Emanuelle in Bangkok (1976)

AKA Black Emanuelle 2

Emanuelle is sent to Bangkok on an assignment to interview and photograph the king.  She is met by a prince, a cousin of the kings who is bizarrely played by a white man. $1000 he can introduce her. Though for him this isn’t enough, he wants to get to know her more. And here begins Emanuelles erotic Thai journey. He wants to show her the Thai ways of pleasure and what better way than to send her to a spa that specialises soapy massages. A true delicacy of Thailand indeed! He assumes that of course she wouldn’t mind another woman rubbing her naked soapy body against hers. And he would somehow guess right. Perhaps he saw the first film or perhaps that’s just the notorious nature of Emanuelle that she is famous for. It certainly wouldn’t be last time we see her enjoying the pleasures of the female flesh.

A typical Thai prince.

One sexcapade leads on to the next and she soon finds her life in danger. Her hotel room has been ransacked and her films and passport have been stolen. The prince was actually trying to overthrow the king. She is told she must leave the country immediately. With no passport she seduces the immigration officer and soon Emanuelle is no longer in Bangkok. This pretty much sums up the first half of the film, in the second she finds herself in Casablanca where she sleeps with many a man and woman.

Emanuelle in Bangkok is the first sequel in the Black Emmanuelle series. Taking inspiration from the French film Emmanuelle this is one of many films that cashed in with the success. The original film itself had a long line of sequels still going today with straight to video titles and even a TV series. There were many unofficial titles, a lot of which avoided legal trouble by simply misspelling the lead characters name. Along with the Black Emanuelle series, we saw Yellow Emanuelle, the British Emmanuelle in Soho and the parody Carry on Emmanuelle.

Bathnight!

Starring the goddess of softcore that is Laura Gemser, the Black Emanuelle series even fell victim to having its own unofficial sequels. Many films staring Gemser were renamed in some regions to appear as part of the series.

This foray to Bangkok is a typical erotic journey of the beautiful woman living the high life, flying first class, staying in luxury suites in exotic locations and floating through the gritty native land like an instagram influencer trying to show how down to earth they are. All whilst sleeping with a bevy of young woman and bizarrely all middle aged, rugged men who no doubt retch of old spice. Journeys such as these could never take place flying economy and staying in Travelodges.

And she does indeed sleep with a lot of people. A surprising amount. And a lot more lesbian encounters then I expected, although a lot of them seem quite short. I wasn’t sure whether this was intentional or just because my DVD appears to highly cut. I watched a UK DVD that has been sitting on my shelf for quite a longtime. Looking at the time listed online and whats on the back of the case it appears 20 minutes is missing. Some of which I won’t miss, apparently there was a rape scene and some animal on animal bloodshed. Though one scene featuring a stripper in a dingy bar cut just as she picked up some ping pong balls. Leaving me left to wonder what on her earth she was going to do with them. Either way it left me wanting a game.

The Bangkok of the title is only relevant for the first half. It would have been nice to explore the seedier side a bit more though she did go to a massage parlour and get cleaned up, though as I stated before this seemed to have been cut short. The Casablanca half doesn’t really offer much in the way of story, but just takes us from one encounter to the next until Emanuelle meets up with boyfriend that we meet in the first half. When they reconnect through the language of coitus and are watched by a female admirer of Emanulles, we discover that he doesn’t take to any of that girl on girl nonsense. They break up and off she trots to the next exotic location.

Airplane WC: That's definitely not economy here.

The film is directed by Joe D’Amato. No stranger to smut, jumping back and forth both soft and hardcore throughout his career. He worked with Gemser on many occasions after this, including many more of the Black Emanuelle films which progressively tilted towards more violent themes as they went on.

Emanuelle in Bangkok isn’t a standout film in the genre but it isn’t dull either.  

Night of the Groping Dead (2001)

Inspired by: Night of the Living Dead (1968) etc...

The film opens with Ruby LaRocca in an empty laundrette. She has an hour or so to kill so she climbs up onto one of the worktops, sticks her hand down her tights and masturbates. With a few crotch shots we do get to see what lies between her legs, with a piercing shinning through. You would think she was keeping them on in case anyone should walk in. But no, she is fearless, so off with her top. The one handed action is soon over so she follows it up with a half naked catnap. I know if I as making this film and found myself with a launderette to shot in, this is exactly what I would be filming.

Suddenly in walks the janitor, a cheaply made up zombie one no doubt. He spots her and proceeds to molest her butt. This is Night of the Groping Dead, and it’s trash.

After a good feel around he then tries to penetrate her with a dirty broom handle (don’t worry its only simulated as this is a softcore film). This is enough to finally wake her up. She is chased by two more perverted zombies and is soon taken captive by non other than Marquis De Sade who it turns out is building an army of S&M zombies and is looking to recruit with LaRocca in mind. All it takes is a quick ravishing by the sex pest zombies and to have few chunks of flesh bitten off. When we next see her she has red hair and is wearing a Dawn of the Dead t-shirt. She is now an S&M zombie. She then overthrows De Sade by biting his “S&M dick” off and becomes the Queen of the zombies or something. She captures Misty Mundae, has a lesbian affair and soon forgets about world domination instead settling for moving to a trailer park, which I believe is meant to be humorous.

