समाचार

The Black Emanuelle films aren’t really a series in the proper sense of the word. True, they all star Indonesian-Dutch actress Laura Gemser, and she usually plays a globetrotting photojournalist called Emanuelle. (The single “m” in her name was used to avoid infringing on the copyright of Just Jaeckin’s 1974 softcore sensation Emmanuelle starring Sylvia Kristel.) But there’s no notion of continuity between installments (often the product of different teams of writers and directors), and, even though a core group of actors does turn up time and again, they always play different, unrelated characters. What unites these films, apart from Gemser’s presence, is their dedication to exploring sexuality in a frank and uninhibited manner.

Severin’s new box set, The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, brings together all 21 of the Laura Gemser films, most of them newly restored from 2K scans of the original materials, as well...

Eli Roth, who is known to have a passion for Italian B-movies, is at the Venice Film Festival to help promote biographical doc “Inferno Rosso: Joe D’Amato on the Road to Excess,” directed by Manlio Gomarasca and Massimiliano Zanin, in which Roth features as a talking head.

The doc, which premiered on the Lido as a special screening, sheds light on Aristide Massaccesi, known as Joe D’Amato, the under-the-radar producer, director and cinematographer who between the 1970s and the late 1990s spawned some 200 films in a wide range of genres spanning from spaghetti westerns to horror to erotic/exotic to porn. Roth spoke to Variety about what makes D’Amato stand out, including the fact that Indonesian-Dutch actress Laura Gemser starred in his “Emanuelle” franchise, not to be confused with the French “Emmanuelle” pics. Edited excerpts.

How did you discover Joe D’Amato and his films?

I first experienced...