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Emanuelle in America (1977)
Starring Laura Gemser, Gabriele Tinti, Riccardo
Salvino, Roger Browne & Paola Senatore
Directed by Joe D'Amato
Written by Ottavio Alessi, Maria Pia Fusco
& Piero Vivarelli
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When I was stationed overseas in the Navy, one of my comrades had a brilliant idea: for about $30, he purchased via mail order an 8 mm film projector and a set of 15 short porno loops. This was in the days long before the internet and other than skin magazines, there was no other porn available to the 3,000 horny sailors stationed on that island. Needless to say, this dude made a fortune charging $1 a head to watch his treasure trove.
Unfortunately, of the 15 short loops, about nine featured bestiality. After my evening of viewing this collection, I was set for life as far as bestiality went. Dogs, ponies, blondes, brunettes, any combination or perverted act you could possibly imagine - I saw them all, some more than once. I never wanted to see another crime against nature ever again. Ever.
Which brings us to "Emanuelle in America." (Wait for it)
It was in 1974 that the Emmanuelle character first appeared on film, starring the very lovely Sylvia Kristel. "Emmanuelle" was a soft-core porn classic, featuring beautiful actresses and handsome actors in picturesque, artfully filmed settings. "Emmanuelle" and it's immediate sequels raked in millions around the world. The films were tame enough and maintained production values of sufficient quality that they provided a genteel alternative to visiting seedy hard-core porn theatres in dodgy downtowns.
Then the Italians got involved.
By now, there have been approximately a gazillion movies made that included the name Emmanuelle in the title: "Emanuelle in Bangkok," "Emanuelle in Space," "Emanuelle's Revenge," "Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals" etc. Most of these movies had nothing at all to do with the Emmanuelle character, often they were just re-titled for sale outside of Italy, with the re-spelling of the character's name with only one M. One branch of the Emmanuelle tree began early on, with the release of "Black Emanuelle" in 1975. "Black Emanuelle" featured Laura Gemser, who was actually a beautiful, worthy successor to Sylvia Kristel.
Exploitation director Joe D'Amato got involved a few years later and brought hard-core sex and other "improvements" to the series. Gemser never actually performed anything other than soft-core sex, but several movies featured explicit inserts meant to fool the viewer. D'Amato also staged or spliced in other hard-core scenes into several of the movies, along with fairly extreme violence.
I'm not going to bother with a plot recap of D'Amato's most notorious "Emanuelle"
movie, "Emanuelle in America;" that would be like trying to explain the entire six seasons of "Lost" to someone who never saw the show and didn't speak English. It has something to do with Emanuelle investigating an international sex slave/hot bisexual Euro-slut/swingers club/secret evil criminal organization. But here's the highlights:
- In addition to a number of soft-core sex scenes featuring Gemser, there are four hard-core scenes, all of which are stiff (pun intended), unexciting, and clumsy. Maybe this was D'Amato's first hard-core shoot, or maybe Italian porno actresses just sucked in the 70s (Again, pun intended).
- In the movie's most notorious scene, a woman strips naked in a stable and jacks off a horse. Yep. She's beautiful and he has a tail and hooves.
- As bad as that is, the movie also contains cleverly edited, graphic, explicit footage from a "snuff" movie. This is some of the most disturbing, hateful and realistic looking stuff I've ever seen. It depicts a group of women being tortured and raped by South American soldiers and it includes: nipples being sliced off with machetes, impalement with steel dildos, hot lead poured down a woman's throat using a dick-shaped funnel, anal rape, whipping, branding, etc.
I really have a hard time trying to figure out just what D'Amato was trying to accomplish with "Emanuelle in America." I saw one of the quality Emmanuelle sequels with my girlfriend in high school and as best as I can remember, it was a fairly pleasant way to spend the evening. I can't imagine any date getting turned on by watching torture and bestiality. That might be a serious warning sign: if your girlfriend wants to visit a farm late at night or brings home a pair of pliers and a leather gag embedded with steel hooks, RUN FORREST RUN!!!
If D'Amato had left out the nasty stuff, this might have been an ok soft-core movie. Gemser was pretty good at soft-core and most of the women (and men) are nice to look at without their clothes on. The only thing that makes any sense is that D'Amato was throwing in the kitchen sink, trying to rope in an audience for a quick buck. That's a classic exploitation template. I hope he made a big pile of dough, because what he left for posterity was one of the worst offenders from the Itialo-crud period.
"Emanuelle in America" is definitely a final contender for Sickest Fucking Film Ever, for the snuff footage alone. And as far as I know, it's the only widely released movie with actual bestiality - please correct me if I'm wrong. But, Jesus Wept, I hope I am right, because I would like to go to my grave never having to watch another pony or puppy show.
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patrick