EMANUELLE IN AMERICA (1977) Blu-ray
Director: Joe D'Amato
Mondo Macabro

Laura Gemser does it all for Old Glory on Mondo Macabro's Blu-ray of EMANUELLE IN AMERICA!

Globe-trotting fashion photographer and New York Times reporter Emanuelle (Gemser) is based in New York and in a semi-committed relationship with fellow photojournalist Bill (Riccardo Salvino, STUNT SQUAD). After averting death by a sexually-frustrated paramour of one of her models, Emanuelle learns from a snitch about playboy and suspected gunrunner Erik Van Deeren (Lars Bloch, A STRANGER IN TOWN) who has recruited a harem to cater to the desires of his buyers. Going undercover as one of the girls, Emanuelle discovers just what kind of special skills are required – bestiality among them – in between taking photographs and indulging in her own recreation. She makes her escape secreted in the car of Venetian aristocrat Alfredo (Gemser's husband Gabriele Tinti, LISA AND THE DEVIL) who invites her back to Italy and his palazzo for a grand ball that turns out to be a no holes barred orgy where she meets a middle-aged woman who bought her virile young beau from a club for single women on a Caribbean island. Going undercover once again, she snaps some scandalous photos of powerful women in compromising positions; however, she discovers that one of the "stimulants" offered up for libidinal enhancement is a brutal snuff film, one of the victims of which she recognizes. Emanuelle is warned against investigating the subject due to the powerful people involved behind the scenes, but she persists and meets a senator (Roger Browne, WAR OF THE ROBOTS) with a penchant for diversions of an extreme nature and a desire to realize them in the flesh.

The second of Joe D'Amato's "Black Emanuelle" series after EMANUELLE IN BANGKOK, EMANUELLE IN AMERICA actually spends very little time stateside, with its theme of the perverse extremes of the wealthy and powerful seemingly a common condition wherever our heroine goes – drawing a contrast between those who exploit women and sex for material interests or sadistic gratification and Emanuelle's own kind of free love in which she uses her sexuality to her own ends be they manipulative or "sexual healing" – indeed, the follow-up film EMANUELLE AROUND THE WORLD's gang rape of a beauty pageant winner by senators would probably have been more fitting here. Browne’s senator does, however, spout the “what we need is another war” line when addressing the issue of dwindling patriotism. In some ways EMANUELLE IN AMERICA seems like it should have been the fitting end to the series with its extremes of hardcore sexual interludes and the grueling SALO-inspired snuff film footage with effects by Giannetto de Rossi of ZOMBIE fame (also produced by this film's Fabrizio de Angelis), Emanuelle's climactic mad-as-hell rant, and her romp with boyfriend Bill through a tropical and tribal idyll whose illusory nature once exposed sends the pair fleeing further into the jungle away from cinematic artifice. While Bitto Albertini's original BLACK EMANUELLE had standard hardcore alternate takes of scenes with body doubles, EMANUELLE IN AMERICA's hardcore sequences are organic to the film and linger just long enough to get their point across with only two of them ending with money shots (versions the world over have tended to be chopped down of violence, sex, or both while even the softcore version available separately from the integral version on Italian DVD is a severely pruned down version rather than including alternate takes). The follow-up entry EMANUELLE AROUND THE WORLD would go back to the softcore/hardcore alternate edits format while EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS toned down the sex and up the graphic gore, leaving the finale EMANUELLE AND THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE tamer by comparison. Like the other films in the series, EMANUELLE IN AMERICA offers up welcome although sometimes too fleeting appearances from Eurocult royalty; in this case, Paola Senatore (CANNIBAL FEROX) as Alfredo's wife, an uncredited Lorraine de Selle (THE HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK) as one of Van Deeren's harem, and Swedish porn star Marina Hedman (BEAST IN SPACE) whose hardcore oeuvre included some of the more extreme fetishes including bestiality. Series regular Nico Fidenco's diverse score takes a back seat this time around to the theme song "I Celebrate Myself" by the group Armonium.

Unreleased theatrically in the United States, EMANUELLE IN AMERICA first became available in a severely cut VHS edition from VidAmerica. The first uncut DVD edition came from German's Astro Films but was in German only and a composite of various poor condition sources with French opening credits, a German title card, and end credits overlaid from the French end crawl of EMANUELLE AROUND THE WORLD. An English-friendly edition followed from Blue Underground featuring a new anamorphic transfer from European rights owner Studio Canal with recreated end credits.

