Black Emanuelle (1975)
BLACK EMANUELLE (1975) also known as Emanuelle Negra, Emmanuelle in Africa, Emmanuelle’s Holiday, Emanuelle Nera (original Italian Title), Emanuel Negra was directed by Bitto Albertini (Italy) and stars Laura Gemser, Karin Schubert, Angelo Infanti, Isabelle Marchall, Gabriele Tinti, Don Powell and Venantino Venantini.
In this first movie of the Emanuelle series, Laura Gemser is introduced as journalist and photographer Mae Jordan, known to her readers as Emanuelle, travelling on assignment to Africa. Here, she explores her own racial and sexual identity as she becomes entangled in various sexual relations and observes those of others.
The movie strongly focuses on the subject of (then taboo) interracial sex and also deals with some more established themes such as voyeurism and lesbian sex. Erotic scenes are interlaced with truly stunning footage of Africa providing a “travelogue” like feel which may be part of the appeal of this movie. None of the shocking all out extremes of later Emanuelle movies are present or even apparent here. What some people will find shocking however, is that Black Emanuelle was in fact a hardcore film.
The original Black Emanuelle film was always intended to be released in two versions (a softcore and hardcore one) so it would cater two markets simultaneously. Explicit pornographic scenes with body doubles were simply added after production because the lead actress(es) refused to do these scenes. These added “stunt” scenes are nowadays known as “hardcore inserts”. Unlike regular porno flicks however, such scenes were usually very short and only aimed at gaining some “x rated” notoriaty for marketing reasons. Laura Gemser was well aware fact that these hardcore elements to her softcore role were shot by the directors, but always stated that she didn’t know or didn’t remember if those scenes were actually used in the particular film. Joe D’Amato later repeated this trick on a number of other Emanuelle films.
Most people that have seen Black Emanuelle on TV in some point of their lives will likely have seen the softcore version, cut for televised broadcast. Needless to say quite a few of these self-proclaimed “children of the eighties” Emanuelle aficionados frown when they find out that they’ve been watching a recut film and are often shocked when they find out how far Joe D’Amato actually pushed the franchise with later films such as Emanuelle in America and Emanuelle Around the World.
DVD Releases:
In recent years a number of authorized and unauthorized DVD have been released which tend to vary in quality and features. An early release by Televista, which is an unauthorized low quality transfer of a earlier video release by Maxima Entertainment from 1997 has been available for some time. Recently however, quite a few other authorized versions with far superior image quality have finally made their way to DVD.
Black Emanuelle Uncut
In 2006 Vision films released a region 0 PAL DVD in Poland featuring a Dolby Digital 5.1 italian soundtrack with polish subtitles and polish “read dialogue” only. This release features an uncut version of the movie, presented in 1:1,85 original aspect ratio and a few trailers.
In 2008 Cine Storm Entertainment (Stormmovie) released an excellent region 0 PAL DVD in Italy which has a 16:9 Widescreen transfer, italian language dolby digital 5.1 and english language Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack but features italian subtitles only. This is a collections edition that features the original 94 minutes length movie including the hardcore inserts and a 15 page booklet (in italian) with backgrounds about the movie, its cast and a number of very nice, hires pictures of movie posters and stills. It appears Cine Storm used the same transfer as the Polish release because the trailer in the extras secetion is dubbed in Polish.
On october 2008, a 1:1,85 aspect ratio PAL DVD with 2.0 mono sound was released by Optimum Releases in the UK, but this version was cut to 92 minutes to meet BBFC regulations for category “18″ Films and avoid an “X” label, which would have prevented it from being sold by regular retailers in the UK.
An all region, slightly censored version of the movie was released on DVD in Austrialia as well.
- Written in 2009 by Lynxxx
Black Emanuelle (Televista)
Black Emanuelle (All Region Slightly Censored Australian Import)
Black Emanuelle (Uncut PolishRelease)
Screenshots
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