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A lavish boxset full of Italian films, many of which have caused controversy and scandal? What, is this article about Severin's Black Emanuelle boxset again? Nope. A Big nope. This set comes from Criterion, and contains the first nine films by the Italian super-rebel Pier Paolo Pasolini. For those who already have Pasolini's latter works like Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom and his Trilogy of Life anthologies, rest assured: those are not included in this set. But all the others? They're here! Nicely packaged and accompanied by a gorgeous book. The whole set looks mighty pretty, so here is a gallery of shots. Click on the edge of the pictures to scroll through them, or at the center of each to see a...

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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...

If you are a Blu-ray collector, US-based distributor Severin is worth keeping tabs on, as their releases tend to be interesting, with many films getting proper treatment and great extras. Their boxset dedicated to folk-horror films is rightly the stuff of legends. So when earlier this year they announced that they were about to release their biggest and most ambitious boxset release yet, I was very excited. That deflated a bit when I heard the subject: the Black Emanuelle films. Wait. What?! They say you can't polish a turd. And no matter how beautiful Laura Gemser is, Black Emanuelle is hardly what you'd call a great film, a dubious cash-grab to leech on the success of another dubious film (Just Jaeckin's Emmanuelle). So what was...

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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...

In his latest interview/podcast, host and screenwriter Stuart Wright discusses the documentary Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life & Ghastly Death of Al Adamson with director David Gregory of Severin Films fame.

The follow-up to his award-winning Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau – the documentary explores the strange life and gruesome demise of exploitation maverick Al Adamson, revealing perhaps the most bizarre career in Hollywood history. Told through over 40 first-person recollections from friends, family, colleagues and historians plus rare clips and archival interviews with Adamson himself, Blood & Flesh is a delightful, dirty and deadly saga of bikers, go-go dancers, aging Hollywood actors, porn stars, freak-out girls, Charles Manson, Colonel Sanders, alien conspiracies,bad contractors and “scenes so Sick the movies could never show them before!”

Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life & Ghastly Death of Al Adamson is Out Now on VOD...

For those of you who enjoy your genre offerings on the eccentric side, May 8th is shaping up to be a wild day of home media releases. Severin Films has put together a limited edition Blu-ray for Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals and they have the uncut version of Violence in a Women’s Prison coming out this week as well. Both The Devil Incarnate and Enter the Devil have been gussied up for an HD release this Tuesday, and for all you Amicus fans out there, Scream Factory is bringing The House That Dripped Blood to Blu, too.

Other notable releases for May 8th include Disembodied, Bizarre, Sick Sock Monsters From Outer Space, The Creeps, Gutboy: A Badtime Story, and The Violence Movie.

The Devil Incarnate

The action takes place in 16th century Spain. The Devil comes to earth to live as a mere mortal. Together with a human companion,...

Back in 1974, classy director Just Jaecklin gave the world Emmanuelle – a tasteful soft core classic for the ages. It remains one of France’s most successful film exports. There were many official sequels but in Italy, the land of ripping off other films, the concept of Black Emanuelle (Emanuelle Nera) came into existence.

She is a globe trotting, uninhibited, sexually liberated photo journalist who gets into sexy capers wherever she goes. Black Emanuelle was played by the exquisite Indonesian Laura Gemser who always injected a touch of carefree classiness into the role. She was just perfect.

The definitive Black Emanuelle films were directed by Italian exploitation supremo Joe D’Amato (Aristide Massacessi) – a man equally at home in horror and in sexploitation. The Black Emanuelle films were heavily influenced by other genres and subgenres in Italian cinema such as the Mondo movie and the cannibal film.

The films were not...