VividSimon Simply Perfect

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Leofwine_draca 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.

Kaliyugaforkix *1/2 One of Joe D'amato's infamous blends of sexploitation and horror, though faaar from his best,TRAP THEM & KILL THEM/EMANUELLE & THE LAST CANNIBALS could've been far trashier had the director had the slightest interest in his material. Instead we're left with a tedious leaden vehicle that's sluggish and dull more than titillating & gross, not coming a snail's width to comparing to his mind-boggling masterpiece of sleaze: EMANUELLE IN America, which REALLY displays the sleaze ethic in spades, as irredeemably vile as a soiled toilet paper landfill.Photo journalist Emmanuel embarks on a jungle trek to uncover a hidden cannibal tribe, enthusiastically boffing her brains out every chance she and the other meager characters get, before messily dispatched in a painfully perfunctory fashion.Stilted and lifeless except when centering on the coital antics of the cast, the sheer boredom of the director permeates the entire affair, reaching its apex, ironically, when the title flesh-eaters arrive amid a sparse assembly of awkward gore FX that could've redeemed the film had they been approached in an over-the-top fashion, instead of the "Lets-Get-It-Over-with" mentality that remains. Inspired moments of exploitation inanity, throwaway elements that would appear ludicrous & alien in other films but only add to the fun-house texture of a Z-film (like the chain-smoking chimpanzee, or photo-snapping teddy bear) are sadly lacking. The flick is only watchable due to its premise: Soft-core porn meets sadistic jungle savagery. When you think of all the missed opportunities such a ripe premise passes by (committing the unforgivable sin of stifling boredom)it almost brings a tear to the eye. For a more inspired glimpse of skinematic shenanigans and breathtaking surroundings, you'd do better with Joe's EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD which at least is pretty to look at and is interesting in that joyous, sublimely horrendous kind of way.Ole Joe was capable of livelier stuff in his less hack-y moments, we could've had a mini-trash classic that predated either grandaddies of the subgenre (FEROX & HOLOCAUST) instead of this tepid time waster.

BA_Harrison Director Joe D'amato is perhaps Italy's greatest director of exploitative sleaze and can always be relied upon to go the extra distance when it comes to delivering gratuitous sex and violence. It's not that surprising, therefore, to discover that Emanuelle And The Last Cannibals not only delivers the usual smörgåsbord of gory delights typical of the genre, but also offers endless soft-core humping, near the knuckle scenes of female self-gratification, and a smoking chimpanzee.Once again, D'amato's regular leading lady Laura Gemser plays sexually liberated reporter Emanuelle, who always gets her story, whatever the risks. This time, she discovers the existence of a cannibalistic tribe in the Amazon and puts together an expedition in order to explore the region. Inevitably, the team meet up with the local gut-munchers and suffer a variety of gruesome fates.Fans of hot, hot women and cheesy gore will have a blast with this film, since D'amato is a director who has never needed an excuse to get his actresses buck nekkid or ladle on the splatter. The first half of the film concentrates primarily on the characters' sexual shenanigans, with Emanuelle getting it on with a couple of lucky guys (with Gemser showing viewers her full frontal as usual), whilst sexy redhead Maggie (Nieves Navarro) and tasty blonde Isabelle (Mónica Zanchi) go even further: both women have fairly explicit scenes in which they enthusiastically explore their own jungles, and Navarro gets jiggy with her native guide. The latter half of the film is more about the violence, and features some nasty disembowellings (including the killing of hot nun, Sister Angela), a beheading, impalements, and a rather laughable moment in which a guy is cut in half with a length of string (achieved via a particularly dreadful optical effect).A wonderfully trashy ending sees Isabelle gang-banged by the cannibals and prepared for sacrifice, before being saved at the last minute by a totally starkers Emanuelle.

MARIO GAUCI A disparate mix of explicit sex and stomach-churning gore, the film can't really decide what it wants to be (and, in fact, the titular character is too often left by the wayside): in the version I saw, the former seemed to be intact - but the latter was evidently trimmed as, mostly relegated to the second half, this section of the film was particularly choppy! I've only watched one of the Italian-made "Black Emanuelle" titles featuring Laura Gemser and two Cannibal films by Ruggero Deodato; I'm not a fan of either subgenre, and this one certainly made no convert out of me! Going back to the element of sexuality in the film, much of it is gratuitous (showing, for instance, an impotent man spying on a couple of girls - one of whom is a nun! - conveniently sleeping in the nude): though pushing forty Susan Scott - star of numerous Spaghetti Westerns and gialli - is featured in a number of uninhibited sex scenes (alone and with a black stud!)...which is basically the sole reason this one doesn't rate a BOMB! Gemser and real-life husband Gabriele Tinti also share a few - including one which is edited in the fragmentary style of Nicolas Roeg's DON'T LOOK NOW (1973)!; speaking of movie references, the opening sequence shamelessly rips off Samuel Fuller's SHOCK CORRIDOR (1963) - with Gemser as the reporter carrying out an undercover expose' of mental institutions!!