aka Brutal Nights
Director: Joe D’Amato
Cast: Laura Gemser, Gabriele Tinti, Roger Browne, Riccardo Salvino, Lars Bloch
Blue Underground / Color / NTSC R1 / Unrated / Anamorphic Widescreen (1.85:1) / French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), Italian (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono) / 100 minutes / Purchase from DiabolikDVD.com
Aristide Massaccesi, aka Joe D’Amato, had a fabulous working relationship with the exotic Indonesian sex goddess Laura Gemser. Not only did she perform on camera for him, but after retiring from acting, she was a costume designer for him until the early ’90s. Together they hepled to build arguably the best and most well known exploitation series of all time, Black Emanuelle. The original Black Emanuelle film and its sequel were the work of Bitto Albertini but the continuation of the character was all D’Amato and Gemser; Emanuelle in Bangkok (1976), Emanuelle Around the World (1977), Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977) and finally Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade (1978). But the most notorious of them all, and with good reason, is Emanuelle in America (1977).
Globetrotting photo journalist Emanuelle is up to her old tricks again jetsetting around the world and snapping shots to sell to her magazine editor. This time she is in the most perverse country on the planet; the United States. To get things rolling she hits up her connections to see what leads they have. A jive talking gym owner tells her of a gun runner who kidnaps women for his harem. Easily enough, she infiltrates the group as one of his girls and uncovers all kinds of perversity including bestiality! With a camera full of pictures she escapes in the back seat of a visiting Venetian Duke’s car and hitches a ride with him to his palace in Venice. While she is there she decides to make the most of it and find out more about the Duke and his wife. She finds out more than she imagined as the aristcrats have a party that turns into a full fledged orgy!
Deciding that she has had enough, she hops back to America and lands in Washington D.C. There she finds a male brothel run by a lesbian virgin madam (I kid you not). While secretly taking pictures of the House of Ill Repute’s sexual escapades, she watches a couple getting turned on by a snuff film. Repulsed, Emanuelle decides to look more closely into it. Against her editor’s warning, she finds the man responsible and seduces him into taking her to the place where the movie was made, instead he slips her some LSD. The next thing she knows, she wakes up to a horrible sight of women being tortured, raped and killed. Is this real or just a bad trip?
This film is one of the most shocking movies I have ever seen (and I have seen alot!). I can only imagine what the audiences thought in the mid ’70s. The amped up violence and gore seem almost out of place in such an otherwise erotically beautiful movie. In this uncut Blue Underground release the usual softcore sex scenes are mingled with hardcore to add to the shock. Regrettably Gemser plays no part in them. But what she does, she does well; getting naked and looking amazing doing it. Her husband and usual co-star Gabriele Tinti plays the role of the Duke and Paola Senatore (Images in a Convent) gets down and dirty in one of the hardcore scenes.
I have see all but one (Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals) of the D’Amato Black Emanuelle offerings and this one is, so far, my favorite. The overt shock value alone puts this one over the top of the rest. All of the movies in the series follow the plot template of Emanuelle spanning the globe in search of sexual enlightenment and a good story/photo. All of them have Joe’s trademark style and sleaze fingerprint. So really, the content within the plot is all you have to compare. Besides the movie being fantastic, BU’s release is top-notch. The picture and sound are nice and clean and the interview with D’Amato in the disk extras is very interesting as he tells of working with Laura and about the series itself. Too bad he couldn’t talk her into taking one (penis) for the team…
