Black Cobra Woman (1976) Exploitation Voodoo

Black Cobra Woman (1976) - It is not often that I get a DVD from Netflix and the quality is really poor but this is the case with this Jack Palance, Laura Gemser movie. Presented in full screen ratio from an old print including scratches and flaws the look and sound are not great. I don't know if writer / director Joe D'Amato was trying to push his sleazy films as travel movies but he often starts his films establishing the location, in this case Hong Kong by showing planes landing at the airport and ferries crossing the harbor in front of the city.  Eva (Gemser) has arrived in town to do a show and when she arrives she is talking to Jules (Gabriele Tinti) who is interested in seeing her show. I am going to guess that the show contains cobras hence the name of the film.  This film is early in the lovely Gemser's career this being her fifth film. Already a budding exploitation star with three featured characters in the Emmanuelle series of soft core exploitation movies she would go on to do more than a dozen of the films. Fresh faced and young in this one Gemser is just starting that twenty year film career. Her IMDB bio explains her early life as:"The exotic dark-haired beauty moved to Italy in the mid-1970's and made her film debut as Janine in the obscure Amore libero - Free Love (1974). However, it was Laura's small, but memorable role as a masseuse in Emmanuelle II (1975) that really launched her career in racy soft-core exploitation fare. Gemser achieved her greatest enduring international cult popularity with her incredibly erotic and uninhibited portrayals of the titular hedonistic and sexually adventurous globe-trotting photojournalist in the steamy "Black Emanuelle" series that were often directed by the notorious Joe D'Amato and frequently co-starred Gemser's real-life actor husband Gabriele Tinti." Tinti eighteen years her senior in real life and Gemser's husband plays Jules Carmichael a playboy who since he hit it off with her on the plain invites his brother Judas to go see her show. I wonder if that name will fit the character of the man. The DVD sleeve says that Judas falls for Eva and that is just weird in that he is a good thirty years older than she, but I guess the wealthy have the luxury of not paying attention to age norms in dating.
  Judas is smitten by watching the topless Eva dancing with a boa constrictor in a room full of men. She is slender and beautiful and it is all to establish desires, Eva touching a female friend under the table in the club establishes her willingness to be open sexually. Judas staring at this with an intense desire wants her. Later Eva is touching herself on a bed while thinking about her snake dancing and female lover. Judas a snake keeper himself takes her to lunch and then hires Eva to care for his reptiles. She having just met the creepy old man is not looking to immediately move into his house to be cared for by him. Such a strange approach the older rich guy offing to keep her and take care of her. This makes her Asian boyfriend jealous, he does not mind her taking woman lovers but the idea of another man in her life makes him angry. His anger is enough for her to allow him one more fuck before she takes the job with Judas.
  Things seem to go well when she joins the Carmichael residence but this film churns slowly while Eva is finding and wooing a bleached blonde Gerri (Michele Starck) and Julkes is seducing and then torturing Candy (Ziggy Zanger) with his brother's snakes. It slogs through the two women travelling around Hong Kong talking. There is some animal violence when they watch a snake being killed skinned and cooked at a local merchant stall. There is also a feeding of Judas' snakes that includes a python killing a mouse. Mostly there is a real openness to the films approach to bisexuality and lesbianism but unfortunately it does not empower those ways of life. More it is a male POV where we can see women caressing each other and getting naked, bathing together and often times in these scenes we see Jules peeping in from the other room always reminding us that this is material for the men to enjoy. Jules is a bit of a creeper, more so than his eccentric but seemingly harmless brother. His jealousy of the two women sharing a bed prompts him to put a deadly snake in the room with the two women. Gerri panics and incites the snake to bite her and she dies quickly. Devastated Eva leaves Hong Kong with Jules not knowing that he killed her lover. Or does she?
  There is a revenge aspect to this film and we eventually get there after a lot of slow plotting. Jules taking a Black Cobra up the ass because this special breed will eat its way free is an idea to be marveled at. She also has the gall to confess her crimes to Judas looking for him to back to the happier times when they lived together. She wants t show him she is the snake charmer and brings the green mamba out to dance with it. Unfortunately for her she is bitten by it and dies. This is a quick and remarkable dark ending to the film. I am not sure how worth the time this particular film is as it slogs most of the time and there really is not any redeeming qualities. I suppose the moral is don't kill with snakes or you will die by one? On a Gemser scale for nudity this film is like 2 of 5 nudes so if that was why you want to see it you may be disappointed in that also.

Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (1980) Zombie Porn

Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (1980) - Also entitled "Sexy Nights of the Living Dead", and in Italian "Le notti erotiche dei morti viventi" this is as much of a pornographic film as will make it onto this blog. Sometimes when you try to touch the edges of genre film you cross over and end up in a place you are so not ready for. Now granted the title of the film and the director Joe D'Amato should have given me an idea that the film would be a skin flick. I have seen some of D'Amato's more soft stuff but remarkably not seen the more hardcore films. This one really pushes the line of soft core with several penetration shots mixed in with a story of zombies. It is the strangest combination, a story where a businessman wants to build a resort on an island. He hires a boat and with his girlfriend heads to the place to check it out. Finding two inhabitants an old partially blind man and a beautiful native girl Luna (Laura Gemser) who seem a bit strange and distant. Pretty much the zombie story is without clear explanation, Luna is also a cat or a ghost or something and they use the dead of the island to protect it from dishonest people. So eventually we will have the boat captain, Larry O"Hara (George Eastman), businessman John Wilson (Mark Shannon) and girlfriend Fiona (Dirce Funari) are bound to be in peril.
Before we get into the multiple sexual acts portrayed on this film lets start with the remarkable bookends to the film. The film starts with an island insane asylum and a few characters crazy as my uncle Joe wandering around, who just happen to be our three main character. There is a late night rendezvous between a nurse and workman with stand up sex. The man is strong because I would have thrown my back out  holding that woman up like that.Followed by another patient who stands behind them masturbating while watching the two have sex. At this point we go back in time to see how these characters got to be in the mental hospital. We will later pop back to this for the closing bookend. There does not seem to be a need for the bookends but at least they break up what is a really boring story.
  So since there is a crappy bookends and a close to nonexistent zombie plot it only leave the porn to be the "meat" of the story. John Wilson starts with a couple of prostitutes who he strips down for ample shots of his prolific tongue performing cunnilingus and them taking turns performing fellatio on him. Then of course the couple money shots with John fucking one of the girls in such closeup.Then the cum shot as the second girl blows him. Like all porn movies they are really way to much in time duration but I suppose there is a ideal time for these scenes that have little to do with the actors and more to do with the audience.
  After the girls leave and John meets up with girlfriend Fiona there is more sex with her. Then there is some establishing sex for out boat captain Larry and so on. When I say so on I mean it, Larry gets with a young lady on his boat and later in one of the stranger scenes I have ever seen he is at a strip club where the dancer strips and also removes the cork from a bottle of champagne in the most unique way. At the island Larry gets to have sex with Luna in the shallow water of the bay. So really this film is a collection of sex encounters with some slow zombie scariness thrown in. The primary conflict is between the Old man and Luna, with John who they do not see as honest and don't want to build on their island. This is resolved in the film with zombies slow chasing and the such. The secondary conflict is "Will Fiona and Larry survive?" and although they run around a good deal they are in the end saved by a statue the old man gave to Larry.
  Now I watched what is called the "explicit uncut version" and really should have tried to stay away from that and instead went with the cut up version. So in the end this film was just too boring lacking any real conflict, zombies without real reason or menace. A porn movie yes, but with limited explicit material which is far from sexy. A horror movie yes but with poor horror villains and not enough story so in the end this film can not be recommended by this viewer. If you want to watch porn you can do better and if it is horror you are looking for this film is far from horror.

