Emanuelle in America: Hey! You got your snuff porn in my cheesy 70's soft core!

So it's come down to this, and so quickly too. My dreams of a blog to discuss history's great figures and writings have crumbled into low rent zombie (sorry, Xombie) novels and cheesy 70's soft core porn flicks. Well you can't say I'm not predictable, can you?

When I was in the throes of adolescent angst, I did not have the luxury of having the wide open pipeline into my house with naked women 24/7 that the kids today have. No, I had to get it wherever I could, which meant stealing Victoria's Secret catalogues, the JC Penny Sunday supplement and also Showtime and Cinemax: the twin devils that have brought Our Great Nation to the state of depravity in which it now exits. But I was 14, nerdy and desperate to see nude women. Cable TV was my salvation. I was blessed with either terminally clueless or terminally hip parents who were willing to turn a blind eye to my nocturnal viewing habits. I lean towards the "terminally hip" side of the equation, because when I got caught renting out the tapes to one of my scumbag friends they didn't act surprised and I wasn't punished overmuch. Kind of embarrassing to think about how much I thought I was getting away with, but that they actually knew all about. But hey, if you can't act like a self-centered douchebag when you're a teenager when can you act like a self-centered douchebag?

One of the giants of the genre was Emanuelle. She went everywhere and did everything (and seemingly, everyone). She had African adventures and then Amazonian adventures. I think she went to the moon a couple of times. There are more Emanuelle movies than Tom Swift novels for crying out loud

This incarnation of Emanuelle should be differentiated with Emmanuelle (with two M's). I don't know the difference. The first Emanuelle was played by Sylvia Kristel, but really, the character has been assayed by so many actresses she might as well be James Bond or Batman. This incarnation is played by the breathtakingly exotic Laura Gemser who appears to be Brazilian. But I've also read that she's "Eurasian." My theory is that she comes from a dimension not of sight, not of sound, but of fabulously tanned babes. Seriously, she's about the only reason to rent this. The rest of the women are of the scraggy hard-bitten cokehead type that predominated in the 70's and some of the more hard core parts are at best gross and at worst offensive, so be prepared with that old fast forward button.

Nothin to do but strut!

It all starts in New York. The New York of the down at the heels Travis Bickle/The Warriors era. But we don't have to worry about that because Emanuelle is rich so she doesn't have to go down to "the gutta where da glitta doesn't reach." Emanuelle is, in the great tradition of hyphenated heroes, a fashion photographer-investigative journalist. Scenes of her walking through the glass canyons of New York are intercut with her taking pictures at a fashion shoot. It's a testament to Laura Gemser's beauty that she can make these atrocious 70's fashions look hot. After walking what seems like miles to her car (gee parking in the city is a hassle) she hops right in and promptly gets carjacked. Ladies, always look in the back seat before you get in! The deranged gunman is mad at her for taking nude pictures of his fiancée and how Emanuelle is turning her to the side of sin and depredation. Emanuelle lays a whole solid 70's trip on the guy about how sex is groovy man and makes you feel good so how can it be bad? Then she leans over and without so much as a how-do-you-do, provides an oral service to him. Bear in mind that this is with a gun pointed at her head. So what would have been a traumatic ordeal for most women is just Emanuelle's way of asserting what a progressive feminist she is. After experiencing the "moment of clouds and rain" for the first time (and at the hands of a pro) he realizes just how groovy sex is and runs off shouting, "I love it! I love it!" which is only slightly less nerdy than my cries of "Excelsior!" after losing my virginity. The plot, having lost all of its momentum, slowly finds a gear and begins to move forward. That's the problem with these soft core movies: everything grinds to a halt for the obligatory sex scene and then has to get back on track. Back at Emanuelle's groovy (it's the 70's, everything is groovy) we meet her groovy committed boyfriend. They're such a groovy couple that they have an open relationship that allows Emanuelle to blow strangers in cars. It's the 70's! But he's all from squaresville and wants to harsh the buzz of their relationship by getting married.

Emanuelle's boyfriend shows
how not to propose to a woman

What a Herbert. Emanuelle neatly heads this foolish idea off at the pass by taking her shirt off. Works for me! For those keeping score at home, this is Laura Gemser's first topless scene. Afterwards, Emanuelle gets a call from her editor about a prostitution ring catering to the super rich and super freaky and the plot is off and running!

First exotic location: Long Island! Like a half-forgotten episode of Charlie's Angels Emanuelle goes deep undercover in the sex ring. All of the girls are named after their astrological signs. I forget what Emanuelle's sign is, but I think we're safe in assuming that she's not a Virgo, if you catch my meaning. Her trip into this sex ring is notable for the second most disgusting aspect of the picture. She and the other girls get taken on a tour of the grounds and the grand finale is at the stables. Here she peeps into a stall while one of the other ladies gives a hand job to a horse. Yes that's right. And this isn't simulated or implied or anything like that. It's a real horse cock getting jerked off. It is important to note that this is the European cut of the film and that all this stuff was added in because it was thought too tame for Europeans. One of the reviewers at Netflix said "Americans with immature sexualities may be offended." Well, goo-goo gaa-gaa, me no like bestiality!

