Black Emanuelle en Orient

This is a suprisingly good film. The photography is good, it seems to have some decent production values, the score is excellent, and the editing is slick. It outclasses many of D'Amato's hardcore films and the erotic scenes are more hot than anything you can see late night on cinemax. An overlooked D'Amato/Gemser classic I say.

This is the first, and most likely the only Joe D'Amato film ever to hit Belgian television screens. Quite logical, since the titles on his repertoire go from nauseating horror films ("Anthropophagous", "Beyond the Darkness") to hardcore porno flicks ("Tarzan X") and sometimes even a combination of both ("Erotic Nights of the Living Dead", "Porno Holocaust"). D'Amato pretty much behaves himself here and follows the formula of the original "Black Emanuelle" film, released one year before, but that doesn't mean avid D'Amato-fans have to worry, as there still is an enormous amount of genuine sleaze to enjoy. "Emanuelle in Bangkok" has virtually no plot at all and you can't even fully believe the title, as our sexy protagonist's journey to the Far East is very brief and she only has contact with two Asian people (a masseuse and a bell-boy). The film most "crucial" sequences are set on a cruise ship and in Morocco, where she has an off/on relationship with a persistent archaeologist. I have no complaints, though, since the camera beautifully captures Laura Gemser's erotic adventures with men, women, couples and herself. Joe D'Amato's trademarks are bizarrely tinted sexual situations, and there's only one such sequence in this film, namely the Japanese stripper who puts ping-pong balls up her vagina. Weird… One aspect about "Emanuelle in Bangkok", as well as in the entire cycle, is downright brilliant and that's the music. Nico Fidenco's score is mesmerizing and, without exaggerating, at least ten times better than every other score that ever won an Oscar. The dazzling soundtrack alone makes "Emanuelle in Bangkok" a true cult classic that every fan of the genre will enjoy watching.

Notorious film director D' Amato's first entry in the "Black Emanuelle" series is somewhat better than its predecessor but, the version I watched on Italian TV is so sloppily trimmed that several sexy scenes end abruptly, thus making them quite senseless! Here Emanuelle attracts the attentions of a Thai Prince (Ivan Rassimov, of all people), her on-off archaeologist boyfriend (real-life husband Gabriele Tinti), a world-renowned historian and a shy Thai bell-boy, as well as 4(!) females - an Oriental masseuse, a repressed American tourist (played by the lovely Ely Galleani from A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN [1971] and BABA YAGA [1973]), Tinti's "official" schoolmarmy girlfriend and, most intriguingly, an American Consul's (possibly manic-depressive) daughter!

I say intriguingly because Emanuelle is shown really losing her head for the young, inexperienced girl (almost up to the point that she starts considering forsaking her hedonistic lifestyle) but, before you can say, "Copout!", she gets a call from her newspaper sending her off to Paris for another assignment!! By the way, towards the middle of the film, Emanuelle's Bangkok apartment gets broken into and she loses her passport and all her valuable rolls of film (apparently because she was getting too close to Prince Rassimov who has a coup d'etat on his mind) and, for good measure, there's some local color (opium smoking and sensuous dancing) and even animal cruelty (in the form of a bloody mongoose vs. cobra duel). What the f***!

The exotic locale gave this a bit more to work with.

The obvious titillation scenes seemed to be the main point here. (Loved the massage scene.) Then big Joe just found ways to connect them. That's what he did best.

Gabriel Tinti, (Goddess Gemser's real life, and late, husband) makes an appearance as her paramour here. As he did in many of these films. He was a decent actor actually. I like seeing him as the straight man in her life.

I liked seeing Ivan Rassimov as the prince. He really played a great authority type. It's strange that he and Gemser didn't star in more films together seeing as they did a lot of similar work.

Call this a soft x film pretending to be a documentary.

In the summer of 1995, Showtime aired this movie almost every night, after "Red Shoe Diaries" and usually around 1 AM. I thought then this was the strangest soft-core thing I've ever seen. Over the years, I've seen far more bizarre, but this one still remains memorable to me after all these years.

First off, the music. Bad '70s porno music meets Asian karaoke. Seriously. There are really only 2 songs here, and I don't know the names of them, so I'll give them names: "Like A Sailing Ship," which has a ship horn in its chorus ("TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!"), and "I Wander Safe At Night," which is played most prominently during the big group drug/orgasm scene, perhaps the standout scene in this film: a bunch of people smoke pot (or some mind-altering drug), then get horny and get freaky. All to the strains of a bad guitar solo. This should be a requirement for all soft-core porn.

Laura Gemser is pretty hot, she could easily still stand out even today. Come to think of it, all the women here are not bad-looking at all. If you can stand the fact that a lot of George W.'s last name is in full force here (personal grooming wasn't in in 1976, kids), you might like the ladies.

"Emanuelle in Bangkok," a standout film from my lonely teenager years. I don't even remember the plot, and I don't care. Seeing this now brings back memories of me with Cool Ranch Doritos and a bottle of Pepsi, keeping the volume low so my parents wouldn't hear it, settling back to Showtime's late-night lineup, which included this film and "Red Shoe Diaries." Those were the days...