BA_Harrison The first of many Emanuelle (spelt with only one 'm') films, this Italian rip-off of the famous French sex classic Emmanuelle (two 'm's) sees its sultry star Laura Gemser as journalist/photographer Mae Jordan (known professionally as—you guessed it—Emanuelle), who is in Africa for her latest assignment. Her employers are married couple Ann and Gianni Danieli (Karin Schubert and Angelo Infanti), who supposedly want our sexy snapper to capture shots of African ruins, but seem more interested in getting her into bed (and who can really blame them? The lovely lens-woman is gorgeous and gagging for it!).What follows is a string of silly soft-core couplings with Gemser and her free-loving associates getting busy with each other at every available opportunity; these are interspersed by some really dull exposition about Ann and Gianni's marital troubles (which serves as the basis for the weak plot), some non-sexual nudity including a hilarious photographic session with Ann going back to nature (pretending to be a gazelle!), plus a little bit of 'padding' in the form of National Geographic style wild-life footage.Director Bitto Albertini's handling of his material is, for the most part, fairly routine, although he does excel when it comes to delivering very unsubtle suggestive imagery: in particular, Ann's sex scene with a garage mechanic is made all the more entertaining by the juxtaposition of shots of a petrol nozzle filling up a car, whilst Emanuelle's naughty encounter with a hockey team whilst on a train is inter-cut with the locomotive's piston pumping rapidly in and out. Hardly a stroke of genius, but very funny!Later entries in the series, helmed by sleaze-king Joe D'amato, combined Genser's soft-core romping with other exploitation sub-genres, making for more satisfying films as a whole. This one, however, is content to simply show as much naked flesh as possible without ever crossing the line into hard-core territory. It's just about worth catching if you're a big fan of Ms. Gemser and/or very trashy films in general, but probably of little interest to anyone else.

The_Void 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'.

lazarillo Some folks say this is the best Emmanuelle movie while others say it sucks. Well, I think they're both right. All the Emmanuelle (French)and Emanuelle (Italian) movies have laughable dubbed dialogue, idiotic libertine philosophizing, a heavy dose of European art houses pretensions, and of course mildly erotic if increasingly tedious omni sexual sex scenes. The Italian movies added a borderline-racist fascination with interracial coupling, and Joe D'Amato took the series into some irredeemably sleazy territory involving cannibals and snuff films. Still all these movies were shot on film, they all had some breath-takingly beautiful natural scenery (and I don't just mean the women), and they were, if only by default, interesting exotic travelogues. "Black Emanuelle" typifies both the best and worst aspects of the series.Unfortunately, after once talented director Walerian Borozyx for some reason cast America b-Movie bimbo Monique Gabrielle (who makes Laura Gemser look like Meryl Streep)in "Emmanuelle 5", and "Emmanuelle 6" with Natalie Uher (actually the best of the legitimate French movies) and a French TV series hosted by original Emmanuelle, Sylvia Kristel, didn't take, Emmanuelle would go Hollywood. Film became porno-gloss video. Exotic African and Asian locations became left over "Star Trek" sets. And the most beautiful naked women God could create (Laura Gemser, Natalie Uher, Nieves Navarro) were replaced by the most beautiful naked women Beverly Hills plastic surgeons could create (Krista Allen, Holly Sampson). Stupid but exotic became stupid and boring. There is only one reason to watch a modern Emmanuelle movie, but that only takes your average dateless wonder about ten minutes. The original "Black Emanuelle" is awful, but it will at least hold your interest until the end, making it--by default--the best of the bunch. (However, when I can get a cheap copy or learn to speak Italian, I'd like to see the very first Emmanuelle--"Io, Emmanuelle" with Erika Blanc)

HumanoidOfFlesh This is not my favourite movie of Laura Gemser's "Emanuelle" series-I still think that D'Amato's "Emanuelle in America" is much better film.Of course there is plenty of sleaze,lots of lesbian action-some of the sex scenes like the hot intercourse between Karin Schubert and the black man at the gas station are suitably titillating.The soundtrack by Nico Fidenco is simply amazing!Overall I give it 7 out of 10-not bad little flick,if you like Italian exploitation!Still I'd love to see a hard core version!