black emmanuelle

THE FLICKS: All hail the DVD box set! Sure, there are bound to be a couple of stinkers in there you really don’t want to own - two thirds of a trilogy that just aren’t up to snuff (ahem, The Matrix) or a remake that went horribly off course (yo, Superman Returns). But when you plunk down $50 bucks and change for a box set, you’re also buying a little piece of history, aren’t you; a document of our pop culture fascinations and foibles on a few shiny metal discs...and maybe some liner notes, if you’re lucky. Severin Films understands this completely. And because no one else had the courage to do it, they took it upon themselves to release not one, but two Black Emanulle collections featuring the immortally exotic Laura Gemser. Why preserve second-grade soft-core porn, you might ask? They’re not particularly well-made, not particularly arousing, and very few would complain if the prints simply deteriorated in some private collector’s basement. But for fans of the history of cinema, these Euro-trash travelogues are an essential footnote to the erotic film industry. Black Emanuelle’s Box Volume 2 is pure, unadulterated sex circa the late ‘70s and if that doesn’t deserve some special treatment, I don’t know what does. Things actually start off with Laura Gemser nowhere in sight. Black Emanuelle 2 has Sharon Lesley taking over the lead role as our sexy supermodel committed to a psychiatric facility for chronic amnesia. It’s up to her therapist (Angelo Infanti) to drag out the flashbacks and get to the bottom of his patient’s sexual hang ups which include daddy issues, a broken marriage and degrading sexual assaults (something apparently a Black Emanuelle film cannot be without). Gorgeous beyond comprehension, Lesley has a body that could blind you if you stare too long. But the film never really lets her use it. The Rashamon-like flashbacks used to tell the story are ambitious, but completely extraneous when all is said and done. And the film’s New York setting becomes claustrophobic when compared to other films in the series which make a point of matching beautiful scenery with the beautiful girls. There’s some naughty body painting and impressive heavy lifting of a 12-pound anchor, but Black Emanuelle never delivers on Lesley’s potential. Black Emmanuelle / White Emmanuelle, on the other hand, is like a gift from soft-core heaven. Pairing Gemser with the astonishingly beautiful Annie Belle (Laure), this an erotic film dream team set against a dusty Egyptian stage. Al Cliver wanders about like a shaggy messiah with unexplained powers, while Susan Scott and Gabriele Tinti shed their clothing at every opportunity. The story, such as it is, seems to fall apart near the halfway mark, but this only serves to make the film that much more ridiculously amusing. Despite their headline status, Gemser and Belle feature only briefly in the sexual escapades before skipping off into the desert together. So writer / director Brunello Rondi (nominated for an Oscar for his work with Fellini) fills most of the time with Tinti’s nymphomaniacal mind games, abusing the native houseboy and any other locals that cross her path. But Black Emmanuelle / White Emmanuelle makes the most of its two leads (particularly Belle, who always seems better than this sort of material) and copious amount of unintentional humor to earn itself at least four out of five stars on the “Emmanuelle” scale. The rarest of the Gemser Emanuelle films is finally on home video, thanks to a vault print discovered in the private collection of a depraved European industrialist (so says the DVD back cover...and even if it’s not true, what a great story)! Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade isn’t quite the adventures in debauchery one might expect, but it does give Gemser as chance to play James Bond a bit, snapping pictures from her Zippo camera on assignment to take down an underground, underage sex ring. Writer / director Joe D’Amato’s final entry in the series, his one moment of genius in the film has nothing to do with simulated sex. It takes a while to get there, but watching a transvestite kung-fu fight scene makes every other Emmanuelle film obsolete. The rest of White Slave Trade features the usual topless groping and flesh pinching set to a swinging ‘70s score. THE FEATURES: Speaking of scores, the number one reason to buy this set besides the films themselves is to get your hands on Getting Down with Black Emanuelle Vol. 2, 70-minutes of cheesy soundtrack bliss punctuated by track 18, sexually suggestive lyrics sung in a thick German accent set against a thumping bass and string quartet. Seriously, this thing has been echoing in my brain for days! The extras are spread across all three discs in the set. After Hours with Joe D’Amato is the most technically frustrating but absolutely fascinating. Made up of 5 guys sitting around a kitchen table with D’Amato in 1996, the scene is set with plenty of beer, cigarettes and an unexplained revolver while the director chats quite candidly about his career. Think it’s easy to get into porn? D’Amato confirms it, admitting they usually had a two-page treatment supplemented with five or six sex scenes, then “voila!,” one week later they had themselves a movie. Black Velvet features a face-to-face interview with Al Cliver supplemented by audio comments from Annie Belle and Laura Gemser. And actress Dagmar Lassander spills the dirt about the trials and tribulations of the Italian erotic film industry on Diva 70. Each film also comes with a theatrical trailer.