Noites Pornôs no Mundo

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 travels the world once again on a crusading mission to report on the abuse and degradation of women at the hands of male-dominated organizations.At her first stop in India she meets up with George Eastman who plays a guru who has discovered the secret of prolonged sexual pleasure. While at the temple she also meets gorgeous Brigitte Petronio and it's not too long before both are having hot lesbian intercourse.While at her next stop in Rome she meets Karin Schubert who gives her a lead about a white-slavery ring...Joe D'Amato's "The Degradation of Emanuelle" is not as sleazy and shocking as infamous "Emanuelle in America",however there is enough sex and violence to bring the smile on the face of any self-respecting smut peddler.The erotic scenes are mostly soft core,but there is a bit of hard core sex added for a good measure.The film is nicely photographed and immensely enjoyable.Give it a look.

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!

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 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 !"