The recent release of The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle is proof that, despite the hegemony of streaming, cinephiles really are living in a golden age of physical media. Blu-ray discs have matured into the definitive home-viewing format for movieholics, and boutique restoration labels are putting out increasingly impressive releases of increasingly esoteric films.
Severin’s exhaustive retrospective of the Black Emanuelle sexploitation series—featuring 24 feature films, two soundtrack CDs, more than 40 hours of special features, and an accompanying 356-page book (The Black Emanuelle Bible)—makes the Criterion Collection’s five-film John Cassavetes boxed set seem anemic by comparison.
Emmanuelle (two m’s) was a series of French “erotic dramas” that debuted in 1974, two years after the X-rated Last Tango in Paris and Deep Throat. Those two films generated huge controversy, and huge returns, and ushered in a milieu of mainstream sex cinema. Emmanuelle starred Sylvia Kristel (who had auditioned for Last Tango in Paris but lost out to Maria Schneider) as the titular Emmanuelle, wife of a diplomat, who embarks on an odyssey of sexual self-discovery in exotic locales.
These stylish, titillating pictures became international sensations, spawning seedier, unlicensed imitators that sought to exploit their success. Enter Indonesian-Dutch beauty Laura Gemser, who had a brief turn in Emmanuelle 2 as “Masseuse,” and whose skin tone was dark enough to be dubiously cast as Black Emanuelle (one m—so as to avoid litigation). Unleashed in 1975, this Italian franchise hit its sleazy stride in the perverted and prolific hands of Joe D’Amato—a master of B-through-Z movies—starting with his 1976 follow-up, Emanuelle in Bangkok.
“French Emmanuelle, in my opinion, is a trophy wife and not very interesting,” says film writer and historian Kier-La Janisse, who produced The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle for Severin. “Whereas Black Emanuelle is a photojournalist—she is fiercely independent, going around the world fighting crimes against women and exposing corrupt political and religious systems.”
Across such titles as Sister Emanuelle, Emanuelle Around the World, and Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (all three from 1977 alone!), Gemser’s globe-trotting run-ins with “sex cults, snuff films, cannibal jungles, women’s prisons, white slavers, depraved convents, and beyond” delivered outrageous sex and shocking violence in equal measure for the taboo-breaking grind-house crowd of the time.
Featuring accomplished 35-mm. cinematography by D’Amato himself and set to the delicious grooves of composer Nico Fidenco, Janisse’s boxed set reconsiders and recontextualizes Gemser’s character as “the premier feminist icon in genre history.”
“Sex cults, snuff films, cannibal jungles, women’s prisons, white slavers, depraved convents, and beyond.”
“I think in sexploitation—and by extension, porn—when you have any kind of reference to gender equality or social-justice narratives … it’s so unexpected and unnecessary for the film to fulfill its stated purpose to sexually arouse that it becomes far more noticeable and likely to fuel conversation,” says Janisse of the filmmakers’ choice to characterize Black Emanuelle as a sexually liberated, self-described feminist. “Exploitation films are usually the first films to talk about any social issue. That’s why they’re called exploitation films, because they seize on things as soon as a Zeitgeist is building. So they may not articulate [social] issues in as sophisticated a way as later films, but they’re often ahead of the game.”
While Black Emanuelle’s sexuality is surprisingly broad-minded, Janisse notes that the “films are still made from a colonial perspective,” such as in the wildly racist cannibal entry.
Gemser, who retired from acting and public life in the early 90s, was never too proud of her oeuvre. She said she only played Black Emanuelle in so many features after falling in love with and marrying her co-star Gabriele Tinti while shooting the first of the series. “These films for her were just a means of adventure around the world, with her husband [and] their friend Joe D’Amato,” says Janisse. “She never thought the films were any good!”
Janisse sought out Gemser’s participation while producing the boxed set, but to no avail. However, she has sent Gemser a copy of The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle. “My hope is that after seeing the care that went into it and how reverential it is that she’ll maybe see the series, and the fans’ interest in her as an actress, in a different way.”
Spike Carter is a writer and filmmaker. His next project is a documentary about Eric Roberts