Emanuelle - Perché violenza alle donne?

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!

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.

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).

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!