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Released by: Severin Films
Released on: July 25th, 2022.
Director: Joe D’Amato, Brunello Rondi
Cast: Laura Gemser, Gabriele Tinti, Jack Palance, Annie Bell, Al Cliver
Year: 1976/1976/1983/1980
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The Sensual World Of Black Emanuelle – Movie Review:
Severin Films, in their ongoing quest to bring to market the best in Eurocult exploitation, sexploitation, horror and general cinematic weirdness, has taken on the unenviable task of assembling the massive Blu-ray boxed set that is The Sensual World Of Black Emanuelle. Comprised of twenty-four feature films and fifteen discs as well as a massive full color booklet, it’s quite a sight to behold and far too big a set to properly cover in a regular review, this entry will serve as the third part of our five part coverage of the set.
Part One can be accessed here.
Part Two can be accessed here.
And with that out of the way…
Disc Seven - Black Cobra / Black Velvet:
Directed by the late, great Joe D'Amato in 1976 and originally released as Eva Nera and also known as Black Cobra Woman as well as a few other titles, this movie begins when a beautiful, exotic woman named Eva (Laura Gemser) arrives at the airport in Hong Kong. Here she's approached by Jules Carmichael (Gabriele Tinti) and they talk. We learn she's come to Hong Kong to perform at a nightclub where she's scheduled to do some sort of weird ancient snake dance. Jules, on the other hand, is in town to do some business and hang out with his older brother, a rich snake enthusiast named Judas (Jack Palance – no, seriously, he’s in this!).
Later that night we cut to the club and sure enough, Eva is strutting around mostly nude with a big snake wrapped around her neck and Jules and Judas couldn't be happier. Duly impressed, Judas calls Eva up the next day and insists on taking her for lunch at her favorite restaurant and though they never mention the name of that place, they meet there and talk over a lovely meal. At this point Judas basically offers to buy Eva's company, he'll pay her to hang out with him and in turn he'll spoil her. It's a pretty weird offer but eventually Eva obliges, probably to get away from the Chinese guy she's been hanging out with who keeps beating her up. When Judas throws a party, Jules introduces Eva to the cream of the crop and before you know it, Eva is having off screen and on screen lesbian sex with Candy (Ziggy Zanger) and Gerri (Michele Starck), not to mention getting massages from attendants with strange vibrating hand attachments and swapping bathing suits. As Eva and Gerri grow closer, Jules and Judas both start to get a little irked, and a whole lot of shifty backstabbing and weird kinky snake related sex stuff goes on. This won't end well...
Not nearly as explicit as most of the movies that D'Amato and Gemser would make together, Black Cobra Woman still manages to offer up enough sex and sleaze to appeal to fans of their Black Emmanuelle series of films. Eva plays with herself, has sex with the dude who slaps her around and gets involved in some girl on girl play time here and there as well. It all leads up to a ridiculous conclusion, the kind that you really only ever get in a D'Amato movie and which really needs to be seen to be believed.
Nicely shot and making fine use of a good, if very repetitive score from Piero Umiliani, the film was edited by none other than Bruno Mattei, which might explain why it's choppy and lacking any serious flow. The cast all sort of sleepwalk through it, which is funny when you consider what's going on, and it's just plain weird seeing Jack Palance show up in this movie. Animal lovers are advised that there is some very real snake violence in here that many will find a turn off. Not the best or most interesting of the run, but it's entertaining enough that if you've enjoyed previous collaborations between D'Amato and Gemser you'll want to give it a look.
Known alternately as Black Emanuelle, White Emanulle and Emanuelle In Egypt, the next film in the set finds Laura Gemser back in the films series that made her an international icon, this time starring alongside the lovely Annie Belle (of Laura) and the perpetually bearded Al Cliver (from Lucio Fulci's Zombie).
Oddly enough, no one in this film is actually named Emanuelle. This time out, Gemser plays Laura, a high fashion model who travels with her friend Pina (Annie Belle) to Egypt where Laura is to participate in a photo shoot or two with a photographer named Carlo (Gabriele Tinti). Once they're there, the photographer turns out to be a jerk - he verbally abuses poor Laura as she poses for him, forces her to pose next to a dead Arabian child, and eventually forcibly has his way with the woman. Once that's over with, Laura and Pina meet up with a new age type named Horatio (Cliver) who decides to show how enlightened he is by having group sex in an Egyptian temple. That's about it - there's really no story to this film, it's essentially just an excuse to have Gemser and Belle make out with everyone they come into contact with and, thankfully, with each other from time to time, though not before Horatio hypnotizes everyone and makes Laura drink the blood of a sacrificial goat!