Made in 2001, this softcore cheapy, was left unreleased until 2008 when it featured as an extra for the DVD for An Erotic Werewolf in London (which I reviewed a few weeks back). The film is short at 48 minutes and feels somewhat incomplete, or at least they all just gave up at some point. The film is amateurish, being shot on a handheld DV camera with under lit scenes. It appears to be zero budget, shot in whatever locations they had to hand with the bare minimal spent on costumes and makeup. As the title suggests it’s inspired by zombie films such as the Night of the Living Dead series. However in no way resembling any of the plots. As soon as we see De Sade we it seems to make a complete departure and just becomes silly (not that wasn’t before that point). Instead we get a few direct references, a Dawn of the Dead t-shirt and a Night of Living Dead poster.

How about the sex? It gets as explicit as showing low angle crotch shot but with guys copping an easy feel and dibbling colossal amounts of fake blood makes this as erotic as a day old cheese sandwich. The sex is simulated with the male characters not even bothering to unzip their pants, whilst the two female actresses go full monty allowing themselves to be touched everywhere possible. The film feels at times just an excuse to have some easy feelies. To watch it’s dull and poorly made. Which is probably why it took so long to get released in the first place.

An Erotic Werewolf in London (Shot 2001, Released: 2008)

Warning: May Contain Spoilers!
Based on: An American Werewolf in London (1981)

An American Werewolf in London is not only one of my favourite horror films of all time, it’s one of my favourite films period. Two Americans decide to spend their summer hitchhiking across Europe before they go off to college. Unfortunately they don’t beware the moon enough and come into a slight altercation with a werewolf, leaving one dead with his soul in limbo whilst his buddy is lumped with the werewolf curse. Along the way he falls for a nurse played by the very very sexy Jenny Agutter.

Swoon

Seduction Cinema’s ‘parody’ doesn’t really follow the same story with the DVD case citing An Interview with a Vampire as a comparison (a film I’ve yet to see so I won’t bother bringing it up again). The film opens with what SC is famous for and that’s a softcore lesbian sex scene. Opening in a New Jersey bar we find out that it’s owned by the said couple (Misty Mundae and Ruby Larocca) and apparently it’s a bit of a quiet night. After having sex on the bar and just as they are about to shut for the night, in walks Polish girl Anoushka who needs to call a cab. It will arrive in just 15 minutes, which is plenty of time for Misty to get acquainted, seduce and screw the tourist. It then turns out that of course she is a(n erotic) werewolf. So once an appropriate amount of lovemaking has been done she dons a healthy coat of hair, gives Misty a good bite and slinks off into the night naked. It's unknown if the cab arrives but her girlfriend does manage to nap through the whole ordeal and herself have a sex dream featuring Anoushka.

Misty wakes up in a hospital whilst Anoushka somehow has zipped her way off to London where she has a great desire to tell her whole story to the papers, opting for The Daily Limey (a term which I don’t think anyone has really used since the 60’s). Telling how she would stalk her prey, make love to them and finally get her freak on and go for the kill. The exact thing that Misty is now doing in the hospital. The first of which is nurse Darian Caine who is specifically told by the Doctor to keep her ‘fingers out the pudding’. Which of course she immediately disobey’s in a sensual act of alternative healing that should of gotten her struck off long ago. So in the end we end up with two erotic werewolfs on he prowl both sides of the Atlantic. 

The film is directed by William Hellfire, most famous for directing the obviously offensive Duck! The Carbine High School Massacre, and is one of many softcore lesbian parodies that were made for the cable and video market in the early 2000’s. Other titles included were Erotic Witch Project and Lord of the G-Strings. And being of that era, the low budget production shows more so today, shot in a mix of standard def mini-dv and betacam. I was surprised to see some actual shots in London with some of the actresses (the usual landmarks; Big Ben, Parliament, red phone box). The dialogue and acting are at times terrible with lines such as; “I’ve traveled across the planet to see you,” and “I will always make love to you.” And there's some real goofball humour that at times just doesn't match up with the overall tone. But of course that’s not why we are interested in he film. It’s after all about the sex, the lesbian sex. Which there is plenty of. And at just 68 minutes the film doesn’t really feel too long or too short. The sex itself isn’t exactly outstanding, it’s pretty standard. The scene featuring Darian Caine however I felt had potential and definitely stands out personally. I should also talk about the makeup. Long lush arm and boob hair along with the a set of fangs and claws creates a minimalist illusion of a sapphic she-wolf. Its actually quite effective especially taking into account the budget.

In the end the Erotic Werewolf really has little to do with American Werewolf other than the title. And in fact the whole London shoots feel like a huge missed opportunity. But then we come to the ending. Misty has escaped the hospital and made it back to her girlfriends house, lusting for her. Ruby ties her to the bed and they have sex. The fully riled up Misty breaks free and goes for the kill. As the original erotic werewolf tells the reporter, silver and churches cannot harm them as myths would have you believe but as we soon find out regular bullets seem to do the job just fine. As Ruby stands over the woman she loves, now dead by her own hands, I couldn’t help but think of the ending to American Werewolf. How the one who must ultimately take responsibility for the beast is one who loves them most. Like putting down a beloved pet, or in this case a lover. A beloved lover... The film is heavily dated and is filled with flaws. However it’s still better than the originals sequel: An American Werewolf in Paris!