Crooked business deals and meaningful glances aplenty in this Italian production that was filmed to great effect in Ghana. This really is a jewel of a film that is crying out to be discovered, it is at first a very odd and sexy melodrama that plays at times like a soft giallo, a warped love story, and in one totally irrelevant sequence it resembles a strange mondo movie. Calvin Lockhart plays it much the same as he did in The Beast Must Die, George Hilton is excellent as is Enrico Maria Salerno. The women are great, Anita Strindberg is total ice cold beauty, whilst Yanti Somer never looked better. This is a film to hunt down and enjoy. Fantastic.
2 Reviews
"Jungle fever", Italian style
lazarillo5 January 2010
Four Italian business representatives--an amoral swinging couple (George Hilton and Anita Strindberg), a camp gay (Franco Giornelli), and the kept mistress (Yanti Somer) of the powerful company head--are sent to Ghana to oversee a rather shady business deal. Trouble arises when the kept mistress begins an interracial affair with a representative (Calvin Lockhart) of the equally powerful Ghananian magnate they are negotiating with. The interracial lovers quickly find themselves embroiled in international corporate intrigue.
This film is part of an interesting "filone" (an Italian word that translates loosely to "genre" or "thread")of rather "politically incorrect" films that were nevertheless big in Italy in 70's. These films might be dubbed "black sexploitation" films, not to be confused with American "blaxploitation" films since they were aimed at white people and were focused primarily on interracial sex scenes rather than on macho black guys sticking it to "the man". And while "blaxploitation" films were often accused of racism, these films generally left little doubt by frequently portraying their black characters as little more than primitive, sex-crazed savages. The most famous of these films was probably Joe D'Amato's "Black Emmanuelle" series (most of which actually featured Asian actress Laura Gemser or Latin American actress Lucia Ramirez), but this "filone" also included stuff like "Death in Haiti", "Il Dio Serpient", and "The Nude Princess". This movie is perhaps most similar to "The Nude Princess" in that a black character is actually the protagonist (and an urbane and educated one rather than some grunting savage having doggy-style sex with a white woman). The movie also make some surprisingly intelligent commentary on racism and legacy of slavery and colonialism, even if it is a bit heavy-handed at times (i.e. if you really want to turn on a white woman, you should probably take her somewhere other than an old Portugese slave stockade).
Calvin Lockhart (from the British werewolf film "The Beast Must Die")is good as the black protagonist, but Yanti Somer is much weaker as his white lover. Hilton and Strindberg are enjoyably evil, particularly the latter as a malicious tease who contemptuously strips off and flaunts her body in front of the African men. The gay guy is a rather offensive stereotype, but that's pretty typical of Italian films of the era. Don't expect too much political correctness here, but if you like these kind of films for some reason (perhaps you huffed too much paint as a kid?),this is one of the more serious, intelligent and interesting ones.
This film is part of an interesting "filone" (an Italian word that translates loosely to "genre" or "thread")of rather "politically incorrect" films that were nevertheless big in Italy in 70's. These films might be dubbed "black sexploitation" films, not to be confused with American "blaxploitation" films since they were aimed at white people and were focused primarily on interracial sex scenes rather than on macho black guys sticking it to "the man". And while "blaxploitation" films were often accused of racism, these films generally left little doubt by frequently portraying their black characters as little more than primitive, sex-crazed savages. The most famous of these films was probably Joe D'Amato's "Black Emmanuelle" series (most of which actually featured Asian actress Laura Gemser or Latin American actress Lucia Ramirez), but this "filone" also included stuff like "Death in Haiti", "Il Dio Serpient", and "The Nude Princess". This movie is perhaps most similar to "The Nude Princess" in that a black character is actually the protagonist (and an urbane and educated one rather than some grunting savage having doggy-style sex with a white woman). The movie also make some surprisingly intelligent commentary on racism and legacy of slavery and colonialism, even if it is a bit heavy-handed at times (i.e. if you really want to turn on a white woman, you should probably take her somewhere other than an old Portugese slave stockade).
Calvin Lockhart (from the British werewolf film "The Beast Must Die")is good as the black protagonist, but Yanti Somer is much weaker as his white lover. Hilton and Strindberg are enjoyably evil, particularly the latter as a malicious tease who contemptuously strips off and flaunts her body in front of the African men. The gay guy is a rather offensive stereotype, but that's pretty typical of Italian films of the era. Don't expect too much political correctness here, but if you like these kind of films for some reason (perhaps you huffed too much paint as a kid?),this is one of the more serious, intelligent and interesting ones.
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