Emanuelle in America aka Brutal Nights: Video Search of Miami Rating: USA: X (100 minute print)
Say what you will about the late Joe D’Amato (Anthropophagus, Buio Omega), but one thing’s for certain—the man was the king of sleazy horror-porn films. No one could merge the erotic copulation of hardcore pornography with the stomach churning gore of a splatter flick quite like D’Amato…his films are simply sleaze epics. So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at one of his finest works—his 1976 film Emanuelle in America aka Brutal Nights.
Just Jaekin’s 1974 film Emanuelle (starring Sylvia Kristel in the title role) was something of an international box office success. The X rated adventures of the newlywed Emanuelle struck a nerve with sex flick fans worldwide, spawning a whole Emanuelle cottage industry in its wake. Never being one to miss jumping in on a popular cinematic trend, the Italians soon started making their own series of Emanuelle films by the mid 1970’s. These films were often directed by Joe D’Amato, and featured the exotic Laura Gemser (Trap Them and Kill Them) in the title role as the globe trotting sexual nymph. However, unlike the Kristel films (which were generally about Emanuelle’s sexual liberation and experiences), the Italian Emanuelle entries were far more exploitative. In D’Amato’s films, it wasn’t enough for Emanuelle to experience a sexual awakening—she had to also go through Hell in the process (ala Trap Them and Kill Them wherein Emanuelle finds herself confronting a tribe of cannibals). This blending of sexually titillating pornography coupled with popular exploitation film elements made the Italian Emanuelle films into cult classics.
This time out, fashion model photographer/investigative journalist (which provides at least a somewhat realistic reason as to why Emanuelle keeps finding herself in all these weird situations) Emanuelle investigates the sexual peccadilloes of the rich and famous. After being held at gunpoint by a man who thinks she’s the embodiment of evil (Emanuelle simply comes on to him, which sends him running away in terror) our fearless reporter infiltrates an arms smugglers harem. Here, she covertly captures photos of the wealthy enjoying the company of a bevy of exotic young women. Nothing is taboo here, as Emanuelle soon discovers when she witnesses one woman masturbating a horse.
From there, she heads to Venice, where she attends a party that quickly devolves into an orgy that would have made Caligula proud. After taking some more photos, she heads off on her next adventure—a trip to an island where women pay to act out their sexual fantasies with some buffed out men. It’s while snooping around here that she stumbles on to something disturbing—even to her.
In one of the rooms, a couple has sex on a bed, while nearby a movie screen displays footage of women being raped and tortured by various men. There’s no sound, and the images are grainy, but Emanuelle can’t shake the feeling that she’s viewing an actual snuff film. She then returns to New York and tells her editor that she wants to look into it. As part of her investigation, she meets a man who appears to be a government official…and soon, he’s showing her even more snuff footage of women being mutilated and tortured before being murdered. Emanuelle gets photos of the screen, but the paper refuses to publish them—the people behind this menace are just too powerful.
Emanuelle in America has a special place in film history because it was one of the first films to come along and help define what an actual snuff film would look like. Prior to this, snuff was something that was whispered about by fearful suburbanites—almost like some kind of clever urban myth. Everyone had heard of snuff cinema, but no one had ever seen it (although, Allan Shackleton had released his film Snuff prior to this one, few people saw it). Emanuelle in America, powered by Joe D’Amato’s harrowing faux snuff footage, gave us a fairly accurate portrayal of what a real snuff flick would look like—one room for a set, grainy film and poor production values, and little or no sound. And while the two snuff film clips in this movie amount to about two minutes of screen time, invariably, they’re the two minutes most viewers remember.
D’Amato does a competent job with the direction—there’s nothing overtly flashy about the main story sequences (or the hardcore porn scenes, for that matter), but he does a splendid job with the snuff sequences. Here, women are raped by an assortment of men, bound, gagged, impaled vaginally on large wooden spikes, have appendages cut off, and so on. The footage is harrowing in every way—and it looks incredibly realistic…very grainy, very straightforward, and featuring some decent FX work. And, as an interesting sidenote, the snuff film footage in Emanuelle in America is said to have inspired David Cronenberg to make Videodrome--another film with some snuff film footage figuring prominently in the narrative.
The film does feature several instances of hardcore pornography (oral sex, vaginal penetration, etc.), but Gemser herself never partakes in those scenes. Gemser does spend much of the film completely naked, but any hardcore scenes appear as though they were filmed separately and intercut with the regular footage (ala the X rated cut of Tinto Brass’ Caligula). It was a fairly normal occurrence for an exploitation filmmaker to film numerous varieties of the same scene for his film—some would be cut with lots of hardcore sex footage for the porn crowd, some would feature more gore for the horror crowd, and others would cut back on both for the more mainstream market. The downside of this is that there are literally dozens of different cuts of this particular film in circulation—some with the snuff edited out, some with the hardcore edited out, some with both items cut. This makes finding an uncut version extremely challenging.
However, finding the uncut version is well worth the effort. The 100 minute cut of Emanuelle in America is the one I viewed for this review—and it appears largely uncut, with the snuff film footage, hardcore, and horse masturbation scene intact. Don’t settle for a cut version of this one—if you’re gonna see it, you might as well see it all.
On the downside, the film doesn’t have a very good ending. D’Amato and company leave dozens of loose plot threads hanging (most notably, what happens to the snuff film people? Emanuelle just sort of gives up on that story). Plus, the end makes no real narrative sense…it doesn’t have anything to do with the stuff that’s happened before it.
However, that problem aside, Emanuelle in America is still a classic piece of Italian exploitation cinema. D’Amato seamlessly blends porn and gore into a nonsensical narrative that never fails to entertain. Sure, the story has no real point, but this an exploitation film—and in that regard, it more than delivers the goods on every level. If you’re a fan of weird gore/porn, Emanuelle films, Joe D’Amato, or Laura Gemser, then you need to see this film. The snuff film footage and the horse masturbation scene make this one a classic.
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