Please don't spend money on this.

A Masterpiece!

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The first thing that struck me about EMANUELLE IN BANGKOK was Nico Fidenco's music score, a whistling, happy, bumbling little ditty that would be right at home on a YouTube video compilation of Tourette's Guy clips. Or maybe a toothpaste commercial, its stuck in my head now and fortunately for my sanity, its not bad. I'd whistle it for you if I could, and can't help but wonder if that's Alessandro Alessandroni doing his trademark thing there. He's the guy whistling on the old spaghetti western soundtracks, proof once again that while often derivative the Italians managed to create some new forms. The movies may often be cheap & boring, but they almost always have great musical scores.I would paint this one into the same category. It looks pretty much like Joe D'amato took a sprawling vacation with some of his favorite stock players (Laura Gemser, her husband Gabrielle Tinti), a couple of Italian genre cinema leading males he maybe owed a favor to (Ivan Rassimov & my hero Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) and a few sexy Euro body babes with no problems with nudity, group groping and the occasional half naked lesbian make-out with Ms. Gemser (Ely Galleani, Debra Berger, Gaby Bourgois). He brought along a camera, maybe a mistress to hold the scripts while somebody made sure there was enough light, and went about their touristy ways while filming a scene or two here & there as they traveled about.Two scenes sort of spoil the fun, first another barbaric episode of Italian filmmakers using animal violence to fill some screen time, then an inexplicable sequence where Ms. Gemser is sexually assaulted by a mob of greaseballs who make a point to humiliate her while getting their jollies off. Inexplicable because afterward she seems quite at ease with herself and chats pleasantly with her attackers as if they had just met at a diner. Then again its all just a silly phallocentric fantasy really, about guys with unlimited means traveling exotic lands in the company of attractive women in their 20s whom they have random sex with, often playing erotic group games for grown ups & swapping partners, though the version I saw was strictly a softcore engagement. The most arousing display being a scene where the girls all get up, strip down to their panties and dance like a harem for an Arabian prince.Or something like that, to tell the truth I was hardly paying attention to the story and frankly couldn't care less. Like a spaghetti western you watch stuff like this for the individual moments rather than the cumulative effect, and most of it passed quite pleasantly with the occasional raised eyebrow. Like the scene were Emanuelle entertains a crowd in a private club by dripping hot candle wax all over her magnificent, nude body. For all we know and given the way Joe D'amato worked, the whole film might have been just an excuse to put that up on the screen. It may not pass as entertainment for some, but for those two minutes this movie was the only thing I was thinking about.4/10

The first Black Emanuelle collaboration between Laura Gemser and her Svengali Joe D'Amato is merely a taste of the shocking things to come in the likes of Emanuelle in America and Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals. Emanuelle in Bangkok is a kind of dry run, with Gemser repeating her Black Emanuelle character from the first, non-D'amato film and D'amato finding his feet with this new character and genre he's lucked onto.Yet there are signs of things to come. The bulk of the film is sexual travelogue, with Emanuelle exploring Bangkok and then Casablanca, sightseeing and shagging – but some of the sights she sees are not quite what they recommend in the Visitor's Guide to Bangkok (a cockfight, a snake loosing a bloody battle with a mongoose, a dancer who has a speciality act with ping-pong balls , guess where) and the sex becomes dangerous, as Emanuelle is gang raped by a battalion of the king's bodyguards. This last scene is the film's most contentious, as Emanuelle lies back, thinks of previous exhortations to use her body for her own pleasure and ends up on friendly terms with her assailants. The scene could be seen as the first real throwing down of the gauntlet by D'amato in an Emanuelle film, with the heroine taken into places she and we never imagined by her post-60s free love philosophising, and also there's the curious effect of Gemser's performance, or rather lack of one. She walks through the entire film as if sleepwalking, greeting all things good or bad with the same blank affectless nonchalance, a kind of erotic robot either without emotions or with them so deeply suppressed as to suggest some past trauma. There's something about D'Amato's vision of Emanuelle which is both a lure and a fright, as we're compelled by her freedom as much as appalled by her lack of passionate engagement with, well, anything (including sex, where she invariably just goes through the motions).My suspicion is that D'Amato had very conflicted feelings about the sexual freedoms which arose in the post-60s consumer West, a fear and fascination that sex can lead not to ecstasy and freedom by dehumanisation and death. It is no mistake that he cuts from Prince Sanit's sexual philosophising about giving yourself over to pleasure to the death of the snake at the claws and teeth of the mongoose, the "petit mort" alluded to by the cutting.Emanuelle in Bangkok also works as a kind of satirical critique of consumer tourism, with exotic backdrops being used as a sex-filled break (as so many Westerners have used the real Bangkok); yet the real world of politics and human jealousy keeps interrupting, exposing Emanuelle's travels as the banal escapism they really are. The plot, like homeless and rootless modern man, lurches from one country to the next, one meaningless encounter to another, one short-lived and doomed relationship to its successor and it is in this much criticised plotlessness that the film makes its point. D'amato frames the story with two episodes from the relationship between Emanuelle and her erstwhile lover Roberto (played by Gemser's real-life husband Gabriele Tinti), the first setting out the plan to enjoy each other for the time being but not get bogged down in ideas of fidelity and love, the last showing their dream ruined by his foul-mouthed jealous homophobia about her love for a young female artist; the idea seems to be that Emanuelle cannot escape from the old ways of possessiveness, male chauvinism and all that messy stuff, but she'll wander on regardless. What we are meant to make of all this D'Amato, like a true democrat, leaves entirely up to us

