It has been a while since I visited Uncle Joe
D'Amato and his muse Laura Gemser for some Emanuelle
exploitation goodness, probably because of the dozen or so
Laura Gemser movies I've seen, they've all been terrible to
varying degrees, but eventually we will clean off the Laura
Gemser filmography. Unfortunately, despite the fact he's
been dead an awful long time, we will never clear off Uncle
Joe's filmography if only because there are way too many
movies and also because I have desire to review 'The House of
Anal Perversions'. Today we have 'Emanuelle and the
White Slave Trade' which mixes up the whole Emanuelle
experience in that there is kind of plot in this one.
Amazing.
Today Emanuelle is in Africa I think, hanging out with her
good friend Susan. Emanuelle would like Susan to take
her to some mobsters house so she could photograph him,
Emanuelle being a photojournalist and all, but Susan has to
take her car to get serviced. Or more accurately, Susan
needs to get serviced by the mechanic in that car pit.
That seems dangerous and dirty, when all Susan probably needed
to do is call the guy up and have him stop by, but that Susan
is a dangerous and dirty girl.
Emanuelle really needs to photograph this cat, why we don't
know, but now it's time for her to play mistress of disguise
and pretend to be a stewardess so that she and Susan can trick
some prince into taking them to this guys villa so she can
photograph him. It's bizarre and unnecessary, but it's
an Emanuelle movie. Plot hasn't kicked in yet, but it
will eventually. Until then we will watch Emanuelle and
Susan sex up this prince and this gangster, watch Emanuelle
and Susan sex up each other, watch them go on Safari, then
watch the gangster sex up Emanuelle and Susan once the Prince
goes back to wherever he came from.
Somewhere during all this sexing Emanuelle
spotted this guy named Francis Harley (Gabriel Tinti) at an
airport doing something suspicious, and Emanuelle being the
hard hitting reporter that she is, has to get to the bottom of
this suspicious activity. Turns out this guy is like the
middleman to some kind of prostitution ring, so Emanuelle goes
undercover, convinces this cat she's down for this
prostitution game and now it's off to San Diego to work for
the scurrilous Madam Claude and blow the roof off this
sucker. I guess. Not sure what roof there really
is to blow since Madam Claude is pretty darned up front about
what she does and what she will do to you if don't follow her
simple rules.
Of course when Emanuelle goes undercover, she goes deep
undercover. Total Commitment, this girl. There's
more sex to have and more awful, awful investigations to
perform, until she finally gets what she needs. Not
really. Actually, she basically gets poor Steven the
kung fu tranny killed… did I say Kung Fu Tranny? Why yes
I did. Then she gets gang raped, which is terrible for
99.999 percent of the women on the planet Earth, but Emanuelle
has been there and done that, then she was about to get
herself lobotomized until her hotness vexed the nurse at the
facility, and now it's time to make it back New York city to
publish her story. After she hitches a ride on a
ferry. And she has no money. How in the world is
Emanuelle gonna pay? Oh, there's a gang involved, but at
least this time it isn't rape. Roll the credits please.
So we are told that this is the last Black Emanuelle film
starring Laura Gemser that was directed by Joe D' Amato,
though Laura would don the moniker of Emanuelle a few more
times after this one, and it certainly isn't the last time
these two titans of exploitation worked together. We do
have to say that Joe leaves Emanuelle behind with one of his
better efforts in the series. It's the same, but a
little bit better.
Yes, Emanuelle jumps indiscriminately from bed to bed but
there were actually times in this one where there was a means
to the end in Emanuelle's various sex romps. Not often,
but a couple of times. Then there was an actual
narrative. Just the fact that I can type that word
within a review of a Black Emanuelle movie should let you know
that this one aimed a little higher. In the grand scheme
of things this narrative isn't a very good one, and Emanuelle
has to be the absolute worst 'investigative reporter' ever,
and she still shoots rolls and rolls of film with almost no
pictures to show for her hard work, but Emanuelle going
undercover to expose something that was already pretty exposed
was the highlight of this film.
And you can always trust Joe to give us one thing to make his
movie memorable, be it ping pong balls or horse masturbation
or some other kind of bizarre occurrence, this time we got a
tough as nails transvestite who knows kung fu. You don't
see that every day. Joe might not film the crispest
fight sequences around, but it was still something to
see. Followed by watching somebody get bludgeoned to
death with a bowling pin. Nobody could flow from high
comedy to absolute horror like Joe D'Amato.
Of course 'Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade' is still a
terrible movie, it still makes no sense, and I wished Joe
would've stop having Emanuelle get raped, or maybe have Laura
put her hand up and say 'Not this time Joe', but at least Joe
and Laura took this particular film as high as it could
go. Which is pretty low under normal circumstances, by
sky high for this amazing team of exploitation legends.
