Sorry, this movie sucks

Good concept, poorly executed.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

I was extremely thrilled with Severin's Blu-ray of Emanuelle and the Last Cannibal came through my work. I was familiar with Joe D'Amato, the famed Italian porno exploitation trash-master who helmed films with names like Porno Holocaust, Erotic Nights of the Living Dead, and Super Hard Love, but, I must admit, I had never seen a single one of his almost 200 films. I had, however, seen a Black Emanuelle film, the first one, and was not terribly impressed. It wasn't directed by D'Amato, but rather Bitto Albertini, another Italian exploitation guy, though less prolific or esteemed than our man Joe. I found Black Emanuelle (or Emanuelle in Africa as my VHS is titled) to be fairly standard Sexploitation fare, none of the sex or any of the parts in between were impressive or interesting enough to hold my attention, but when I saw the cannibals on the cover of this film, I had a hope. A hope that this film would be what it looked like: a sexploitation Cannibal Holocaust.Well, it delivered. This is one of the purest films of unbridled irredeemable trash I have ever seen, and I loved it. After the opening credits basically the first thing that happens is a nurse gets her whole titty bit off by a she-cannibal. I was excited to see that D'Amato was going for the extreme gore right off the bat, even before the copious (and I mean copious) amount of fucking. Emanuelle is a photojournalist who, after doing an undercover piece in a New York psychiatric ward, finds evidence of a long-thought-extinct tribe of Amazonian cannibals. With her handy cannibal expert, she flies south to trek through the jungle in search of them. And have sex with basically everyone she meets.Here is just a list of some of the things you will see in this film-A Man gets his dick sliced off, very slowly, and eaten -A chimpanzee smokes a cigarette and put on sunglasses while he watches two women sexually bathe each other under a waterfall -A naked lady with her guts ripped out and a live snake stuffed inside her -A man shoves his fingers up a teenage girl's vagina while she is sleeping. (Honestly it kinda looked like he was booty digging but I can't be 100% either way) -A Nun getting her nipple sawed off (and eaten) -People claiming that it is the nighttime when it is very clearly not. Like the sun is out. And they say that it's dark. -Hysterical women being slapped (stupid women with their emotions). -"The Annual Feast of Fertility" (A woman gets stabbed in the vagina and then has her uterus cut out and eaten). -A man is placed between a tug of war with a long string which, of course, cuts his body in half -Incredibly awkward, quiet, and frightening cannibal gang-rape.Let me extrapolate a bit on that last bullet point, because it really was the strangest rape scene I've ever seen. The cannibals need to impregnate their captive and so they gang rape her. She lays there, silent, as each cannibal climbs on her and humps her about four times, in a ridiculously unrealistic simulation of sex (think Tommy Wiseau's idea of what sex looks like). As this happens the other thirty or so cannibals stand by watching, also silent. The whole scene is silent. Just people standing around awkwardly watching this raping happen. The movie was in fact not a response to Ruggero Deodato's notorious video nasty Cannibal Holocaust, but rather its predecessor, 1977's Ultimo Mondo Cannibale, the film credited with jump-starting the cannibal film trend of the ensuing ten years. I haven't seen Deodato's first Cannibal picture, but in comparing Emanuelle to Cannibal Holocaust, many similarities are obvious, though I will say this: Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals has 40% less rape, 100% more consensual sex, and 100% less actual animal killing than Cannibal Holocaust. I do really like the character of Emanuelle in this film. Early on she warns her anthropologist-guide-slash-fucktoy that she is a fiercely independent woman who won't be tied down to one man. She fucks a guy who gives her a ride, she rubs a couple vaginas (briefly), she globetrots around the world doing crazy dangerous shit, getting attacked by snakes and almost eaten, pretends to be a God, all in the name of getting a good story and set of photos for the newspaper where she works. Although, obviously obscured by about fifty pounds of celluloid filth, Emanuelle represents something of a feministic protagonist: Self-posessed, career driven, sex positive, and adventurous. Not a role-model for children, perhaps, but certainly much better than the blood-bags that women usually place in movies this gory. The gore, though. I was not expecting this amount of gore. I mean, it's a cannibal movie, I get that, but this was like... Wow. Some really intense shit. Also a lot of people rubbing their own or each others vaginas, which I was also not expecting since this doesn't have the hardcore inserts like some versions of some Emanuelle films do. Definitely the least "soft" of any softcore porn I've seen. There's a moment about halfway through the film when they first meet the hunter character in the wild and begin talking about hunting. Emanuelle asks why he doesn't hunt in Africa where its much safer as opposed to here in the harsh jungle of the Amazon. The thrill of the hunt, he says, is the hunt itself, not the act of killing. Setting your mind upon a prey and tracking it down, that is what gives him pleasure. This can obviously be said of Emanuelle as well, and the hunter reminds both us, and her, that humans can also be hunted. Emanuelle lives her whole life like a hunt: hunting for sexual gratification, adventure, and for the great stories that drive the passion for her reporting. Or maybe that's just a bunch of bullshit. Lets be honest, this is a movie about people fucking and eating each other. I doubt that Joe D'Amato meant for it to be anything more than that, and that's fine! It doesn't need to be anything more than that. It's a movie that knows exactly what it is and who it is marketed to and does everything you want it to do almost perfectly.9/10

