Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977)

A shotgun marriage of two different Italian exploitation genres - sex film and cannibal film - Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977) sounds as if it should be a disaster, yet, in truth, it works surprisingly well.  Directed by the prolific Joe D'Amato, the film is part of the Laura Gemser starring 'Black Emanuelle' series - not to be confused with the official Emmanuelle' series of films, (note the subtle difference in spellings of the name), starring Sylvia Kristel - which featured the globe-trotting adventures of frequently naked investigative reporter Emanuelle.  That the series was already running out of steam as a pure softcore sex movie series is witnessed by the way that earlier entries had already begun to mix genres - notably D'Amato's earlier Emanuelle in America (1977), which saw the heroine investigating snuff films.  Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals opens with reference to another genre as we find her working under cover in a New York psychiatric hospital, disguised as a patient, (shades of Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor).  Here she witnesses a young female patient biting chunks out of the nursing staff as she is restrained, managing to photograph a strange tattoo above the girl's pubic area.  Later, she learns that the patient had previously bitten off and eaten part of a nurse's breast.  Enlisting the help of an anthropologist, (played by Gabriele Tinti, Gemser's real-life husband), she finds that the tattoo is a tribal symbol of a lost tribe of South American cannibals.  Next thing, she and the anthropologist are heading for the Amazon to set up an expedition to find the cannibals.

Structurally, the film is effectively split into two halves, representing the two genres it straddles. The first part, particularly from the point that Gemser and Tinti arrive in South America, is predominantly a sex film, with Gemser getting off with Tinti and soaping down fellow expedition member Isabelle (Monica Zanchi).  The presence of a nun in the expedition (she's traveling back to her jungle mission), raises the hope that we might also have some 'Nunsploitation' thrown in for good measure but, unusually for D'Amato, this never materialises.  The second half of the movie is the cannibal film, with the sexploits of the various characters taking a back seat to to some gory human sacrifices, beheadings, disembowelments and the like.  The turning point comes when Donald O'Brien's white hunter turns up in the nick of time to rescue Emanuelle from the coils of a large snake.  O'Brien's character, (who is accompanied by his wife and a guide) , provides the film with a sub-plot as their real motive for joining Gemser's expedition is to locate a cache of diamonds from a plane that had crashed in cannibal country.  While this section of the film does concentrate on the cannibals, it isn't devoid of sexual action, with O'Brien's wife getting all hot and bothered as she watches the guide cleaning his rifle, before dragging him off into the jungle for a damn good rogering.

To D'Amato's credit, the two halves of the film hang together very well, with the shift in tone as it turns into a cannibal picture never feeling jarring.  What D'Amato understood was that the two different genres are thematically linked: both are about the objectification of women's bodies - one as sex objects, the other as, literally, pieces of meat as they are carved up.  Indeed, the cannibal film arguably represents the ultimate in the objectification of women by literally reducing them to a collection of body parts.  (While slasher films do something similar, the cannibal genre takes it much further. It is notable that cannibal films frequently focus on female victims and highlight the cutting off and consumption of nipples, breasts, buttocks etc, with the obvious pleasure the cannibals take in eating these body parts effectively equating cannibalism with sexual ecstasy).  True to form, in Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, the victims we actually see being carved up and eaten are both female - while one male character is gruesomely tortured to death, we never see him eaten and other male characters are likewise killed by traps or spears, but apparently not eaten.  

Voyeurism is the other theme that runs through the film.  Whether it is Isabelle masturbating as she illicitly watches Emanuelle and the anthropologist having sex, O'Brien spying on his wife as she's serviced by their guide, the cannibals stealthily tracking the expedition or Emanuelle constantly framing everything via her camera, everybody is watching everybody else.  Perhaps it is a commentary on the nature of pornography, which casts us all as voyeurs as we consume it, or even the way in which modern media constantly records our every move.  Nothing, it seems, can happen unless it is being observed, no matter how intimate or horrific the moment.  Emanuelle even stops to photograph a drugged and naked Isabelle being ritually raped before she and the anthropologist rescue her.  Maybe D'Amato intended Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals to be a satirical commentary on exploitation itself - how we, as audiences, can't bear to look away, no matter how gruesome it all gets.

Not that I'm claiming that the film is any kind of misunderstood classic.  The fact is that D'Amato (a much maligned director) made trash.  But he made entertaining and usually quite well made trash, as is the case here.  Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals is actually a pretty good looking film.  Even if some of the jungle sequences do look as if they were shot in a local park.  Which isn't surprising, as they were apparently filmed around a lake near Rome, with local Filipinos drafted in to play the cannibals.  Like all cannibal films, it does play on a lot of racist stereotypes, throwing in a few additional ones for good measure, most notably that of the sexual prowess of the black stud with regard to the guide who satisfies O'Brien's wife in a way he never could.  The sex movie part of it, of course, is all about fulfilling male sexual fantasies. To its credit, though, it does present us with a strong, independent and capable female lead in Gemser, who doesn't have to be rescued by a man all the time and can kick arse with the best of them.  (OK, strong yet sexy and feminine women who can dominate or at least hold their own with men is also a male fantasy, but a much more acceptable one than most).  Gemser, along with the rest of the main cast, gives a decent perfmance, above average for this sort of film.  O'Brien is suitably creepy in his role, (unable to get it up for his wife, he instead gropes Isabelle while she's sleeping), although not quite as barnstormingly barmy as he was in Zombie Holocaust a few years later.

In the final analysis, despite being somewhat slow moving in parts, Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals represents a superior slice of cross genre exploitation.  Which is all the more remarkable considering that it was, reputedly, shot in two and a half weeks.  Hell, what's not to like about a film that climaxes with a naked Laura Gemser in a boat, brandishing a pump action shotgun and blowing away marauding cannibals?