Emanuelle In America

Video Sewer. Always mournin’. Always celebratin’. Ahh, but it’s a mixed-up world.

We just rented Emanuelle in America, the mythological Joe D’Amato trash epic. We rented it uncut on pristine DVD with commentary by Emanuelle herself! What happened to haunting out-of-the-way video stores for rare Beta tapes? What happened to paying through the nose for VSOM to dupe a supposedly uncensored copy for you? And now it’s right there unexpurgated with behind the scenes insight? Mournin’ and celebratin,’ that’s what the Sewer is about.

Emanuelle (Laura Gemser), an intrepid fashion and news photographer, has a habit of taking awesome pictures through a camera-necklace or bracelet that she wields like a narcoleptic tourist. She also gets naked every 30 seconds and will have sex with anyone anywhere, often for no reason.

This time, Emanuelle mixes it up with rich, upper-crust citizens of New York, Venice Italy and some South American country, I forget which. Her mission? To expose the richies for the sex-crazed, bestiality and snuff-lovin’ perverts they really are.

Yeah, Emanuelle in America is a true morality play, illustrated with the notorious horse-masturbation scene, fake rape-and-torture death-camp footage and a handful of unsavory hardcore inserts for the continental audience.

Though witless and plot-less, this movie demonstrates that Joe D’Amato (b. Aristide Massaccesi) may have actually had a few talented bones in his body, if ever he would have gotten his head out of the sewer.

A number of stylishly framed sequences stand out from the brainless sex-slop, and an eerie directorial detachment forms in the harrowing snuff scenes that makes this stuff slightly stimulating, at least intellectually.

But still … what is there to really hold this exploitation envelope-pusher together? Laura Gemser’s hot bodkin, mainly. And what reason exists to string together desultory soft and hardcore sex-scenes with stuff that made me question whether it was legal in my community to possess this release? Though shocking, this is no Salo: 120 Days of Sodom - that is, there's no point or moral center. And why also destroy any weak, reflexively generated titillation with disturbingly realistic snuff footage?

Massaccesi indicts and insults viewers of Emanuelle in America along with his envisioned corrupt wealthy class. Yet still, exploitation lovers will always seek out the goods, and this movie got ‘em. And Video Sewer will always try to help you make your decision, you creep. Mournin’ and celebratin’.