Womens Prison Massacre (1983)

Womens Prison Massacre (1983) - Emanuelle fuga dall' inferno is the original Italian title. The film starts with a play performed in the women's prison, a personal piece of depth and a deep understanding of the human condition. Okay maybe not but it is an attempt. It is intended to show Emanuelle as a strong influential writer and to establish that the prison is not going to tolerate her style of entertainment. It effectively brings the character of Emanualle to the forefront as well as her tomato throwing rival Albina. Then the establishment as a non tolerant group of controllers. Emmanuelle (the lovely Laura Gemser) is a reporter framed for smuggling drugs even as she closes in on the government official involved. She is now in a women prison where she is not the most liked prisoner. The official District attorney Vincent Robinson (Jacques Stany) wants to make sure she never gets her story out. He enlists the aide of the Warden (Lorraine De Selle) who in turn tries to have tough prisoner Albina (Ursula Flores) do her dirty work. Emanuelle and her friends Laura (Maria Romano) and Irene (Antonella Giacomini) are out numbered in the prison so although they are tough the guards still manage to give them significant problems. Albina does not fair well against the smart and strong Emanuelle and even after being armed with a knife only manages to have the knife stabbed into her own leg. This is what you think the film is going to be about. Emanuelle fighting against the odds to beat out the prison establishment and then to publish her story and expose the crooked district attorney. No though that is not it at all!
  Early on is a sub plot about four convicted murders, men who must be temporarily housed at the women's prison. Brett O'Hara (Robert Mura), Victor "Geronimo" Brain (Raul Cabrera), Helmut "Blade" von Bauer (Pierangelo Pozzato), and mastermind Crazy Boy Henderson (Gabriele Tinti) are on their way and the results will be explosive. They have something to do with the smuggling ring Emanuelle was investigating but that is nothing. During transport some fake cops try to spring them and would have succeeded if not for Lawman Harrison (Carlo De Mejo) who manages to fight off the attempt and deliver the prisoners. It seems it was just a reason to have a car chase really.
  In the prison they manage to overpower the guards, the lawman and the warden and take the whole prison hostage. Of course they want a car to the airport, a plane at the airport and 5 million dollars. Strange enough the negotiator they are dealing with is none other than District Attorney Robinson. Leaving the wounded lawman with Emanuelle the convicts threaten the lives of everyone in the prison if they do not get what they want. The 3 hour time limit seems serious.

  Brett gets a chance to be alone with the warden. He makes her strip off her clothes with a little violent persuasion. Blade and Geronimo  head down to the women's ward where the women will love a man. The Warden strips but this film is a bit tame as far as skin, some boobs and a garter belt. Brett seems more into humiliate her than to rape her. Geronimo gets it on with Albina in the medical ward and she is equally into it. There is some simulated sex in that scene. Blade seems happy to stand at the bars of the women cage and be felt up. In all the sexy 70's music you hear in porn is playing and the film cuts between the different locations. After finishing in Albina she gets a surprise when he chloroforms her before heading back out to meet the others. There is implied rape of the warden but nothing on the screen. This is an exploitation film but like I said it is more about making you believe what happened as opposed to seeing such horrors. This at least until Crazy Boy gets mad at Emanuelle for pleading for the cops life. To show her he slaps her around and then rapes her, she is clear this is not her wish.

 Blade in with Laura and Irene seems like a crazy fuck himself. He makes them dance with the blow up doll but seems to get as much pleasure pulling their hair and scaring them with his crazy eyes as he does in deflating it. At least while this is going on Blade loses his razor blade and Laura end up with it.
While this silliness is going on outside Robinson is setting up to send in commandos. Inside the convicts want to know what is going on. The Commando unfortunately come in the window just as Albina wakes and she goes straight to Crazy Boy to talk deal for her info. So when the commandos make their move it is a fair gun battle. They fail even though Brett is killed in the process. Crazy boy does a payoff to Albina by killing Irene for her. Then he makes Emanuelle and Albina play Russain Roulette. Laura was hiding when Irene was killed and she gets a strange idea harkening back to the play she performed in the beginning of the movie. The mantis hides the razor blade in her vagina and lays nude waiting for Blade to take her. She recites her silly lines and he goes for he beautiful body only to get the suprise of his life. he chokes her out as he takes her the blade slicing into his member as she dies. He struggles out of the cell looking for help from the women in the cages but all they do is attack him when he gets close. Now a man without a penis he is no longer desirable.  These scenes are cut with the game of Roulette that ends with a gory outcome splashed across Crazy Boy's face.

