Emanuelle in the Country

First, let it be known that Laura Gemser's character isn't called Emanuelle in this film; it's Barbara.

Second, the film quality is extremely bad; grain and streaks throughout. The dubbing is atrocious; little effort was made to match the English soundtrack to the Italian actors' speech.

Third, the story is a throw-away about 2 rivals, the current and former mayors of a small Italian village. Gemser arrives at the film's beginning to be the village doctor.

The only reasons to sit through something this bad are the sexual scenes: 4 scenes of nudity; 2 involving fondling; 2 up-skirt; 1 simulated sex scene. Gemser is sickeningly skinny, but the other female lead is sufficiently attractive.

All-in-all, a film to be avoided; not even the cost of a rental or the time it takes to view.

This is the kind of movie that really tends to tick people off because it is greatly misrepresented by its English title. As other reviewers have said, this is NOT a "Black Emanuelle" film but one of a small number of Italian sex comedies "Black Emanuelle"-star Laura Gemser appeared in around that time (probably the most interesting being Jose Larraz's "Malizia Erotica"). Comedy was not really Gemser's forte, but then Italian sex comedies were really nobody's forte. A few actresses like Edwige Fenech had some small degree of comic timing, but for the vast majority, comic timing mostly involved how long it took them to strip down to the skin and how frequently they did it. These movies today are either in Italian only and really stupid, or dubbed into English and really, REALLY stupid. This one falls into the latter category (but tack on a couple more "reallys").

Gemser plays a female doctor from the city who moves into the country with her husband and drives all the country bumpkin stereotypes crazy. This is a pretty sorry portrayal of rural Southern Italy. (If people had seen something like this at the turn of the century, they would have had flotillas and gunboats stationed around Ellis Island to turn back southern Italian immigrants before they implanted their inbred yokel seeds here in America). This movie not only unfunny, it's painfully unfunny. The only good thing about it is Gemser. Naturally, it lacks the depravity of the films she made with Joe D'Amato ("Black Emanuelle" and otherwise), but it has the usual nude scenes, and a long (some would say interminable) softcore sex scene near the end that differs somewhat from the "Black Emanuelle" series where the sex scenes are more truncated. If THAT'S a reason to watch this dreck, have at it, but keep in mind you are going to suffer mightily through a lot of lame, badly-dubbed provincial "comedy" to get there. But then that's why they invented fast-forward buttons.

The first thing you'll notice when watching Emanuelle in the Country is that is, in fact, not a part of the Black Emanuelle series at all but just a sex comedy starring Laura Gemser with the 'Emanuelle' name tacked on! I don't have a problem with that in theory; Italian cinema is literally infested with filmmakers doing things like this to sell their films, and the prospect of a sex comedy starring Laura Gemser was very welcome indeed; but unfortunately, the rip-off of Gemser's most popular and well known character is not justified as this is a poor sex comedy by anyone's standards. The title suggests that we will get to see the beautiful Emanuelle (or in this case, a doctor named Selina) in the country and that is exactly what we do get. Gemser is the new doctor in town and it's not long after getting there that she's attracting attention from all corners of the local population. The men are interested in getting her into bed, while the women are interested in the fact that all the men want to get her into bed and so set out to regain their attentions...

The version of the film that I saw was only seventy five minutes long, which means there's a good chance it's the cut version. I guess there's a chance that means that all the interesting stuff got cut out; although I somehow doubt it and think it's much more likely that this film didn't have anything much interesting about it to start with. Naturally, Laura Gemser is by far and away the best thing about the film; although her performance is not up to much. Still, as ever her body is great to look at and she does manage to just about make the film bearable. The country village she finds herself in is completely populated by fools and it's their antics that provide most of the 'laughs', although I doubt anyone will find this film funny. Maybe it's only meant to appeal to Italians, I don't know, but I didn't find anything to laugh at. It soon becomes apparent that the film isn't going to go anywhere and since it's not funny either; I did start to wonder exactly why I was watching it, until I remember that Laura Gemser is the star. Anyway, this isn't the only bad Black Emanuelle film; but it's one of them and I can't say it's worth tracking down.

I bought this one mainly because there is Gemser in it (is there any other reasons to buy movies like this???), so I didn't expect much of it. In fact, I didn't even know what kind of movie this turns out to be before I viewed it. Well, it turned out to be Italian comedy (some sort of) with sexual content in it. Much of naked ladies, softcore acts and ridiculous plot, which doesn't bother much, because nudity seems to be in a leading role in this one. So, if you like to see Gemser in the shower, in the bed (naked of course) and in various other places without her clothes this one is for you. Not so good as D'amatos Emanuelles, but still watchable.

** out of 5 as a movie, ***½ out of 5 as a Gemser-flick.

If you are an Emanuelle fan (indeed if you are a film fan), I really would not bother with this one- a weird cross breed of "Carry On Luigi" and weak Gemser softcore. It has none of the humour of the former, and none of the sophistication of the latter.

Yes Gemser gets naked occasionally, as does AN Other, but the film is so lousy that we just don't care. No charm, no sensuality- and not worth your time.

For those who are fans of Eurotica, I would of course strongly recommend the others in the Emanuelle series- but this (like a number of other so-called entries in the series) has "Emanuelle" daubed on it, but wears the title with no authority.