"Hey Wilbur! You better get in here!
Carol's acting really weird!"

After this, Emanuelle moves on to her next assignment in the global sex ring she's been covering: New Jersey! This is sort of a resort where rich women go to find willing studs. Emanuelle cons her way into the compound and proceeds to not too surreptitiously take pictures of the guests with a dopey miniature camera hidden in a brooch. Double Agent 76 had a more subtle way of taking pictures (better fashion sense too). She takes pictures of a woman getting ravished by Tarzan and a woman getting ravished by a gladiator. Peeping through an unlocked door (hey, locking the door when you're having sex is so 50's!) she espies a woman and a man watching a snuff film. And while I fervently hope that it was a fake snuff film produced for the purposes of this motion picture, it's grainy and jittery and realistic enough to make me very queasy and make the Little Governor want to run away and hide. I suppose that's my immature American sexuality again. At least Emanuelle is properly horrified by this, so I'm on her side.

Real subtle, Emanuelle

Ah, but the jig is up! Her half-assed attempts at secret photography have not gone unnoticed. Right before the resort's goon squad busts into her room, she takes the film out of the camera and secretes it I know not where. She is grilled by the butch matron of the resort, which leads to some tepid lesbianism. After knocking out her tormentress, she makes good her escape and goes to her editor with the snuff angle. There's a bunch of crap about how she's looking for leads to get into the snuff ring. Brenda Starr made a more convincing journalist, although she wasn't half nude most of the time.

Hired goons?!

She gets her break in that most wretched hive of scum and villainy, Washington DC, where she hooks up with what has got to be the most pathetically evil caricature of a Republican ever devised for the big screen. This guy (he's a Senator or something) looks like Barry Goldwater and Charlton Heston fell into the Brundlefly machine. Emanuelle handily seduces him and asks him for some "real kinky, far-out stuff." Yes that's what she says. So the ersatz-AUH20 threads up a pretty vanilla black and white porno in his 8mm projector (remember those?). Emanuelle is wholly unimpressed. "Like wow man, are you from squaresville, I wanted some real taboo stuff!" So Barry loads up the snuff film and I make with the fast forward. Emanuelle wants to get deeper into the story (she's undercover you know) and asks to watch one being made. Senator Evil takes her to the heart of the Amazon to watch a snuff film being made. Fast forward away!


Does anyone else think Senator Evil on the left there might have been based a little on Nelson Rockefeller?




So, we're almost out of here, thankfully. She gets her pictures and gets away from Senator Evil (how she did this without becoming the star of a snuff film is not gone into) and goes back to New York to break the story. But quel horreur! Her editor spikes it on direct orders from the paper's owner who is, presumably, a evil wealthy capitalist (is there any other kind?) who is in on the snuff porn ring. Disappointed, broken but a little wiser to the ways of the world Emanuelle goes to a tropical island with her boy toy from the beginning of the film and, thankfully, the picture ends.

Pros: Laura Gemser is three kinds of naked throughout most of the movie.
And that's about it.
Cons: Most of the other women aren't really that attractive and the bad lighting doesn't help.
Bestiality
Snuff porn
The ending: after the snuff porn story gets spiked, the movie pretty much gives up.
And the usual suspects for 70's era soft core flicks: bad dialogue, bad acting, bad plots, and almost puppy-like desire to BE something artistic. Just be a porn! If you've got Laura Gemser naked enough you don't have to be The Odessa File!

Grade: B-, and that's almost entirely due to the lovely Ms. Gemser without whom the picture would be well-nigh unwatchable.

Xombies! Not very good

Title: Xombies
Author: Walter Greatshell
Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group, August 1, 2004
346 Pages

