Black Emanuelle Box set Vol 2.

First I’d like to apologize to Todd for taking so god damn long getting this review together but I was moving house and things have taken longer than expected to get my crap together and most of it is still in boxes. Go figure.

But what better way to unwind after a hard day of moving boxes upon boxes of DVDs, sofas and all the other stuff than to sit down and watch a series of sleazy ass sexploitation films from Italy under the Black Emanuelle banner.

Now I have to be honest, I have never seen the original Emmanuelle or the countless sequels and knock offs that have been produced over the years and I can’t say I’ve missed it. You see I have little patience for these cock teasing soft core flicks and since the advent of the internet there are decade’s worth of proper porn out there for a young man, or woman to revel in like the sick twisted pervert he or she is.

Severin have released their second installment in their Black Emanuelle box set series and this time the films in question are Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade, Black Emanuelle/White Emanuelle and finally Black Emanuelle 2: Electric Boogaloo (sorry couldn’t resist).

The films are all pretty similar in their crappiness, with the White Slave Trade being the shittiest and Black Emanuelle/White Emanuel being the best looking of the bunch. But let’s get to it.

Emanuel and the White Slave Trade follows Laura Gemser as Emanuelle the reporter as she uncovers a sinister white slave ring in America and goes deep undercover, and sometimes over them, to get her story. Lot of screwing ensues and some other stuff that has no story point but gets people naked for a few minutes. Tedious stuff really.
This was Joe D’amato´s and Laura Gemser´s last collaboration and you could see why. Everything is watered down, uninteresting and just plain boring. The plot, and I’ll use that term very losely, is just a thread to tie together uninteresting sex scenes in different bedrooms. I have often wondered why people like D’amato as a director because I have never seen a film of his that might possibly garner him such praise. All that I’ve seen is crap, poorly made exploitation garbage that a 12 year old could do with his dad’s video camera, if the kid was especially messed up in the head that is.
Laura Gemser on the other hand is one fine lady and I can well understand why so many films were made with her in the nud...I mean lead. But a good actress she is not and in fact there aren’t any good actors in this film and the horrendous dubbing does nothing to help.
The film looks like ass and no amount of restoration can save the uninspired cinematography but I’ll lay that blame squarely on Joe’s feet. The transfer is OK, a bit soft, grainy and has washed out colors and some dirt on it but I guess that will only enhance the nostalgia and the 70’s feel.

Black Emmanuelle/White Emmanuelle looks like they at least tried to make a proper film, albeit an arty, continental film with lots of boobs in them. Laura Gemser is once again starring as Emanuelle, or Laura as the English dubb calls her, who is this time a supermodel visiting Egypt with her grade A asshole of a boyfriend/photographer. They are visiting insanely rich friends who live in luxury and hedonism and there Emanuelle meets Pina, or Laure depending on the dubb, a foxy little minx who is experimenting with her sexuality. lots of ebony and ivory action ensues, and some ebony, ebony, ivory or ivory, ivory ebony action for good measure. They are indeed lovers and not fighters.
This one is a bit hard to follow story vise but we aren’t really watching them for the story to begin with. The writer and director of this film is Brunello Rondi, writer of Fellini’s 81/2 and Satyricon so I guess he thought he could do just as well as that dude but played it safe by putting in allot of naked flesh in to it. The film looks great, the cinematography is very good for this type of film and like I said before it looks like they geniuely tried to make a proper art film.

Black Emanuelle 2 isn’t pussyfooting around right from the start by showing weird scenes of Emanuelle, butt ass naked, being tormented by the same man, in different situations and time periods, who we soon find out is her doctor at a mental institution where she is being treated. Are these scenes showing Emauelle’s mental state or fantasies or how she has embodied different persons throughout the ages? You see Emmanuel has amnesia and is unable to recognize her family and friends. Hunky Dr. Freud is on a quest to find out what caused the amnesia and the psychosis she’s going through, manifesting in wanting to get naked and make out with the next available person.
This is flick has basically one thing going for it and that’s Sharon Lesley´s FANTASTIC breasts and body. Other than that this film is a complete bore. Lesley is as beautiful and sexy as she is a bad actress and she does little other than stare in to space and spout her lines. Another cult favorite in this film is Dagmar Lassander, a saucy red head who plays the good doctor’s suspicious wife who thinks that he’s spending far to much time with his patient and that not all of his interest in her are clinical.

The package is rounded up with a few extras, interviews with rather haggard looking Dagmar Lassander, with Joe D´amato about his porn career and with B-movie star Al Cliver and an audio only interview with Laura Gemser, though it doesn’t say it anywhere on the cover or in the menus. The best thing is a CD with tracks from various D’amato Emanuelle flicks. Nice 70’s groove going on there.
The transfer for the films are all pretty good for the material, Slave Trade looks the worst and Black/White looks the best. The audio is all mono but Black/White offers an incomplete English dub and the Italian dub with English subtitles. I had problems with subtitles not appearing over the Italian scenes when I tried to view the film with the incomplete English dub, I tried it on two players and it didn’t work in either of them. Oh well.
This is a great set for fans of sexploitation and followers of the amazing adventures of this Nubian Queen. A bit pricey for the lack of extras and overall quality but we know us geeks won’t let that stop us. Personally I thought these films were guilty of being just too damn boring and poorly made and no amount of flesh can rectify that, well maybe a little. For people not well versed in this genre, expect to use the fast forward button a lot.

A little added after thought.
One thing I noticed while watching these films and irked me a little was how it looked like kissing was totally forbidden in these film. You could fondle, lick or suck any part of the body but when it came to kissing it seemed like the actors were really trying to avoid contact in that area, making the scenes totally limp and devoid of passion. It's especially noticeable in Black Emanuelle 2 where it's very obvious. Were Italians very prudish about kissing at that time?