If it was popular in America, you can bet that there will be an Italian rip-off of it, and obviously 'Black Emanuelle' is a rip-off of the successful French porn classic 'Emmanuelle'. Black Emanuelle would go on to become a very popular franchise in Italy, with the insatiable Laura Gemser getting up to allsorts, including an outing into the jungle with cannibals, escaping from a women's prison and going to Bangkok under the direction of such trash film luminaries as Joe D'Amato and Bruno Mattei. This first outing is tamer than some of the later stuff, but still should satisfy fans of this series. Naturally, the plot focuses on Emanuelle, a young journalist who travels to Africa on an assignment (to have sex with as many people as possible, I think). She gets herself involved with a couple named Ann and Gianni Danieli who are having marriage trouble and both turn to the young journalist for a bit of 'comfort'. Naturally, things go a bit awry and Emanuelle is forced to flee Africa, but with Gianni on her tail...
In terms of plot, this film is not all that exciting and clearly it's all just an excuse to show as much sex as possible. This actually isn't all that much of a bad thing as Laura Gemser obviously relishes this role and seeing her with her clothes off is what most people will be tuning in for anyway. The music is superb and the title track is absolutely pure seventies trash flick gold and is sure to delight fans of this stuff. Director Bitto Albertini is not a well known cult name but he has a background in cinematography and as such the film looks very nice, which compliments the central theme nicely. While Emanuelle would go on to become something much less than innocent in all of the later series efforts, this film focuses more on her losing her innocence than the actual sex and that works fairly well as that is basically what the original French film was about. Overall, I cant say that this is one of my favourite films and I do prefer some of the later efforts in this series, and the original French film, but Black Emanuelle is certainly worth a look if only to see the start of one of cult cinema's most popular series'.
In terms of plot, this film is not all that exciting and clearly it's all just an excuse to show as much sex as possible. This actually isn't all that much of a bad thing as Laura Gemser obviously relishes this role and seeing her with her clothes off is what most people will be tuning in for anyway. The music is superb and the title track is absolutely pure seventies trash flick gold and is sure to delight fans of this stuff. Director Bitto Albertini is not a well known cult name but he has a background in cinematography and as such the film looks very nice, which compliments the central theme nicely. While Emanuelle would go on to become something much less than innocent in all of the later series efforts, this film focuses more on her losing her innocence than the actual sex and that works fairly well as that is basically what the original French film was about. Overall, I cant say that this is one of my favourite films and I do prefer some of the later efforts in this series, and the original French film, but Black Emanuelle is certainly worth a look if only to see the start of one of cult cinema's most popular series'.