Xombies turned out to be less of a B+++++++ or whatever the previous reader had rated it in the inside cover and more of a Gentleman's C.
First, let's look at the title: Xombies. What the Hell is that? You are, apparently, supposed to accent the "X," so it's pronounced more like "ks-zombies" or maybe "ex-zombies." The first is just dreadful pronunciation, as if Xavier Cugat was the leader of a hell-spawned army of the living dead. The second option makes it sound like reformed zombies who have paid their debt to society. Either way, it's practically unpronounceable. In the real world, people would just call them zombies and not bother to differentiate between the two.
"Look out! Zombies!"
"Not Xombies?"
"Nope, just regular zombies."
"Well, thank heaven it's not Xombies!"
Once the titular Xombies have been introduced, they're pretty much dropped as a plot device. They're in the first 50 pages and the last 10 and apart from cameos in the super secret Corporate arctic base (sorry, just gave away a plot twist) they're mostly absent. See, it's not about the Xombies, man, it's all about man's inhumanity to man in the absence of a coherent and benevolent government. Basically the same stuff George Romero was going on about almost 40 years ago in Night of the Living Dead. Except not good.
The story is told from the point of view of Lulu, a seventeen year-old girl on the run with her deadbeat mom trying to find her deadbeat dad. Lulu has some disease that prevents her from aging so that she may be seventeen, but she's built like ten. This means a lot of creepy borderline child pornography of the stripe that characterized that later crazy years of Heinlein's career and most anime porn as she interacts with other more developed teenage boys. Not my cup of tea, thanks.
Lulu's mom gets Xombified pretty early on in the proceedings, so she hooks up with Mr. Cowper (he of the famous gland) an aging defense bigwig, who is making a last play to get to the last nuclear sub out of Providence. It is at this point where the aforementioned teenage boys come into the picture. The company (an evil corporation - is there any other kind?) has procured a de-milled Ohio class boomer and is going to ferry a ragtag group of teenage boys, aging defense contractors and surly military types to the arctic base.
The characters are, well, two-dimensional. Lulu is good, all good. She never ever does anything even mildly objectionable. Mr. Cowper is rough and gruff and not ready to be loved except maybe for a soft spot for his bastard daughter. The crew of teenage boys she falls in with are completely bland and not worth describing expcept her nominal love interest, Hector. He's a furry.
Furries! The second lowest form of life on the planet, second only to Objectivists. Frankly, if I had to choose between a Zombie Apocalypse and a Furry Apocalypse I say bring on the zombies! But no Xombies, thank you.
Furries, for the hopelessly square among you, are people who get a weird sexual thrill out of dressing like an animal or looking at anthropomorphic animals or that kind of thing. This is one of the many elements of the book that come off as the author banging hard on his own personal drum. Hector is painted as the natural leader for these teenage skate punks...but he's a furry! Her wear's a fer cryin' out loud squirrel suit for 90 percent of the book! These teens would stomp him into the ground!
After the sub gets to the secret base, we find that it's been taken over by a super-evil corporate cabal. And that's where things start going down hill. See, it's not the head of corporations like Bill Gates or Ted Turner that are running the show, but their shadowy bosses, man! Gates is just a puppet to the *real* power mongers. Oh, yes, we've heard this one before way back in the 70's in the Illuminatus Trilogy except that Illuminatus had the excuse of actually having been written in the '70's rather than just sounding like it. And also more interesting characters, better plot. better sex scenes and no freaking Xombies. Speaking of our titular menace, the Xombies make an appearance when our plucky heroine has to run a gauntlet of them in order to, uh, do something or other. I don't know, it gets sketchy from here on out.
The whole corporate society is extremely man-heavy because the virus incubates in womens' uteruses. So gay prostitution is rampant and most of Lulu's male pals get sold into it. It all comes off as kind of a weird ripoff of the underground society that Don Johnson falls into in "A Boy and His Dog." Except not good. And in much the same manner of A Boy and His Dog it tries to say that, when super right wing types are trying to remake society without the aid of enlightened liberal types it all goes to shit. Which is fine, except I think the super liberal Utopian types are probably going to have an equally difficult time preventing their society from degenerating into madness. It takes all kinds, is all I'm saying. Don't be hatin', aiight?
See, basically the Xombie virus (Agent X) was cooked up by the evil corporate nogoodniks in order to ensure their immortality. But it got out of hand and escaped before they managed to fix the whole "Sure you're immortal, but you're also a gibbering flesh-eating ghoul" thing. Apparently, Lulu, because of her disease may possess the key to taming the Xombie virus. And from there on out, the big climax takes place with lots of explosions and blah blah blah. I'll refrain from revealing the super-duper twist ending, except to say that by the time I was done with it I was sick and tired of the book.
Pros:
Lulu - you actually want her to be happy in the end and I was rooting for her.
Xombies - They were actually pretty scary, for the four (or so) pages they were on stage.
The Sub - Escaping a Zombie Apocalypse via nuclear sub seems like a real good idea to me.
Cons:
Characterization - Paper thin.
Plot - moves pretty slowly, with a limited payoff. I can handle slow moving plot (Heck, The First Circle is one of my all time favorites and that moves like molasses) as long as there's some kind of emotional pay off at the end.
Politics - Hey, you got your politics in my zombie novel! Just because George Romero can get away with this doesn't mean everybody should try.
Ending - By this point I just shrugged and plowed my way through. It doesn't help that the book gives away the ending on the second page.
Hector - It's not just the furry aspect but more that he's an irritating twerp trying to bang a girl who looks like she's ten.
Grade C------

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"In the future everyone will be Hitler for 15 minutes."
James Lileks