Written by: Joe D'Amato,
Gianfranco Clerici, Maria Pia Fusco
Directed by: Joe D'Amato
Starring: Laura Gemser, Ivan
Rassimov, Karin Schubert
Inter-series continuity is
about the last thing you'd expect from a filmmaker as sloppy as Joe
D'Amato. It's even more shocking than a woman getting fucked by a
German shepherd (we'll get to it, just be patient). Nevertheless,
that's what we're presented with just as soon as Emanuelle gets done
banging a trucker in his van full of beds. Turns out he picked her
up on a pier where she'd hitched a ride on a yacht and debarked with
no money or clothes but those on her back, because she just came from
a tropical island where she tried to find happiness but, as she
says, “it didn't work out”. At the end of the previous
installment, Emanuelle In America,
we saw our heroine head off to a tropical island with her boyfriend.
Apparently the simple life wasn't for her, so she headed back to the
States to take up her old job at the newspaper.
Her
first mission is to head off to India, where a guru is charging
exorbitant amounts of money to teach people how to achieve the
ultimate orgasm. This, of course, is nothing more than a pointlessly
long set up to just about the most obvious punchline ever, as
Emanuelle bangs the guru and, as he's smoking a cigarette and basking
in the afterglow, sure he's just blown her mind, she basically shrugs
and says, “Meh, it happens to a lot of guys”. There are two
notable things about this sequence. One is another unexpected
display of concern for continuity as the hardcore inserts with a very
obvious body double for Gemser (hey, she turned into a white girl!)
were shot on the same set as the orgy scene, probably even at the
same time as you can see several of the same extras in the background
of the original film and the additional scenes to make them fit
together more seamlessly.
The
other standout feature of what is otherwise clearly a chunk of
padding, is George Eastman as the sex guru. If that name sounds
familiar to you, he's starred in several other of D'Amato's movies,
most notably Anthropophagous/The Grim Reaper,
as the hulking, deformed killer. Eastman is a massive tank of a
dude, with extremely intense and scary eyes, and to make him look
like an Indian guru (they failed), they put him in brown face makeup
and a long wig. This makeup combined with his naturally sinister
appearance makes him look like a giant serial-killer sex Jesus.
Next,
Emanuelle meets up with her reporter friend Cora Norman, who is
working in Hong Kong on a white slavery ring story. They decide to
work together, getting themselves sold into a harem so they can track
the slavers to the very top rung of the sleaze ladder. Like the
James Bond of the sexploitation world, Emanuelle goes from the
possession of a creepy, melty-faced guy (whose unexplained and
unusual appearance makes it feel even more like a trashy Bond flick),
who she narrowly escapes being raped by because she fights too much
and he decides she needs to be broken, to a trainer in Hong Kong who
teaches the women to respond to even the most vile of conditions with
moans of pleasure. This is accomplished by tying them to weight
benches in what appears to be a discount hotel workout room and
subjecting them to all kinds of degradations.
This
is the scene that caused the movie the most problems. The two
demonstrations the trainer gives Emanuelle and Cora involve pouring
milk on one girl's vagina and putting a snake on it, “because all
reptiles love milk and will lap up every last drop”. Sure they do,
guy. At one point it's suggested he's inserting the snake into her,
but he's pretty obviously feeding it into his hand instead. The
other girl gets mounted by that German shepherd I mentioned earlier,
and although no actual penetration is shown, judging by the positions
of the girl and the dog, unless they covered Rin Tin Tin's red rocket
with something she's getting humped for real.
Finally
they wind up back in the states, where a group of high-powered
politicians get their kicks making the girls dance naked for them in
some cruddy warehouse district. When one of the girls gets raped
nearly to death by a bunch of winos, the cops come calling and the
gig is up. Well, we assume it is. There's never really any clear
finale. The half-dead girl gets carted off in an ambulance and
Emanuelle trots off to her next adventure, completely unfazed by all
the horrible things she's seen the last few weeks.
This
was one of the most expensive movies ever made in Italy at the time,
with location shooting all over the world. When they go to Hong Kong
or India or Iran, it's not just a dressed set in a studio, it's the
real deal. All the money they spent really shows, because whatever
else you think about it, the movie looks fantastic. D'Amato may be a
lousy writer and editor, but at his most inspired, he does have an
excellent eye behind the camera. It was quite a shock going from Sex
and Black Magic to this. Even
though that movie was made only three years after this one, the whole
thing just feels dreary, like D'Amato is bored to death with what
he's doing and is just going through the motions for a check. This
movie, by contrast, is very energetic, garish, sleazy, and reveling
in every disgusting moment.
Emanuelle Around the
World is the third of five
Emanuelle flicks D'Amato and Gemser made together. If the rest of
them are as much squalid fun as this one, I'm looking forward to
checking them out. Severin Films did a stellar job restoring the
French hardcore print for this release, but I'd love some extra
features. I want commentary tracks and documentaries for these
things. The behind-the-scenes stories are probably even more fucked
up than the movies.
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