Emanuelle in America

After reading the reviews to this film and being a huge Joe D´Amato-fan since a long time my expectations were more than immense! The story is about beautiful reporter Emanuelle (played by D´Amato-darling Laura Gemser) who wants to write a sensational story about perverse sexual practicals of America´s high society. Meeting (and even more than that..!) an influential politician Emuanuelle finds a trail to the legendary/notorious snuff-movies where real humans are tortured and killed on film...

A very interesting story, but sadly the execution is only average, because "Emanuelle in America" is nothing else but typical 1970s standard soft sex! When you´ve seen one example of the endless Emanuelle-series you´ve seen´em all - this movie is no exception! In my opinion, the sickest scene is featured in the 30th minute when a naked girl caresses the dick of a horse. Then nothing´s gonna happen... After one hour the first blow job-scene is brought on and in the last third the movie there are some short hardcore takes filmed.

And then at the very end you´ve got to see those notorious snuff-sequences..! Yes, they are extremely violent! Yes, they are extremely disturbing!! However they have a pretty short running time from about 15 seconds all together and they are quite similar to those featured in Pasolini´s "Salo". And I can´t get rid of that feeling director Joe D´Amato only added them to give this after all very tame movie some shocking and provoking impulses..!

If you want to see a real sick Joe D´Amato-movie watch his splatterfest "Buio Omega" instead!!!

If pernicious is a stronger word for ugly, then it applies here, but I'm not referring to the "snuff" footage sequence, I'm referring to the non-sex/non-horror scenes. They're so unbelievably boring and poorly acted that you could end up leaving the theatre (or living room) and missing out on the sleaze.

The film's soundtrack is outstanding and captures the era wonderfully.

As always, Laura Gemser is captivating and too sexy for words, and the film's explicitness verges on hardcore for most of the time and crosses the softcore line once or twice.

But it's the "snuff" footage sleaze fans want and it doesn't disappoint. Almost SALO-esque in its intensity and terribly well executed, it arrives in context but blurs its context quickly because it is unexpectedly extreme and realistic.

Worth seeing once or twice. Or owning, if the inclination's there.

Ah, that Joe D'Amato...you can't help but watch his films no matter how curiously interesting or just plain bad they are. If it weren't for the explicit versions, I think most folks would forget about them soon after viewing, unless just gawking at naked gals here and there in the guise of a "legitimate film" is your kind of thing. The BIG problem with Emanuelle In America is that it can't make up its mind if it wants to be mere exploitation or hardcore, as it bounces back and forth but never really completes those goals.

Li'l Miss Sexpot herself Laura Gemser is "Miss Emanuelle" who will travel anywhere and subject herself to any danger in order to get an ultimate story to further her journalistic endeavors (her sneaking around and snapping pics reminded me a lot of later Charlie's Angels adventures). She joins a harem of sorts and fondles women and watches bestiality, mingles with horny aristocrats, gets an expose of a women's pleasure resort (ah, finally a bunch of naked men in a movie), and shmoozes with bad men behind a snuff film ring. Yes, a film like this DOES need lots of sex to keep it going, but it's strange how much of it doesn't show up until much later.

When sex scenes start, they end abruptly like a bad tease. During the sex, lots of jumpcuts jar the viewer so that it's not easy to get any pleasure out of viewing it. When hardcore footage appears, it usually never "finishes" (okay, there's a lack of money shots). When there ARE money shots, the scene has zipped by so fast you wonder if you were supposed to get excited or think that folks finish sexual encounters within one minute or less. Sex scenes in films like this are usually intended to arouse, and these leave you somewhat confused.

Here is where I DEFEND something about this film: Those people who are only turned on by shaved, squeaky-looking pretty people in porn should not be so harsh to those of us who actually like a bit of body hair on men, or if women aren't so artistically trimmed. I have a feeling that most are bitching about the "hairy men" because of the bearded guy in the hut (in the Tarzan fantasy sequence). If anything, his hirsute appearance enhanced the energy of the too-brief scene, and I'm sure there are plenty of folks that appreciated a natural-looking man instead of plastic pretty boys. As for the women, it's funny how so many "reviewers" are calling the actresses unattractive -- seems there are too many men out there that have ridiculously high standards for women. I didn't find these women unattractive; if anything they seemed real and still even out of the league that most of the drooling heterosexual viewers would ever get in real life. You know the kind, guys with beer guts who wear hats and t-shirts that say "No Fat Chicks" and think that all women are inherently bisexual. I say HOORAY for '70s hairy porn, let's have more of it!

For me, instead of being creeped out by physically follicle-blessed men, I was creeped out by the sordid footage of the snuff films. Instead of a glimpse of one, we are subjected to several scenes of it, and it reminds me of those harsh slasher films that get women naked before they are dismembered. Are we supposed to be aroused by the nudity AND the physical violence at the same time? Otherwise, why so much of it in this film? I say fill out the other basic hardcore sex scenes more, and less of the poles and hooks being used as sexual torture. And to think David Cronenberg got his inspiration for "Videodrome" from this film.....eek!

