So I'm nowhere near completing my education on the Emanuelle movies, mainly those commonly referred to as the Black Emanuelle movies, that starred the lovely, the seductive, the incredibly sexy, Laura Gemser. (I can't help but wondering what she looks like today. Has she aged gracefully? Does she look like a sexy grandma or has she aged really badly and is basically unrecognizable? She should make convention appearances, but then at which conventions would she appear? Vintage sleaze sexploitation conventions? God, please let there be something like that invented just for me. Anyway, I'm rambling.) I think Emanuelle Around the World is like the fifth one staring Ms. Gemser that I've watched so far and I'm totally hooked. I started with Emanuelle in America, directed by Joe D'Amato and Emanuelle Around the World is also directed by D'Amato so it bears many similarities. I can't wait to see some of the other films she starred in for D'Amato because they seem to be a bit more wild than the ones he didn't direct, namely Emanuelle on Taboo Island and Sister Emanuelle, which is more from another girl's perspective that it is from Emanuelle's. Again, I digress.
Emanuelle is a jet-set photo-journalist famous for uncovering 'shocking' events, namely those events involving sexy scenarios (and some not so sexy but involving sex, which I'll get to in a second). This outing, she's off to uncover white slavery prostitution rings in a variety of exotic locales. More digression, I did watch this over two sittings, one late at night, having drunken several glasses of wine, the second being the next morning with a bit of a hangover. Anyway, she goes to Rome and manages to get invited to a party where this prostitution ring is operated. One things leads to another, and she's bound and gagged about to be raped by the 'boss,' a deformed man with a burnt looking face and a yellowed over eye. She is squirming around too much so the 'boss' selects another nubile young thing and rapes her instead of our titular heroine, if you could call Emanuelle a heroine, but I might get to that later, too. Then, the prostitution ring gets busted up by an phone call aptly placed by a young man Emanuelle had enlisted for this very task. She repays him by having sex with him in a closet on his father's yacht while his stepmother has sex with her female maid in the main cabin.
Then I fell asleep. And it was hard to remember where I left off. So....when I started to write this review, I couldn't remember every single detail so from here on out, I'll just list what I think is important.
Next, Emanuelle visits a Indian guru. She witnesses, and briefly participates, in a giant orgy. I don't know how much of this has to do with white slavery, or if that was even mentioned. The scenes are totally hardcore at this point. So much for that softcore shit, right? This is what I love about Emanuelle movies. I cannot imagine an age where you could go to a theatre, sit in the dark, and watch a movie like Emanuelle Around the World with a bunch of other people jacking off around you. I was born too late I often think. I would have loved to walk up to a box office, purchase a ticket for a film, and be treated to something like this. Because wait, it gets weirder, more hardcore, and bestial. I wonder what other people's reactions to this would have been. And granted, there are a lot more hardcore films out there, especially now, than D'Amato's seventies take on the genre, if you could call pornography a genre, but this is where all that started, right? These are famous, artsy pornos, essentially.
Anyway....of course Emanuelle manages to fuck the guru and check out his Kama Sutra school, a surreal collection of images of women in varying positions with giant stone penises. Fast forward a bit...
Emanuelle's in Macau and she winds up during her pursuit of yet another prostitution ring, in the hands of Chang. She tells Chang she wants to make a lot of money and Chang ties her up and forces her to watch a few acts that might ensure her employment with his organization. For instance, a bound girl is treated to milk being poured about her most private of areas and then a snake is released, because, according the expert Chang, this particular snake loves milk. He puts the snake inside her, she rolls around in horror/feigned ectasy, and Chang laughs maniacally. This all goes on waaaaaaaaay to long for my taste, and when that subsides, another bound girl is raped by a German shepard, again set to the tune of Chang's maniacal laughter. Before a similar fate can befall Emanuelle, her reporter lady friend busts in and shoots up the place. There is talk that the dog is still aroused and should be unleashed on Chang, but alas, we aren't treated to that image.
Having white slavery as the story arc, you end up with lots of different kinds of sex. It's such a great premise for a movie like Emanuelle Around the World because appeals to whatever you might be into. It's got lesbian stuff, animal stuff, rape fetish stuff, softcore, hardcore, sex with fruit, you name it, it's in there, at least in this one and when she's in America. Since it's Emanuelle that is taking us around the world, she is spared from the violence herself. She always manages to elude her captors and fornicates with who she deems appropriate. No harm comes to her and she is free to continue her work exposing injustices to woman and expressing herself sexually as she pleases. But that's just it, she exposes these injustices, but what does she do to help the women that these fates have been bestowed upon? Sure, she frees the girls involved in Chang's bestiality, but by merely just exposing white slavery rings, she doesn't really DO anything or make any comment about the wrongness of what she has seen or been involved in. She takes pictures of these events with her hidden bracelet camera, and she fucks a bunch of men and women, but can she really be seen in a feminist light? Sure, it's the swinging seventies and she does what she wants when she wants to, but refrains from actually having an opinion on any issues whatsoever.
Curious even still is her ability to infiltrate these organizations and webs of crime. She always gives her real name, her bracelet camera is painfully obvious, and many times, tells people her occupation and intent to uncover the operations. At one point, a guy involved in a harem says, oh yeah, look, it's those American lady reporters. They're famous the world over. People know Emanuelle and her reputation in these movies, so why do they keep letting her into their brothels, Kama Sutra schools, orgies and parties? Because they want to fuck her too, I suppose. She exudes sex so everyone just must do as she says in any circumstance.
Perhaps I'm searching for depth where there isn't much? Emanuelle is beautiful and exotic, I get it. These films contain sexual scenarios for whatever it is that may turn ya on. With the international locations, the film seems more expensive and better than it actually is. The fashion is absolutely superb in that great seventies way. And like I said before, I'm quite smitten with these films and the era in which they were made right now. I won't make any judgments right now about whether or not Emanuelle is the seventies spokeswoman for feminism or anything, but she's fun to watch, if nothing else. And I've got my work cut out for me. There are a lot of Emanuelle movies out there.