This is the first, and most likely the only Joe D'Amato film ever to hit Belgian television screens. Quite logical, since the titles on his repertoire go from nauseating horror films ("Anthropophagous", "Beyond the Darkness") to hardcore porno flicks ("Tarzan X") and sometimes even a combination of both ("Erotic Nights of the Living Dead", "Porno Holocaust"). D'Amato pretty much behaves himself here and follows the formula of the original "Black Emanuelle" film, released one year before, but that doesn't mean avid D'Amato-fans have to worry, as there still is an enormous amount of genuine sleaze to enjoy. "Emanuelle in Bangkok" has virtually no plot at all and you can't even fully believe the title, as our sexy protagonist's journey to the Far East is very brief and she only has contact with two Asian people (a masseuse and a bell-boy). The film most "crucial" sequences are set on a cruise ship and in Morocco, where she has an off/on relationship with a persistent archaeologist. I have no complaints, though, since the camera beautifully captures Laura Gemser's erotic adventures with men, women, couples and herself. Joe D'Amato's trademarks are bizarrely tinted sexual situations, and there's only one such sequence in this film, namely the Japanese stripper who puts ping-pong balls up her vagina. Weird… One aspect about "Emanuelle in Bangkok", as well as in the entire cycle, is downright brilliant and that's the music. Nico Fidenco's score is mesmerizing and, without exaggerating, at least ten times better than every other score that ever won an Oscar. The dazzling soundtrack alone makes "Emanuelle in Bangkok" a true cult classic that every fan of the genre will enjoy watching.

"Um...ok." is what I heard myself say quite often during this picture. This sequel to Emanuelle nera (1974) is basically just a travelogue as Laura Gemser goes to and fro from place to place and in the process destroys two marriages and smokes opium with Ivan Rassimov. Yep, that's all there is to it.Gabriele Tinti actually comes off best, and the sex scenes between he and Laura Gemser are quite nice. I was confused by Emanuelle's "struggle" with her lesbian feelings for Debra Berger's character. I remember seeing her have sex with two women in the last film.Ely Galleani is her usual smiling self (I've never seen her not smile in a film) and Ivan Rassimov has those sexy eyes, and of course Laura Gemser is gorgeous as ever, but this film is just kinda a time-passer. Now, the series would reach it's pinnacle soon with "Emanuelle Around the World," but that's another story...EDIT (June 2007): On reflection, having seen this film again after several years, I have to admit that I have a new appreciation for how the romance between Emanuelle and Debra was handled. It's really quite sweet. Emanuelle's struggle isn't with feeling attracted to a woman, but feeling stronger emotions, thus she flees India, back to her old ways. If you watch their scenes in Italian with the English subs on (on the Severin DVD release,) the dialogue between Emanuelle and Debra is a bit different, and more moving. It makes the bathtub scene much more significant, rather than just a random moment of titillation as it appears in the English dub.