  Down to Crazy and Geronimo they take the Warden, the injured Lawman and Emanuelle as hostages when their demand have been mad. The fast paced organ music pumps with a background drumbeat as Robinson sees Emanuelle alive again. He wants the cops to shoot them all and takes the first shot at her, missing but hitting Geronimo and the Warden. Crazy Boy shoots him in the chest giving Emanuelle her revenge.
Off they go in the car apparently in days before there were LoJack and helicopters. When the car stalls Crazy Boy gets pissed at the double cross and is wounded by the cop driver as he kills him. Off he runs with wounded officer Lawman in pursuit to take him out. The film ends with Emanuelle returning to her prison cell to serve out her undeserved term but with the knowledge that the corrupt Robinson got his.
Overall the film executes the goods of a exploitation film. It wanders in unexpected places but overall closes out all the threads that were started. It is always good when the exploiters get theirs in the end. Because the depth of the characters as so flat with only Gemser getting any depth at all, this film can't be good. It is exactly what it was intended to be and does not get my recommendation. Now if you like exploitation it is just mildly boring with no big surprises or skin so you will probably be disappointed.
Rating (4.5) 5.0 and up are recommended, some just more or less than others.

Emanuelle in Bangkok (1976) - Sleaze Adult

Emanuelle in Bangkok (1976) - Joe D'Amato has a long trail of adult sleaze, porn and genre films to his credit. The Italian director worked from his first credit (according to IMDB) "Sollazzevoli storie di mogli gaudenti e mariti penitenti - Decameron nº 69 (1972)" until his death in 1999 with his last credit being Amore & Psiche which came out after his death in 2000. He was prolific with 199 credits to his name as a directo. I encountered him first with some really bad horror films but since have seen quite a few of his less wholesome entries. These films really do fit into one of the focuses of this blog, I attempt to cover many of the things I could not see as a teen in the 1970s and there was that time inthe decade when sleaze and adult films were running in mainstream theaters across the country. The Emanuelle series of films were a stolen idea D'Amato exploited throughout the 70s and early eighties. The idea from a series of french films with a similar name were erotic sex adventures, basically he changed Emmanuelle to Emanuelle and created his on stories with different actors but for sure was taking advantage of the success of the originals. Emanuelle in Bangkok is the first in the series. It stars the beautiful Javan actress Laura Gemser as a photo journalist who also is experimenting with free love. Really the entire edifice is to find ways for Gemser to take her clothes off onscreen. In this film she and sometimes boyfriend Roberto (Gabriele Tinti) are talking about attraction in a restaurant He notices how the men look at her and she how the women look at him. Then bang! right to a sex scene between the two, with no time wasted. The sex scenes are the soft core variety with a bit of frontal nudity on Gemser's part. There is rolling around kissing and the implied oral sex, but nothing too shocking. There is a ridiculous sex theme music that plays every time there is a love making scene where the participants are mutually consenting. It is clear from the conversations Emanuelle and Roberto, that he has stronger feeling for her than she for him. She is not quite ready to settle for one man and he is forced to reluctantly agree that they are going to split for a while. D'Amato show a casualness to sex with multiple partners that was prevalent in the time period, although I thought it was a fading idea by 1976.
Emanuelle travels to Thailand to be the guest of Prince Sanit (Ivan Rassimov) with the hope that he can get her in to visit with the king. He is the most miscast person in the film, an obviously very white man playing a Thai prince. They explain this away by saying that the Thai royal family has been so prolific through the years that everyone in the country can claim some kind of connection to the king. When she arrives at the hotel before meeting with him there is the classic difference between sleaze and non sleaze films. Where in a traditional film when a person wants to take a shower after their travel they generally get to the undressing and you see the dress drop to the floor and the lower legs of the actress. In this film Gemser just strips in front of the camera and the scene cuts after showing her nude, it doesn't really matter if she showered or not what was important was the nudity. It also emphasizes her attitude towards nudity, when she sees the house boy drawing her a bath she doesn't wait for the young man to leave but just takes her clothes off without shame.
