Lovely Laura Gemser stars as a saucy undercover journalist of questionable ethics whose investigations take her on a perilous journey deep in the heart of cannibal country.
It’s safe to say it's not only a good scoop Emanuelle was after when she undertook the brave task of going beyond the call of duty following a nasty breast munching incident involving a girl in a metal hospital. Our intrepid reporter is soon whisked away to the Amazon in search of the cannibals who apparently raised the breast chomping loon in this sex and horror combo from Aristide Massaccesi, better known to most as Joe D'Amato, champion of the Black Emanuelle series.
As you may expect there's less gore and more phwoar in this flesh filled film from the seventies where the libidos are as wild and unchecked as the pubic regions. In keeping with the soft-core genre the story acts as a pretty flimsy means by which to screen copious amounts of copulation so expect a case of story fitting around content rather the other way around. If you're expecting a horror in the excessive tradition of the Italian cannibal genre therefore, you’ll be disappointed. The gore is extremely few and far between but when Massaccesi gives it he gives it pretty raw i.e. much intestinal carnage and a bit more booby snacks. This is down to the focus not being on the horror element and the fact that it was so low budget, you're often left to fill in the bloody blanks for yourself as much of it takes place away from the camera.
What we do have though is the staple of the Italian Cannibal film; the juxtaposition of the urban/rural with the opening city shots and the obligatory move to the Amazon where time has left the barbaric natives untouched. This kind of genre and setting does enable Massaccesi to place his saucy heroine in a situation steeped in animalistic behaviour with humans driven by the most basic needs of survival, and that folk’s means fornication. Emanuelle and co. are certainly feeling the animal magnetism, and Massaccesi brings this to the fore with the horny white woman lusting after the black guide, the sight of him cleaning his gun being a scene of such stereotyping and phallic suggestiveness that it just proves too irresistible. Well, after all her husband is impotent.
Emanuelle owes more to the Russ Meyer school of smut than just the economical camerawork. This group of lusty ladies know what they want and know how to get it. These women volley between pure feminine desire and sexual voracity, the territory of the predatory female has never looked so natural. Emanuelle herself can be lost in erotic fantasy or prone to what can only be described as abuse. Massaccessi's camera makes neat work of presenting the women without objectifying them. Whilst he does seem to fetishise the vagina, because these women are so sexually aware and commanding, it never feels like a perversion of the male gaze, rather an emblem of female sexuality. This isn't a film which could be taken as female objectification; these women are in control, with men at their service by command, any man found trying to cop a feel uninvited is reprimanded by a punch and those words which cannot fail to put you in your shameful place - "Have you gone mad? Dirty bastard!"
Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (Emanuelle e gli ultimi cannibali | Emanuelle's Amazon Adventure | Trap Them and Kill Them ) could certainly not be described as a good film, but it's perfectly inoffensive. Massaccesi wisely steers clear of placing the sex and horror together coupled with a refusal to fetishise the rape scene, making this an all round harmless piece of eroticism, a little more than innocence but less than perversion.
Harmlessly exploitative, if rather boring, with some strong leading ladies and a good old Italian horror/porn soundtrack. A perfectly silly piece of soft-core nonsense 3/10
Buy It: amazon.com | amazon.co.uk