Schlock purveyor Joe D'Amato combines soft-core pornography with hard-core gore in this unwieldy combination of an EMANUELLE flick and a cannibal chomper. Made a couple of years before Ruggero Deodato's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST truly shocked the world, this low-budget Italian effort is a pretty weird movie, half boring and half shocking, and all dated. D'Amato has his eye firmly on the exploitation market – little surprise considering the director spent his later years churning out hardcore pornography – and for the first hour the film stops and starts as it delivers a series of sweaty, poorly-shot sex scenes, complete with the obligatory '70s cheesy music. Finally, D'Amato seems to shake off the confines of the porn industry and he turns the film into a low-rent cannibal adventure, where some authentic locations add to the experience and the gore flows thick and fast in the last ten minutes.It's all very predictable and, for a man of D'Amato's standing, quite poorly made. The jungle locations look fantastic but many scenes are too dark, leaving the viewer squinting as they try to make out just what's happening. The casting is pretty good for an Italian film. Laura Gemser looks sultry and often strips for the camera, but her role here is to stand back from the proceedings and she doesn't really get involved too much in the cannibal stuff. Gabriele Tinti, Gemser's real-life husband, is very good in his professor role, and you barely remember he's in the film. Better is Donald O'Brien (ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST) as a sleazy, impotent good guy, and Susan Scott, who plays his sexy wife, Maggie. Scott is the real star in her sex scenes, which really push the boundaries of decency, and she shows herself to be an actress who certainly isn't shy when it comes to revealing her body. Scott's late-night encounter with her husband's black servant is one of the most unintentionally hilarious sex scenes I've ever watched, and a real highlight (?).As for the adventure stuff, it's not very exciting and you can pretty much guess who's going to live and die. I did love the hilarious cannibal P.O.V. shots where we hear the natives murmuring, and the gore effects, while cheap and fake-looking, are designed to be shown in the sleaziest light imaginable; there's a definite sexual aspect to the killings, especially when the natives goes after the women. This leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth but it isn't disturbing in the same way Deodato's movie was, for instance, although some fake snuff footage early on is more effective. The action-packed escape at the film's climax reminds us what this film could have been like, and I did enjoy the ultra-cheesy man-torn-in-half-by-string death which is the most memorable bit in the film for me. But in all this is very cheap and dodgy stuff, and hardly satisfying for fans of either sex or horror films.

Famously made during the great underwear shortage of 1977, Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals demonstrates all the concrete rules of softcore films. 1) No two women can be left alone for more than three seconds without touching each other and 2) No woman can be left alone for more than three seconds without indulging in a bit of invisible banjo playing, if you know what I'm saying.Laura Gesmer is Emmanuelle, and we first see her in New York (of course), pretending to be crazy in order to get the scoop on some kinds of going on in a loony bin. After a nurse gets bitten by a patient found in the jungle (or something), Emmanuelle endears herself to the audience by molesting the patient while she's tied to a bed. Works for all journalists! Just ask Alan Wicker! So, barely adequate reason for going to the jungle established, Emmanuelle get her crew together, including a hunky professor (love interest), a young jungle expert (love interest), and a nun. Along the way they hook up with Donald Obrien (vouyer), his wife and a hunky African man. Various couplings, gusset typings, and chugging-in-the-bushes ensues. For the entire first hour.There's cannibals in the title, but where's the cannibals? Well, thankfully, they manage to put in an appearance that saves the film. They waste most of the cast in various ways, sedate one of the girls, and lead us to what is a great exploitation scene, the likes of which Tarantino could never dream of: A naked laura gesmer, firing a pump action shotgun from the back of a speedboat while being pursued by cannibals.I could have done with more action and less scenes of Donald O'Brien grinning while trying to molest people, to be honest, but as cannibal films go, it's not too bad. At least D'Amato doesn't resort to killing animals to pad out his film. Good soundtrack too.

Joe D'Amato's "Emanuelle E Gli Ultimi Canibali" aka. "Emanuelle And The Last Cannibals" of 1977 is an extremely sleazy and highly entertaining piece of 70s horror sexploitation, which my fellow exploitation fans will love for its constant extreme sex and gore scenes and, especially, for the stunningly beautiful Exploitation siren Laura Gemser, who once again plays the role of the nymphomaniac journalist (Black) Emanuelle. When working undercover in a mental institution, Emanuelle discovers that a girl must have been raised by cannibals. Emanuelle and Professor Mark Lester (Gabriele Tinti), an anthropologist whom she feels attracted to (of course), travel to Brazil. Accompanied by some other folks, they enter the jungle near the Amazon, where a supposedly extinct cannibal tribe used to live...The gorgeous Laura Gemser is most famous for playing the lead in the 70s soft-core porn 'Black Emanuelle' series, which tried to tie in with the famous (and at the time scandalous) "Emmanuelle" of 1974, and Joe D'Amato directed a few of those film. "Emanuelle And The Last Cannibals" is a very exploitative mix of the constant sex orgies of the 'Black Emanuelle' films and the constant gore of the ultra-violent Italian Cannibal flicks. The result is a vastly entertaining Sleaze flick that no Exploitation-buff should consider missing. The plot is quite forgettable, the movie just constantly jumps from a gory massacre to a sex orgy, back to a gore scene, back to a sex scene, and so on - but who's complaining? It is almost impossible to get bored. The film also has quite a bunch of creepy moments, its main purpose, however is not suspense, but sex and gore. Laura Gemser is, as always, extremely hot, and actually naked for about 80 percent of the time, and the rest of the female cast is not too keen on wearing clothes either. The supporting cast includes the great Donal O'Brien who enjoys a deserved cult-status among fans of European genre-cinema for starring in various Spaghetti Westerns and Italian Exploitation flicks always plays his roles very good. The rest of the performances are rather forgettable, but "Emanuelle And The Last Cannibals" is probably not a film one will watch for the good acting anyway. If you are easily offended never mind this movie, but every lover of sleazy Sexploitation and Cannibal flicks should have a great time. Highly recommended to all my fellow Exploitation-buffs and Laura Gemser fans out there.