What? Rewind that last part. Ok. Yeah, she really does drink the blood of a sacrificial goat. Huh. Didn't see that part coming.
Directed by Brunello Rondi (best known for writing a good portion of Fellini's filmography - he wrote 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita), Black Emanuelle White Emanuelle is interesting in that it stars two (at the time) real life couples - Laura Gemser and Gabriele Tinti, and Annie Belle and Al Cliver. You'd think with this sort of chemistry on set that their respective performances would heat up the screen considerably but that doesn't really happen here, much of the softcore bump and grind footage comes off feeling too staged and too forced for its own good. That said, Gemser and especially Belle both look ravishing in the picture and the camera does not shy away from showcasing their considerably physical charms.
Susan Scott shows up in a small supporting role in the film as does the wonderfully named Ziggy Zanger (who also pops up alongside Gemser and Tinti in Joe D'Amato's Black Cobra Woman)! But really, none of hit makes a whole lot of sense. One can only assume given the credits to his name that Rondi was trying to bring an artsy surrealist slant to the Emanuelle formula and in some ways he succeeded - the movie looks very cool and the scenes involving Horatio and the hijinks that go on in the temple could have a deeper meaning. On the other hand, he's also succeeded in creating a genuinely confusing film that doesn't actually wind up going anywhere leaving us wondering what, in fact, was the point in the first place?
That said, there's enough in here that cult movie fans should dig the picture even if it's far from the best that the series has to offer. The cast is fun and made up of some interesting Eurocult regulars. Cliver's performance is as wooden as ever but quite amusing and he does show off 'Lil Al' in one surprising scene. The plethora of disco on the soundtrack dates the film quite nicely. The cinematography is good, and hey, Laura Gemser drinks the blood of a sacrificial goat. What more do you want?
Disc Eight - Emanuelle’s Perverse Outburst / Porno Esotic Love:
Essentially a greatest hits package put together using footage from earlier entries in the run, 1983’s Emanuelle’s Perverse Outburst – which is an amazing title for a movie – culls from Black Emanuelle, Emanuelle In Bangkok, Black Cobra Woman, Emanuelle And The White Slave Trade and a few others, including Porno Esotic Love. New audio has been recorded in an attempt to make something new out of this older material and the whole thing is as cheap and tawdry as it sounds, and as you’d want it to be.
Plot wise…it’s a little tough to make complete sense out of it but Emanuelle, with some help from Misha, is using her talents as a reporter and photojournalist to help the C.I.A. or some such agency, using her skills and talents as a seductress to get whatever information it is that they need in order to shut down a trafficking ring and a drug operation and some sort of arms smuggling ring that has some ties to the K.G.B.. Along the way, lots of people have sex and D’Amato edits in clips from some of his hardcore features (some of which looks like it originally appeared in Erotic Nights Of The Living Dead) to spice things up, which results in lots of blowjobs and an appearance from Mark Shannon. There’s also a discussion in the movie about how dolphins have human like qualities and lots of J&B is consumed.
Also known as Unleashed Perversions Of Emanuelle and set, at times, to a wonky synth score the new narration is frequently amusing as the narrative quite clumsily attempts to try and tie all of the footage into something semi-coherent. Watching the film dubbed in French as it is presented here gives it an interesting vibe while D’Amato’s typically strong and polished cinematography is as impressive here as it was in the movies that the film was taken from.
The whole thing is weirdly goofy and plenty silly but if you’re a fan of Gemser and D’Amato’s collaborations it makes for an interesting and entertaining curiosity item if not a stone cold classic of erotic cinema.
Porno Esotic Love, which D’Amato directed in 1980, stars Gemser as a woman named Eva, a dancer by trade, who experiences a sexy dream where she and her lesbian lover, Iris (Annj Goren), a stripper and sex worker, indulge in a beachside sex romp with two African men. When Eva wakes up from this she discovers that Iris is dead, a needle in her hands indicating that maybe she overdosed.
Wanting to know more about how Iris died and hoping to get to the bottom of the case by finding the drug dealer she believes to be responsible for Iris’ passing, Eva decides to fly to Asia where Iris and her husband, Steve (Gabriele Tinti), had been tied up in a plot with a man named Frank (Mark Shannon), employed at the Consulate, in a drug trafficking ring.