So, take a look at Emanuelle In America so you can say you saw it, and if you got a kick out it, then it's actually okay. I saw it as a curiosity that had to be done and over with. It just really felt like a longgggg tease to me, so that I had to dig into my stash of hairy '70s porn afterwards to feel satiated!

Extreme depravity, hardcore sex, and ultra violence: I'd heard that this sleazy offering from Italian trash-movie king Joe D'Amato (Aristide Massaccesi) was the epitome of exploitation, so I borrowed a copy from a friend and settled down to enjoy a prime slice of deviancy. Unfortunately, this supposedly spicy dollop of D'Amato sauce actually turned out to be rather bland.

Laura Gemser plays Emanuelle, an investigative reporter determined to get her scoop, whatever the risk. Using her womanly wiles, she digs up the dirt on an organised-crime boss and his harem, some lust-crazed Venetian aristocrats, and a sex club for lonely women where our horny heroine eventually stumbles on the story of the century when she discovers a couple enjoying a genuine snuff movie.

The first half of the movie is rather dull, packed with plentiful female nudity but hardly any of the 'rough stuff' that I had read so much about; only a brief scene involving a happy horse named Pedro is worthy of note.

Eventually D'Amato hits his stride and, during an orgy scene, he delivers the first of many hardcore moments; from here on in, the XXX action is more plentiful, but the clumsy direction and editing means that they are far from erotic.

At the end of the movie, Joe throws in a smattering of very gory pseudo-snuff footage for good measure, but this only serves to make the film feel even more disparate. The end result is neither a soft-core adventure, a hardcore porn movie or an all out gore-fest, but a disappointing (and often boring) half-assed mixture of all three.

See it so that you can talk knowledgeably about the genre to like-minded sickos, but don't expect anything too amazing.

There are basically two kinds people in this world: those who like smut and those who don't. Those who like it should revel in the work of Aristede Massaccesi, a.k.a. Joe D'Amato. Those who don't should stay as far away from it as humanly possible. However, I see myself as that rare someone who is able to walk the line that divides them. I can watch a D'Amato film from beginning to end but will have a storm of mixed feelings afterwards. The first Joe D'Amato film I saw was either "Emmanuelle Around the World," "Emmanuelle in Bangkok" or "Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals." I saw them on Showtime and/or the Movie Channel (now called Starz) back in late '92 and early '93. I was not familiar with D'Amato at the time; I was intrigued by the star, Laura Gemser. I had seen her in another Emmanuelle film called "Emmanuelle, Queen of Sados" (not directed by D'Amato) and was struck by her exotic beauty. I had always been a fan of 70s movies and many of the Gemser and D'Amato films had the texture of kung fu movies, exploitation movies and other genres of that time. Unfortunately, the cable stations stopped showing them and the only ones I could find at the local video stores were the aforementioned "Emmanuelle, Queen of Sados" and "Black Cobra," a soft-core film directed by D'Amato, with Gemser and Jack Palance. But finally in 1995 I jumped on the information superhighway, and thanks to many cult films sites on the net, I was able to find many if not all of these films and purchase them. Upon receiving the videos, I soon realized that I wasn't as seasoned a Joe D'Amato fan as I thought. I watched "Black Emmanuelle," Gemser's first outing in the title role, and "Erotic Nights of the Living Dead I was shocked in find her in a hard core scene in the former with Angelo Infanti, the same guy who blew up Michael Corleone's wife in "The Godfather!" I'm not going to say I've never watched pornography but it wasn't what I was looking for. In fact, I would find out later, and much to my relief, that a body double was used to substitute Gemser in the scene. I was still however shocked to find these films I had seen late on Friday and Saturday nights contained graphic, often violent scenes of hardcore sex. It took some adjusting but I found that I was still curious. I tried to find "Emmanuelle in America," the unofficial grand daddy of 'em all, on the net but tracking it would prove not to be so simple. The online store that was supplying it appeared to have ran out of copies. So I went on to buy other D'Amato films like "Caligula, the Untold Story." Though I was taken aback by the graphic scenes, I wasn't surprised by them. Finally I found another site that carried it. Though I was anxious, I must admit I was eager to see it, especially the infamous "snuff" film (at this point, I feel obligated to point out that it is well documented that the snuff footage seen in the movie was staged, so please don't go awry trying to contact the FBI to confiscate the film). I finally saw `Emmanuelle in America,' and its most famous seen. I found I wasn't as jaded as I thought, as I found myself quite disturbed by the footage. Emmanuelle thought she saw it in a dream, but when her boss at the paper shows her photos of the crime, she replies (much to my shock), "Amazing." I burst out laughing at her quip, but when the film reached its anti-climactic end, I was surprised to find that Emmanuelle did not further investigate the sadistic crime, then I thought to myself, "It's a Joe D'Amato flick. What do you expect?" And I burst out in laughter again.