Black Emanuelle en Amérique

Extreme depravity, hardcore sex, and ultra violence: I'd heard that this sleazy offering from Italian trash-movie king Joe D'Amato (Aristide Massaccesi) was the epitome of exploitation, so I borrowed a copy from a friend and settled down to enjoy a prime slice of deviancy. Unfortunately, this supposedly spicy dollop of D'Amato sauce actually turned out to be rather bland.

Laura Gemser plays Emanuelle, an investigative reporter determined to get her scoop, whatever the risk. Using her womanly wiles, she digs up the dirt on an organised-crime boss and his harem, some lust-crazed Venetian aristocrats, and a sex club for lonely women where our horny heroine eventually stumbles on the story of the century when she discovers a couple enjoying a genuine snuff movie.

The first half of the movie is rather dull, packed with plentiful female nudity but hardly any of the 'rough stuff' that I had read so much about; only a brief scene involving a happy horse named Pedro is worthy of note.

Eventually D'Amato hits his stride and, during an orgy scene, he delivers the first of many hardcore moments; from here on in, the XXX action is more plentiful, but the clumsy direction and editing means that they are far from erotic.

At the end of the movie, Joe throws in a smattering of very gory pseudo-snuff footage for good measure, but this only serves to make the film feel even more disparate. The end result is neither a soft-core adventure, a hardcore porn movie or an all out gore-fest, but a disappointing (and often boring) half-assed mixture of all three.

See it so that you can talk knowledgeably about the genre to like-minded sickos, but don't expect anything too amazing.