Eva then kinda-sorta goes undercover, using her talents as a dancer to take on a job as a snake dancer at a somewhat clandestine night club using deadly poisonous snakes in her act that will come in pretty handy once she figures out ‘whodunnit’ and decides to get her revenge.
By using a whole lot of footage from Black Cobra Woman and a bit of footage from Porno Holocaust, D’Amato once again kinda-sorta creates a new movie out of some existing material, and while recycling is good for the environment, it isn’t always good for movies. Some bits and pieces shot in and around Hong Kong look to be new and possibly exclusive to this movie but the vast majority of it is taken from the two films mentioned. That said, can you ever have enough footage of Laura Gemser dancing with a snake? Probably not. While Jack Palance didn’t make the cut, we do get plenty of nicely shot girl on girl action as well as some hetero scenes, all filmed by D’Amato’s watchful eye with nice composition work. Say what you will about the man, but his smut always looked good and this movie is no exception. The new dubbing used is suitably wacky and, as it is with the first movie on this disc, it won’t change your life but its inclusion here is very welcome indeed since it makes for an interesting oddity in the Black Emanuelle series.
Disc Nine – Divine Emanuelle:
Huh? Divine Emanuelle? Well, the film on this disc is actually better known as Love Cult or Love Camp in some circles and has very little to do with the Emanuelle series we all know and love, but Laura Gemser stars in it and takes her clothes off a lot, so hey, there's that at least.
Gemser plays 'The Divine One' – a woman who is the central figure of a strange love cult named The Children Of Light that owes a lot to Jim Jones and his crew of religious nut jobs. At any rate, these cultists practice group sex a lot and also manage to incorporate the dirty deed into pretty much all of their rituals. They often sing songs (seriously, there are musical numbers in here) but more or less spend all of their time gettin' it on.
The dark side of the cult becomes evident when someone refuses to engage in carnal deeds – for their dissent, they're usually stripped and whipped. Should you decide to leave the cult, well, you'll find yourself tossed to your death at the bottom of a pit full of spikes by some guy who looks like a greasy Steve Reeves movie reject.
The writer/director of the film, Christian Anders (who would later appear in Kung Fu Emanuelle), plays the role of Dorian and his job is to smooth talk ladies into joining up with the cult, so that there's always a constant supply of fresh meat to play with. When he meets up with the pretty young daughter of a prominent American senator named Patricia (Simone Brahman), he talks her into becoming one of them. Dorian becomes conflicted when he starts to fall for the latest addition to the love cult, and soon he's falling head over heels in love with her. Once he gets in touch with his emotions, he realizes that they're not safe if they stay with the cult and he decides that they should escape the compound so that they can get back to the real world and make a new life for themselves.
Unfortunately, as Dorian knows all too well, the cult doesn't like it when you try to leave. When you join them, you're one of them forever and when the two lovebirds make their escape, the burly muscleman is going to be there to try and stop them. And then there's the rumblings about the end of the world that are going around the camp, and the mass suicide that they've scheduled to ensure that they get into Heaven when it happens…
Part cult movie in the tradition of Guyana, part women in prison film, Divine Emanuelle is one hundred percent goofball sleaze from start to finish. The musical numbers border on the surreal, the sex is completely gratuitous and extremely plentiful, and the plot merely exists to take us from one set piece to the other. Performances are standard for this type of material across the board, with Christian Anders winning the award for goofiest hero to ever turn against a cult and Laura Gemser spending a lot of her time naked and looking good but not doing a whole lot else.
Anders' direction is competent if at times a little primitive. The cinematography has its moments but overall isn't anything to write home about. In terms of pacing the movie moves along at a good speed and the script throws in enough sex, violence, and sexual violence to keep things interesting. Divine Emanuelle isn't really an Emanuelle or Emmanuelle movie at all, but it is a fun soft core adventure with horror movie trappings that entertains as a guilty pleasure and, as such, a worth addition to this collection.