Now we could continue to rehash the plot in detail but that really is not the point of the film. Instead lets give a quick synopsis and talk about the themes presented as a way to show nudity. At its heart that is what this film is all about. Emanuelle is propositioned by the Prince Sanit after she tried to bribe him. He suggests they get to know each other better instead of bribes but she is not biting. A bit odd that this one guy is not a turn on for her. There is a strange guy in army fatigues watching her as she goes sight seeing.
She has sex with the female masseuse Gee (Koike Mahoco). She has sex with the house boy at the hotel. She meets Roberto and his friend the obnoxious Americans Jimmy (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) and Frances (Ely Galleani) and they go on a montage of Thailand's cultural offerings including kickboxing, cockfighting and a strip club where a dancer does a wax and fire show and another does a ping pong ball routine. Emanuelle excited by the show gives knowing glances not at Roberto but at Frances. All of them go back to Prince Sanit's house and smoke opium have sex changing partners through the drug fogged night. I think and I am no expert that much is being made of Emanuelle's inclination to be attracted to women. She is intimate with both Gee and Frances but she is a multi partner person who is not securing any one relationship in her life. She is free to engage in sex with whomever, as Prince Sanit put it she has a unique ability to experience sex in a pure form.
This is going to come in handy in the next couple days when Sanit disappears and Emanuelle is trapped in the empty house by the strange guy and his buddies. When I say disappeared I mean furniture and everything. There are reasons explained later about the Princes relationship with the king. This does not help Emanuelle though; They surround her and then gang rape her. It is a weird decision by director D'Amato in that the filming is them ripping her clothes off and each climbing on top of her in turn but they never take out their cocks. It is like each is taking a turn dry humping her. The princes words echo in her head and she stops struggling and by doing so seems to enjoy the sex and gain the confidence of the assailants. This is so fucking bizarre I can't really wrap my head around it. Really it is just so easy to release from the horror of a gang dry humping? The scene does not fit with the rest of the film where all the sex is respectful and consensual. I think D'Amato was trying to show Emanuelle as a different kind of free sexual spirit who can accept any form of physical interaction, but I think he fails with this sad display. This is just a start in her troubles though...her passport has been stolen from her room...wait! Here I am again giving the nuts and bolts, not what should be going on. Lets stick to romance and sex here, Emanuelle has sex with the airport security guy to get out of the country and to Roberto in Casa Blanca. She has sex with Roberto and his new girlfriend Janet. She and Janet have sex with a group of Arabs (not shown) that was amazing in its stereotyping of a people. She falls in love with Debbie (Debra Berger), the immature but attractive daughter of the US consul. Then Roberto with Debbie watching from the door but refusing to join. Each time there is the theme music by Nico Fidenco overwhelming the tame visuals. Emanuelle opens from a woman who is into free love but after exploring intimacy with women and men together finds herself in love with Debbie and says goodbye to Roberto, I am sure in 1976 very few people went into this film looking for this journey and for them you can see from the above they got lots of nudity and simulated sex. Poor Roberto has a sad tale, he loves Emanuelle and would like them to be together but also likes having other women involved. He not only loses Emanuelle but also his rebound girl Janet, she is never the same after she and Emanuelle spend the night having sex with the eight arabs, I am not trying to be racists just calling them "the arabs" but seriously that is the presented stereotype. She comes back and breaks off her engagement to Roberto.
Debbie grows up a bit through her relationship with Emanuelle and although they too part, setting up the next film by freeing Emanuelle to go States bound in Emanuelle in America. The secondary track for this film is to show musical sightseeing montages in between the sex and nudity. These scenes are of the cultures and city streets of where ever Emanuelle is, Thailand, the middle east an archeological dig each place is explored with silly over the top music and the actors smiling, looking at things and showing interest in their surroundings.
Rating (4.5) 5.0 and up are recommended in the Zombiegrrlz system Skip it!