Emanuelle And The Last Cannibals [1978] [DVD]

"Trap Them and Kill Them" aka Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals is simply put the best of the cannibal exploitation genre and for a good reason. The plot is very simple, starts in New York, and ends up in the cannibal infested tropics, on a forbidden island. Sexy Laura Gemser is the investigative reporter who must find out what is going on with the strange symbol found on the victim in NYC. The jungle adventures are absolutley erotic, as everyone is constantly jumping each others bones. Including Gemser, and the sexy young blonde. That is until they run smack into the cannibals, and are inevitably captured, tortured, and eaten. Well, except for the sexy little blonde, who is stripped naked, and, well um, lets just say the cannibals had "other" ideas for her. Emmanuelle, however, is on the way, and to the rescue! Laura Gemser is without a doubt, one of the sexiest women in the world, of all time. She has an exotic look to her that is an incredible mixture of Native American, Polynesian, and Asian. She had long legs that stretched to eternity long before Stacy Keibler hit the WWE. And a belly you could bounce a quarter off of. She simply, WAS sex. Sensual, exotic, and every inch a woman. This film was LONG overdue on DVD, except that I am still having trouble tracking down a copy, but I'll get one if it's the last thing I do. Me me Lai of "Jungle Holocaust" fame is a razor close second, but Gemser wins in the end. Lets say it here, the absolute queen of 70's exploitation. All Hail Gemser!

That pesky minx, Emanuelle, has met her match this time! Now she's dealing with a vicious(what other kind?) tribe of cannibals, along with some other unfortunate souls. Joe D'Amato tries to weasel in on Lenzi/Deodato's territory, but adding his own personal touch. In this case, he tries a marriage of gory Italian style cannibal flick and softcore porno. Emanuelle manages to hit on, and/or sleep with just about every man and woman in this film-A Real Party Chick! What else could you ask for when you're on a perilous trek through cannibal territory? Laura Gemser is extraordinarily sexy, if you didn't already know. Basically, the first hour of the film is dedicated to all the characters exploring each other rather than the Amazon. There are four female characters and 3 of them(one is a nun, but even she's not safe from a nude scene) seem to have the hormones of a 17 year old guy. After this rather unexciting hour the cannibals decide to crash the party. There's alot of nipple eating in this film. I'm not sure why this is the cannibals' first choice before they dig into the rest. I guess they see them as hors d'oeuvres or something. I'm not quite sure if I like the mixing of genres all that much-I guess I's prefer strictly one or the other. It's not bad though; It still makes for goodtime, sleazy midnight viewing, which is all you can expect from Italian horror cinema. One bizarre scene is worth the price of admission alone: Emanuelle and some other lady are bathing naked in a river while a chimpanzee sits onshore watching them, clapping and smoking a cigarette. Funny.

I first saw "Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals" ("Emanuelle e gli ultimi cannibali") in Paris along the Champs-Élysée, where it was playing under the title "Viol dans les Tropiques," in the early 1980s. It was the first time that I had ever heard of the film's star, Laura Gemser, whose cinnamon-skinned, statuesque beauty leaves me at a loss for superlatives.

As delivery systems for Gemser's eye-popping pulchritude, her films are worth parades, confetti, and a twenty-one-gun salute. But aesthetically speaking, the films themselves are poorly made. Joe D'Amato, maker of "Cannibals" and the director with whom Gemser is most closely associated, is more notable for his sensationalistic subject matter than his handling of a movie camera (the same cannot be said of Russ Meyer).

But trying to warn audiences away from Laura Gemser films because they're poorly made is about as useful as warning people away from Häagen-Dazs because its fattening. Most viewers don't go to a Gemser movie to see a well-made film; they go to see a rapturously beautiful woman get herself into one sexual situation after another. On this level, "Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals" probably won't disappoint its core audience. However, the film is notable for its use of nudity in one scene.

In this otherwise schlocky and cheesy exploitation movie, when the youngest member of an Amazon safari is kidnapped by South American cannibals, Laura/Emanuelle strips out of her clothes, pretends to be the cannibals' fertility goddess, and spirits the young kidnap victim away from her captors.

What I liked about the scene (when I could ignore the condescending portrayal of the "cannibals") was that Emanuelle's nudity became an agent of her personal power. The cannibals were so in awe of her naked body, and the confidence with which she wielded it, that they surrendered their prisoner to her. In one of those rare moments in the movies, a woman's nakedness was not a mark of vulnerability or victimization -- but of strength. And the natives yielded to the erotic aura and power of her unadorned female form. In fact, the cannibals' awe of Laura Gemser's naked body mirrored my own.

Also, immersing myself into the story, I got an electric charge out of the idea that a beautiful woman would deliberately drop trou and knowingly walk into such a dangerous situation. (The film's German title is "Nackt unter Kannibalen" -- literally "Naked Among the Cannibals.") And I got another charge out of the idea that she was able to escape that situation precisely because she was nude to begin with. Never underestimate the power of the naked female body.

Gemser fans may laugh at comparing "Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals" to the films of Miklós Jancsó, the Hungarian art-film director ("Red Psalm," "Allegro Barbaro") who also frequently uses nudity as an element of power and resistance. But nakedness is so rarely portrayed as a symbol of strength in story-telling audiovisual media (no doubt because of nudity's taboo status in society) that thinking of similar scenes from films leaves the brain racked.

This one scene from "Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals," the single moment of mesmerism in an otherwise tawdry movie, stands as a tribute to Laura Gemser and her bountiful beauty. Jancsó aside, I wish there were more scenes like this in non-sexploitation cinema.

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