Black Emanuelle autour du monde

These 70's "Black" Emanuelle films from Joe D'Amato are no blockbusters but they sure can be enjoyable cheesfests and certainly have a huge following. Many guys like these just for the eye candy of Laura Gemser (can you blame us?). I personally like them because they ARE cheesy. Cheesy can be fun. But some people are dissatisfied with cheesy 70's Euro films if they aren't Oscar material. These are an acquired taste. The best of them being EMANUELLE IN AMERICA (the uncut import version only not the old VidAmerica release) and EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS (for fans of sex/horror). And FYI these films are Italian, but most of the cast are in fact speaking English. I still can't understand why their voices were re-dubbed unless it was to cover up some of the actors heavy Italian accents.

Emanuelle is now a newspaper reporter who travels around the world in search of a story about "violence to women". It starts off in San Francisco, where she meets a guru leader of a religious sex cult. We see the inside of a large church-like rotunda covered with colorful, "Indian" tapestries. The members of the cult are arranged in pairs, seated on pillows, all over the floor. It's sort of unclear, but it seems that this is one of the places where sex slaves are collected. Then suddenly, Emanuelle is off to Rome where she uncovers another sex slave operation, then Hong Kong, the Middle East, and finally New York. There are really five mini-plots associated with each of these places. It's almost episodic. In comparison with "Black Emanuelle", the movie seems less focused on the characters and more interested in illustrating the plot. It can be less engaging because of this. Still, it's probably one of the better in the series (much better than "Black E, White E/aka Emanuelle in Egypt") and full of cheap, exploitive thrills!

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.

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.

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.