Review

Any attempt to chronicle the onslaught of entries in the infamous Black Emanuelle series is bound to be a dangerous undertaking--actress Laura Gemser essaying the recurring role of a character named Emanuelle is the only semi-consistent element in a series of films made in the mid-1970's by various directors, which have all been heavily re-titled for different markets following their initial releases. Made by director Albert Thomas (a.k.a. Adalberto Albertini) in 1975 to cash in on the success of Just Jaeckin's softcore hit Emmanuelle the previous year, the original Black Emanuelle featured Gemser as a photojournalist on a voyage of sexual discovery in a variety of scenic locales. Black Emanuelle was a hit in its own right, spawning a wave of sequels and imitations. Although perhaps not official Black Emanuelle titles, the five Emanuelle films Gemser did with Joe D'Amato in 1976 and '77 are the entries that devotees of the series remember most strongly: the comparatively restrained Emanuelle in Bangkok and the notoriously excessive Emanuelle in America, both from '76, and then the wildly entertaining Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (a.k.a. Trap Them and Kill Them), the ridiculous Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade and the relatively little-seen Emanuelle Around the World, all three from '77. This quintet represents not only the pinnacle of the Black Emanuelle series, but also one of the highlights of D'Amato's career; in their delirious excesses and sheer narrative goofiness, they also comprise the apex of Italian exploitation films of the period.
More than any of the other Black Emanuelle titles, Emanuelle in America is representative of an era in Italian exploitation cinema when the boundaries of visual decorum were being pushed beyond their breaking point. Throughout the 60's and 70's, Italian genre films were rife with images of sexuality and violence that often exceeded similar content in other Western films, but by the mid-70's, confrontationally transgressive films were being produced whose sole purpose would be to explore the forbidden as graphically as possible. With its mixture of explicit sex and shocking violence, Emanuelle in America stands as one of the most arresting examples of this period in film, almost the ne plus ultra of Italian grindhouse-flavored cinema, a movie that seems forever destined to be viewed at three in the morning under the most unsavory conditions possible. Even with D'Amato's underappreciated sense of satire governing the proceedings, Emanuelle in America remains astonishingly strong stuff.
The narrative takes on the form of a Eurotrash jetsetter's bottomed-out bargain-basement bacchanale, with magazine reporter Emanuelle going undercover (and under the covers) to investigate everything from a private harem in New York--complete with intimations of bestiality--to a rich duke (played by the late Gabriele Tinti, who was Gemser's real-life husband) and his high-society orgies in a Venetian ballroom. After a sojourn at a wealthy woman's stud farm in the Caribbean--a plotline that provides more comic relief (and hardcore footage) than anything else in the film--Emanuelle meets a Washington DC politician, thus initiating the portion of Emanuelle in America that has managed to appall even the most jaded Eurotrash film buffs, and provided D'Amato's movie with much of its infamy. Emanuelle is shown snuff films, and the footage that D'Amato incorporates to represent this underground pornography is almost unbearably realistic and harrowingly graphic: scratched, grainy images of third-world banana-republic militia torturing and slaughtering bound victims in a starkly barren bunker, with examples of sexual mutilation that make the antics of Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS look like acts of kindness. "You can't get that kind of simulation from a professional actor!" Emanuelle observes, and when this uncut version of the film surfaced in this country years ago (by way of bootlegs taken from the Venezuelan video release), many had to wonder if she was right. Well, D'Amato reassured all that the footage was indeed clearly faked, but the harshly convincing nature of this simulation, and the nonchalant way the film intermingles sadistic violence and polysexuality as if they were one and the same thrill, makes for disturbing viewing. In today's conservative and politically correct climate, it's difficult to imagine filmmakers embracing some of the taboo topics these movies served up, let alone doing so with D'Amato's freewheeling jocularity. From a contemporary standpoint, Emanuelle in America seems like a movie from not only another time, but another planet.

 -- Travis Crawford