Also found on this disc is Fanatico… When The Goddess Calls, which is Christian Anders’ Director’s Cut of the movie in work print form. This version of the movie runs just over 114 minutes versus the 99 minute theatrical cut. The Divine Emanuelle cut of the movie is considered to be the official and final cut but it was created by using a lot of reshoots and re-editing that changed the tone of the movie quite a bit. Severin has recreated this version of the movie using the original negative and sections taken from an interpositive. It feels more like a trippy musical than the flat out exploitation picture that Divine Emanuelle turned into. While hardly a puritanical picture in this form, it has a good bit less sex and more focus on Anders' character. There's more plot and character development here as well, and it definitely makes for an interesting variant (that appears here in its worldwide debut!).
The Sensual World Of Black Emanuelle – Blu-ray Review:
Each of the films on these three discs in this set are framed at 1.85.1 widescreen except for Black Velvet, which is framed at 2.35.1, and Divine Emanuelle, which is framed at 1.66.1. They are all presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition on 50GB Region A discs. Emanuelle’s Perverse Outburst and Porno Esotic Nights show a bit of damage and, given their cut and paste nature, it isn’t shocking to see that some scenes have better clarity than others and some scenes are considerably grainier than others. The other four films are cleaner and boast better color reproduction – again, this all makes sense given the nature of those two specific films. Overall, transfer quality here is quite good. Some minor compression artifacts can pop up in some of the darker scenes but odds are pretty good that if you’re not looking for them they won’t bug you. Depth, detail and texture all look really solid as well and everything appears to look like proper film without any obvious noise reduction or edge enhancement getting in the way.
24-bit DTS-HD Mono tracks with optional subtitles provided in English only are provided for each movie in the set. Black Cobra gets English and Italian options, Black Velvet gets partial English and Italian options, Emanuelle's Perverse Outburst is presented in French, Porno Esotic Love is given English and Italian while Divine Emanulle gets English Mono and French Mono options. For older mono mixes of low budget films, these all sound fine. The levels are properly balanced and any hiss or distortion that works its way into any specific mix is minimal. The dialogue is always easy enough to understand and the various scores have solid range and presence to them.
The extras for the three discs in this fifteen disc collection are spread out as follows:
Disc Seven - Black Cobra / Black Velvet:
Extra features for Black Cobra start off with an audio commentary with Film Critic Samm Deighan that covers the different titles that the film has been known under over the years, details on the different cast and crew members, the influence of the original Emmanuelle film and the novel that it's based on, the feminist readings you can bring to some of these movies, how and where the movie subverts tropes and audience expectations, details on Tinti's career and how he shifted the focus of his career so he could work with Gemser more, the relationship that exists between the two female leads and how it is depicted in the movie, Jack Palance's career and presence in the film, D'Amato's ability to work in pretty much any genre, the use of snakes in the movie and how they tie into the film's twist, some of the plot holes in the movie and why the film remains worthy of discovery by a larger audience.
From Prague To Hong Kong is an interview with Actress Michele Starck running thirteen minutes. She talks about her background and being born in Prague, moving to Germany at seventeen after growing up in the Eastern Bloc, going to art school and then getting into acting after making friends with some Italians and moving there and staying there. She then talks about how she got into acting despite being very shy, her work in Black Cobra, getting along with Gemser, going on to work with Bud Spencer, being on location in Hong Kong and dealing with a grumpy crew, Jack Palance's arrogance and how she was intimidated by most of the other cast members.
Joe D’Amato At Eurofest is twelve minutes of footage from the director's appearance in England in 1995 where he appeared at some screenings of his work and signed autographs. At a Q&A session, he talks about his work in the horror and sex film genres, working with Klaus Kinski, shooting alternate hardcore versions for the French markets, different aliases that he's used and why he's used them, why he likes to work in The United States, doing work for Italian television, how he came to work with Laura Gemser and details on some of the other actors he's worked with over the years.
Black Velvet’s special features include an eighteen minute featurette called simply Black Velvet which interviews stars Annie Belle and Al Cliver. Made up of audio interviews with Laura Gemser and Annie Belle as well as some recent on camera interview footage with Al Cliver, the three stars of the film to discuss their respective roles and to give their thoughts on the film itself. They talk about what it was like working on location (Gemser was ill most of the time!) and how they feel about the project and they time that they spent together working on it and this turns out to be quite an interesting featurette that does a good job of relaying the history of the film from the perspective of those who starred in it. All three interviewees speak Italian though the included English subtitles do a fine job of translating.
