Emanuelle nera: Orient reportage

Emanuelle in Bangkok (1976)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Joe D'Amato's first stab in the "Black Emanuelle" series with Laura Gemser in her second stint as the character. In this film, Emanuelle travels to Bangkok to get an interview with their King but she spends most of her time screwing any man or woman she can get her hands on. This film doesn't contain the sleaze factor that future D'Amato/Gemser films have but there's still some fairly naughty stuff here including one woman who sticks a golf ball up her vagina and then blows it out. Animal lovers will also want to stay away as there's a disgusting scene with a snake and muskrat fighting it out to the (real) death. As for the rest of the film, it's amazing that D'Amato would make so many softcore and hardcore adult films (this one is soft) and yet never manage to capture anything remotely erotic ala other directors in the field like Franco and Rollin. Gemser is a hot piece of ass but D'Amato does nothing with that beauty and the non-erotic moments is what really kills this thing. The so called story is boring enough and while there's plenty of sex and nudity, this too gets boring after a while. This film was followed by Emanuelle in America, which also features Pedro the horse. Now that film and star get an ultimate yuck.

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...

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 title says it all!! There is no story, just lovemaking scenes at regular frequency as the scene shifts from the Orient to the Gulf with a cruise thrown in between. The only saving grace for the film are the Husband & Wife couple of Gabriele Tinti & Laura Gemser.

The first thing that struck me about EMANUELLE IN BANGKOK was Nico Fidenco's music score, a whistling, happy, bumbling little ditty that would be right at home on a YouTube video compilation of Tourette's Guy clips. Or maybe a toothpaste commercial, its stuck in my head now and fortunately for my sanity, its not bad. I'd whistle it for you if I could, and can't help but wonder if that's Alessandro Alessandroni doing his trademark thing there. He's the guy whistling on the old spaghetti western soundtracks, proof once again that while often derivative the Italians managed to create some new forms. The movies may often be cheap & boring, but they almost always have great musical scores.

I would paint this one into the same category. It looks pretty much like Joe D'amato took a sprawling vacation with some of his favorite stock players (Laura Gemser, her husband Gabrielle Tinti), a couple of Italian genre cinema leading males he maybe owed a favor to (Ivan Rassimov & my hero Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) and a few sexy Euro body babes with no problems with nudity, group groping and the occasional half naked lesbian make-out with Ms. Gemser (Ely Galleani, Debra Berger, Gaby Bourgois). He brought along a camera, maybe a mistress to hold the scripts while somebody made sure there was enough light, and went about their touristy ways while filming a scene or two here & there as they traveled about.

Two scenes sort of spoil the fun, first another barbaric episode of Italian filmmakers using animal violence to fill some screen time, then an inexplicable sequence where Ms. Gemser is sexually assaulted by a mob of greaseballs who make a point to humiliate her while getting their jollies off. Inexplicable because afterward she seems quite at ease with herself and chats pleasantly with her attackers as if they had just met at a diner. Then again its all just a silly phallocentric fantasy really, about guys with unlimited means traveling exotic lands in the company of attractive women in their 20s whom they have random sex with, often playing erotic group games for grown ups & swapping partners, though the version I saw was strictly a softcore engagement. The most arousing display being a scene where the girls all get up, strip down to their panties and dance like a harem for an Arabian prince.

Or something like that, to tell the truth I was hardly paying attention to the story and frankly couldn't care less. Like a spaghetti western you watch stuff like this for the individual moments rather than the cumulative effect, and most of it passed quite pleasantly with the occasional raised eyebrow. Like the scene were Emanuelle entertains a crowd in a private club by dripping hot candle wax all over her magnificent, nude body. For all we know and given the way Joe D'amato worked, the whole film might have been just an excuse to put that up on the screen. It may not pass as entertainment for some, but for those two minutes this movie was the only thing I was thinking about.

4/10