, it's the real thing.

Highly recommended for this scene alone; everything else is more or less the usual "Black Emanuelle" stuff plus some rather violent scenes (fitting the sex trade theme but definitely not erotic).

Certaintly not as sleazy as Emanuelle In America, but not as lightweight ad Emanulle In Bangkok. Similar to Emanuelle in America we have Emanuelle traversing the globe discovering sex scandals. The set peices range from fairly innocent romp in the back of a moving truck to rape and beastality (implied not explicit). Of course it all remains fairly softcore. D'Amato handles the cinematography masterfully, its easy to see why he's so at home in adult films. Hes a master at creating suspenceful erotic sex scenes. Watch for ol Joe himself in a quick cameo near the end of the film (hes the man being arrested at the very end).

This movie recently appeared in the "Black Emanuelle's Box Set" with two other movies, one of which was significantly better ("Sister Emanuelle") and the other slightly worse ("Emanuelle in Bangkok"). Emanuelle (Laura Gemser)is a once again a "world-famous photojournalist" who is much more intrepid than intelligent (when we first see her she is saving air fare to San Francisco by having sex with a long-haul furniture trucker--I don't know why she didn't just have sex with a pilot). She is sent to India by her publisher where she discredits a local sex guru--by having sex with him, of course. Encouraged by an old friend (Karin Schubert) and a young girl (Briget Petronnio) who she meets (and has lesbian sex with) in India, she decides to investigate a white slavery ring, naturally by getting HERSELF kidnapped, along with a couple naive white girls, in Rome with only a shy, virginal guy she briefly flirted with as back-up.

Obviously, this film is not very realistic. International sex slave rings do not generally trade in pretty middle-class white girls snatched right off the street while touring Rome. This movie would be pretty offensive if it WAS realistic though since it is obviously far more interested in exploiting this subject than exposing it. It is not quite as transgressive or disturbing as other films in the series like "Emanuelle in America", but there are way too many scenes of women being slapped around and/or raped. Still even these scenes look more like rough consensual sex than anything since the women never seem to physically or mentally traumatized by it, but remain as pretty and chirpy as ever afterward.

The female leads are all very attractive. Petronnio would later suffer far worse abuse in Ruggiero Deodata' "House at the Edge of the Park" while Schubert probably suffered worse in real-life after becoming a hardcore actress. Laura Gemser, as usual, manages to float effortlessly above whatever sleaze she is cast in. At times this movie seems almost feminist in a strange way, much more so than the similar American "Ginger" series with Cheri Caffaro, largely because of the innate classiness of Gemser that makes her "degradation"-proof even to the likes of Joe D'Amato. As for the movie itself, it's not good and I don't want to morally defend it, but it isn't really more than a, for lack of a better word, "naked" version of the old Hollywood ploy of exploiting lurid subject matter while pretending to condemn it.