The Roots Of Evil features Biographer Alberto Pezzotta discussing Director Brunello Rondi for seventeen minutes. He talks about some of the highlights in Rondi's filmography, how he came to direct Black Emanuelle, White Emanuelle, the evolution of the original screen play, his work with Producer Alfredo Bini, wanting to market the movie as a Black Emanuelle or Emmanuelle sequel, the influence of Pasolin's Arabian Nights on the movie, thoughts on the main actors that appear in the movie, homages to other movies like The Flowers Of St. Francis, how the film serves as a series of contrasts, some of the film's harsher and stronger scenes and the limits of obscenity and how Rondi liked to push the envelope with his work.
A Relationship Of Confusion features Film Critic Joseph Fahim on the film spending seventeen minutes exploring how the film is an artifact of its time, how the Egyptian landmarks and artifacts shown in the film still exist but how the people have changed so much. He goes on to discuss the movie industry's relationship with and interest in Egyptian culture, Europe's relationship with Egypt and how it differed from Hollywood's, Egypt's own film industry and how it reflected the sexual revolution of the late sixties and early seventies and if this movie had a formal contract with Egypt to shoot there given how it depicts the country. He goes on to note that it would be impossible to make this movie in Egypt in the modern day given how Egyptian politics have changed. Some audio from Producer Harry Alan Towers details how some of this came to happen before Fahim comes back to detail the specific Egyptican cultural elements that are worked into the movie and provide information on some of the Egyptian supporting players that had a part in the movie. He also goes over concepts of Egypt masculinity, some of the Arabic dialogue in the movie, thoughts on specific scenes, the sense of loss regarding how Egypt is seen in the movie and much more. This is a very unique and interesting piece that should prove to be quite eye-opening for anyone with an interest in Egypt’s history and how this film ties into it. Great stuff.
The disc also includes a two minute alternate English opening credit sequence as well as both English and Italian theatrical trailers for the feature.
Disc Eight - Emanuelle’s Perverse Outburst / Porno Esotic Love:
Extras for Emanuelle's Perverse Outburst are limited to an audio commentary with Author Bryan Connolly And Film Programmer Amber Adams. They discuss the different movies the movie is built off of, how the movie uses a lot of footage from Porno Esotic Love, a few other cut and paste jobs that D'Amato had a hand in creating, how the movie has more intrigue than most Emanuelle movies, having to use Gemser and Tinti's wardrobe selections to try and figure out which movie the footage appeared in originally, the insane frequency with which the movie is cut, how the Black Emanuelle movies borrow the travelogue ideas from the original French Emmanuelle movies but throw in taboo busting elements to top it, if extra footage from the earlier movies is used here or not, the dubbing in the movies, Mark Shannon's presence in the movie and how he compares to a creepy Burt Reynolds, the existence of a Super 8mm French Emmanuelle movie, how hard some of the more obscure Emmanuelle knock offs are to find, the resurgence in people wanting to preserve and study vintage pornography, the visually stunning qualities of Just Jaeckin's softcore films and how confusing it can be to figure all of this out.
The special features for Porno Esotic Love start off with The Lovemaker, an interview with Actor Mark Shannon running eleven minutes. He speaks quite candidly about how he wound up starring in some of these oddball hardcore and horror genre pictures for D'Amato, the comedic side of some of his movies, his love of reading and where he got his stage name from, his thoughts on having scenes from his movies inserted into other films without his knowledge or additional payment, getting to work with some very beautiful female co-stars, memories of specific shoots and different locations that they took place on and working with Gemser on a scene where she bit his dong off! Great stuff, and he's not only got a good memory but a pretty decent sense of humor about his work and career as well.
A trailer for the feature it also included.
Disc Nine – Divine Emanuelle:
This disc includes a selection of two and a half minutes of deleted scenes (one of which is a lesbian sex scene with Gemser exclusive to an alternate German cut of the movie) as well as a trailer. It would have been great to get a commentary or interview for the alternate Fanatico cut of the movie explaining how and why it turned into the Divine Emanuelle movie we all know and love, as there have to be some interesting stories there, but sadly that didn’t happen (though to be fair, there’s lots of info in the book about this – more on that in part 5!).
The Sensual World Of Black Emanuelle - The Final Word:
Discs seven, eight and nine of Severin Films’ release of The Sensual World Of Black Emanuelle really mixes things up! We get some fairly standard Black Emanuelle stuff going on as well as two weird cut and paste Frankenstein jobs and then a hippy love cult musical in two different cuts. Accompanying all of this are more excellent interviews and commentaries that peel back the layers of the movies and do a nice job of covering their history.