After a limited red-case edition limited to 1,500 numbered copies with a reversible cover with new art on each side by Justin Coffee and Silver Ferox, a booklet featuring a brand new essay on the film by Heather Drain, and a set of postcards released in the earlier half of the year, EMANUELLE IN AMERICA comes back to Blu-ray in a standard black case edition without the aforementioned bells and whistles. The Mondo Macabro's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray looks simply fantastic in a way one could not have imagined the film to ever look. Although professionally lensed by D'Amato, it was easy to assume that the film always looked heavily diffused and grainy with slightly muddy colors. The HD master, however, has much finer though still prominent grain, crisper resolution (only the steam room scene has that particularly soft look), and colors that pop. Detail is enhanced in facial features and hair (pubic and otherwise), while the film's prosthetics do not hold up as well. While some errors in the Blue Underground recreated credits seemed to be the fault of the company, the original English overlays here also erroneously credit de Rossi as both boom operator and for opticals. The disc features English and Italian dubs in lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono in which the dialogue is clear and the high notes of Fidenco's theme are free of distortion. Optional English subtitles translate the Italian track. Note that there have been some reports of playback problems with the Blu-ray from a handful of purchasers but we experienced no playback problems with either the advance review dual-layer BD-R sent back in May or the pressed copy sent for this review.

The film is accompanied by an audio commentary by Cinema Arcana's Bruce Holecheck and Mondo Digital's Nathaniel Thompson which may have been recorded some time ago when they cite the film as the first Black Emanuelle film on Blu-ray (or they may have overlooked Severin's EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS). The informal discussion is actually quite comprehensive, covering the source novel and official film series, various spinoffs and retitlings, D'Amato's transition from cinematographer to director to pornographer, the contribution of journalist, celebrity interviewer, and screenwriter Maria Pia Fusco to this and the follow-up film, the marriage of Gemser and Tinti, various supporting players in front of and behind the camera, and the various cuts of the film released theatrically and on home video (including the specifics of the cuts to the VidAmerica edition). They cite the influence of Tinto Brass' SALON KITTY on the film's use of voyeurism as a theme and a device allowing for the interchangeable insertion of explicit footage for different markets, and suggest that rumors of the kind of depravity on the set of CALIGULA leaked from its closed set motivated this film's pushing the envelope in terms of both hardcore sex and violence.

Also included is the 1999 interview "Joe D'Amato Totally Uncut: The Erotic Experience" (62:21) – previously featured on Media Blaster's DVD of IMAGES IN A CONVENT and a companion piece to "Joe D'Amato Totally Uncut: The Horror Experience" featured on Shriek Show's DVD of ANTHROPOPHAGUS – in which he discusses his early work as an operator and cinematographer, his directorial credits before his "official" directorial debut DEATH SMILES ON A MURDERER, his pre-Black Emanuelle entry EMANUELLE AND FRANCOISE ripped off by editor/screenwriter Bruno Mattei (HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD) from the Greek film THE WILD PUSSYCAT (recently released on Blu-ray by Mondo Macabro), the Black Emanuelle series and his working relationship with Gemser and Tinti, what he feels is the difference between his seventies and 1980s hardcore film, his eighties Filmirage softcore films – the period softcore THE ALCOVE was inspired by Tinto Brass' THE KEY and a Brass-esque erection shot added to ELEVEN DAYS, ELEVEN NIGHTS was a post-production insert with Gemser standing in for the man with a dildo in the fly of her pants – and his nineties hardcore films wherein he distinguishes both eroticism and hardcore, and art versus work.

"Emmanuelle: From 2 M's to One: The Story of Emmanuelle" (35:30) is a video essay by author David Flint who provides background on the source novel and the debate over whether it was authored by Marayat Rollet-Andriane or her husband – drawing parallels with "The Story of O" and its popular attribution to various pseudonymous male authors when it was indeed penned by a female writer – her mainstream career as an actress and her role in LAURE based on one of her novels (and titled FOREVER EMMANUELLE in the United States), the actual first cinematic adaptation of the novel with Cesare Canevari's A MAN FOR EMMANUELLE, the Sylvia Kristel films, producer Alain Seritzky's follow-ups, the D'Amato series, and the various spin-offs and retitlings. He also muses on the transition of Emmanuelle in both the official series and the other incarnations from a character to "just a name," how the D'Amato series reflected both male fantasies about and resentment towards the notion of the sexually-liberated female, and the question of why there were no actual pornographic Emanuelle films (full hardcore films rather than alternate versions) suggesting that the character was synonymous with softcore and went the way of the genre with the greater accessibility of hardcore content. The disc closes out with the "More from Mondo Macabro" (13:30) catalogue clip reel. The cover is reversible. (Eric Cotenas)

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