Black Emanuelle autour du monde

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).

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.

The third (I think) installment in the Italian Emanuelle series starring the unearthly beautiful Laura Gemser, and simultaneously the final one that is somewhat classy and stylish. After this entry, the franchise became the prototype of total sleaze & obscenity with sex-insatiable Emanuelle invading women prisons and even a tribe of Amazonian cannibals. "The Degradation of Emanuelle" even ranks among Joe D'Amato's best films, since the screenplay is adequately written for a change and the erotic scenes are tasteful and tempting. After a brief encounter with the man of her life – a congressman for the United Nations – sleaze reporter Emanuelle wants to alter her writing style and battle the oppression of women all around the world. This noble mission brings her from India, where she unmasks a fake guru who supposedly re-invented the female orgasm, to Rome, where there's a whole network of girls that get kidnapped and deported to the Middle East as white sex slaves. But her biggest challenge lies in the United States, where eminent senators can still rape innocent girls without being punished for it. As a social allegory on Human Rights, this is a very meaningless effort but it remains a pretty decent exploitation film all together. The decors and costumes are beautiful and every large hole in the plot is neatly filled up with footage of Laura Gemser's stunningly ravishing body. Just like in all the other Black Emanuelle films, the absolute finest aspect is Nico Fidenco's brilliant music. The intro song "Picture of Love" should have won an Oscar! Ha!

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.

This is perhaps the most enjoyable of e Aristide Massaccesi's EMANUELLE movies, relatively free of the sadistic excesses of more extreme installments such as EMANUELLE IN America and EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS. As in the previous episode, EMANUELLE AND THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE (a/k/a VIA DELLA PROSTITUZIONE and at least half a dozen other titles), our intrepid girl reporter (still played by statuesque Laura Gemser who hails from the isle of Java in the former Dutch Indies) is hot on the trail of an international white slavery ring.

Having said thanks to the lorry driver (US adult superstar Paul Thomas) who picked her up naked in San Francisco harbor in her customary fashion, she bumps into old friend and colleague Cora Norman (German nudie starlet and later middle-aged Queen Mum of Spaghetti Hardcore Karin Schubert) who has found a lead to the gang's whereabouts in Rome. Before she can go check this out however, Emanuelle's editor demands that she'd do an exposé on some trendy Indian guru (exploitation mainstay George Eastman a/k/a Luigi Montefiori) in sunny Bombay instead. This makes for the best (and funniest) part of the movie as bored housewives from all over the world flock to the temple to experience the guru's heavily hyped "prolonged orgasm" techniques. Naturally, the guy turns out to be a fraud as Emanuelle soon learns when she makes love to him and he turns out to be a touch, well, premature !

In Rome, Cora gets beaten up and raped as her investigations start to turn up a bit too much in the way of damaging information as Emanuelle allows herself to be picked up by a pair of local lover boys who deliver her to the lair of the evildoers. Luckily, she had just met some virginal puppy dog (played by Claudio Alliotti who would go on to star in Masuo Ikeda's extraordinary DEDICATO AL MARE EGEO) mere minutes before and asked him to follow her on his Vespa and inform the cops.

Hong Kong and wicked Chinamen are next on the agenda, including some spectacularly tasteless (but hilarious) business involving strapped down naked women with various animal species, fortunately with appropriate comeuppance for their tormentor, before we're off again to downtown Teheran for sheiks and harems.

Capturing their target at this last stop, Emanuelle and Cora learn that women's rights are still trampled on their N.Y. home turf as well when they're invited along with an assortment of senators and their entourage for the humiliation of Miss Ohio (hardcore porn actress Juliet Graham) at the hands of homeless bums.

Even though most of the film's gorgeous female cast gets roughed up at some point, Massaccesi manages to keep the tone surprisingly light, helped by the furious pace with which he rushes through the often nonsensical proceedings, making this the cinematic equivalent of the sleazy adult comics that were quite popular at the time, in their own way unassuming precursors to much of today's manga output. Sex is quite strong for soft core with fleeting hardcore footage spicing up the orgy scenes, none of it involving Gemser though who acts as haughtily impervious to the tawdry shenanigans as ever, adding an arbitrary touch of class in the process. Italian exploitation veteran Ivan Rassimov is pretty much wasted as diplomat and do-gooder Malcolm Robertson who falls in love with our flighty heroine but never manages to get into her pants (on those rare occasions she's actually wearing them !) due to conflicting schedules which tend to find them at opposing sides of the world.

Good cinematography by Massaccesi supplies surface gloss (they were ripping off a "très chic" French sex series, after all) and Nico Fidenco's infernally groovy soundtrack bumps 'n' grinds along with the cast. So let me leave you with the lyrics to the unforgettable (resistance is futile) theme song, all together now : "Let's take a picture of love !"