BY TODD GARBARINI
This
has been a good year for fans of model and actress Laura Gemser. Recently, Severin
Films released a deluxe Blu-ray package of two of her films, a soundtrack CD, a
really cool t-shirt and an enamel pin, the last item appearing to be something
that is new and all the rage nowadays. We’ll take a look at the two films
featured in this collection.
Emanuelle
and the Last Cannibals
(1977)
Laura
Gemser, the high cheekbone-chiseled, dark-skinned Indonesian goddess born
Laurette Marcia Gemser who appeared opposite Jack Palance in Emmanuelle
and the Deadly Black Cobra
(1975), returns in Emanuelle and the Last
Cannibals as Emanuelle. Here she’s a photojournalist who goes undercover at
a mental hospital with a 35mm camera hidden within a creepy children’s doll
that takes photos when the eyes open and close. She’s looking to expose the
hospital’s treatment of the infirmed and witnesses a horrific event wherein a
patient tries to eat one of the nurses. Yes, you read that right. A tattoo on
the patient’s torso of a cannibal tribe’s logo stuns Emanuelle. She comes to
find out that the woman was raised by a tribe of cannibals called the Apiaca. Eager
to pursue this story, she consults with her newspaper editor, an older man who
is looped so poorly you practically never see his mouth move. In fact, the
whole movie is looped with foley effects and dialogue that all sound so
unnatural but hey, that’s part of the fun of these movies. The story compels
Emanuelle to seek out Dr. Mark Lester (Ms. Gemser’s late real-life husband,
Gabriele Tinti) who agrees to accompany her on a journey to investigate the
Apiaca. Before she leaves on her trip, however, she decides to make love to her
boyfriend in full view of the New York skyline, but this is the last we see of
him as she appears to be smitten with the older Dr. Lester. Mechanical and
joyless softcore sex scenes proliferate, even after the point following their
arrival in the jungle to pursue the tribe. They are offered assistance by a
group of others who go with them: Reverend Wilkes (Geoffrey Copleston),
Isabelle (Mónica Zanchi), an overly emotional Sister Angela (Annamaria
Clementi), Donald Mackenzie (Donald O’Brien), and his wife Maggie (Nieves
Navarro). They are on a mission to locate Father Morales who is supposedly the
only person not from the Amazon who has ever had any contact with the tribe. Unfortunately,
they only discover his remains, which sets poor Sister Angela into a terrible
emotional state.
Poor
Donald can’t seem to satisfy Maggie anymore, so when they stop to make camp she
elects to get it on with natives in the jungle. As one would expect from director
Aristide Massaccesi, better known as Joe D’Amato, the sex scenes are overdone,
artificial and completely lacking in passion. Even Emanuelle’s multiple romps
do little to exult in the wonder of her lithe figure. If ever there was an
award for Best Mechanical and Robotic Sex Scene, director D’Amato would surely
win every time.
Naturally,
the more the group hikes further into the jungle the more they expose
themselves to potentially being captured and eaten. This horrific fate befalls several
of the party, but Emanuelle thinks of an ingenious way to escape once they are surrounded.
The ending is silly and predictable, but you pretty much know what you’re
getting with this acting troupe.
As
difficult as it may seem to believe, cannibal films enjoyed a high level of
popularity back in the 1970s and 1980s, so it was inevitable that they would
make their way into other genres. If the title is unfamiliar to U.S. audiences,
it should be. Though shot in the summer of 1977, Last Cannibals didn’t make its way to American shores until 1984
when it was dumped on VHS under the title of Trap Them and Kill Them. Like most exploitation films of the
period, some of the action is shot in the streets of New York City and it’s a
real hoot to see what Manhattan looked like 41 years ago. One shot has the
comedy Kentucky Fried Movie displayed
prominently on the marquee of the long-gone Rivoli Theatre which was known for
its extended showcases of 2001: A Space
Odyssey (1968) and Jaws (1975).
The film has just made its way to Blu-ray via
of Severin Films and the results are so far above what we’re used to from VHS
bootlegs that it looks like a different movie. Presented
in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and given a 2K transfer from a good
print that significantly brightens up the image, Last Cannibals looks good enough to make one dump the inferior and
murky VHS bootlegs of over thirty years ago.
This
disc has an unusual amount of extras for this sort of title. Up first is The World of Nico Fidenco which runs
twenty-seven minutes. Signor Fidenco is the film’s composer and he has written
an upbeat score for the film. He’s very interesting to listen to and describes
how his stint in the military got in the way of his original ambition which was
to be a film director. After he was discharged, he learned the guitar and
studied singing and this led him to composing music for film. He collaborated
multiple times with director D’Amato. (Note:
if you’re a fan of the score, the first 3000 Blu-ray pressings in a special
edition contain a separate compact disc of the score. The end of this review
will fill you in on how to order it).
A Nun Among the Cannibals: An Interview with Actress Annamaria
Clementi (twenty-three minutes). While watching the interview, I couldn’t
believe that the woman speaking to the camera was the same woman who played Sister
Angela in the film. She was roughly twenty-three when she shot the film, and is
now sixty-five(?!) in the on-screen interview. This bespectacled beauty could
easily pass for thirty-eight. Perhaps the interview was shot years ago? It
looks new to me. She talks about how shy and aloof she was with lead actress
Gemser, and how director D’Amato wanted to put her in his next seven films which
she declined(!), as well as a chance encounter with Robert DeNiro when shooting
in New York City. She also explains that she was approached by Pino Pellegrino,
the man who would become her agent, casually on the street and he asked her if
she wanted to become an actress. Remarkably, she trusted him and they had a
good working relationship.
Dr. O’Brien MD: This eighteen-minute interview with Donald
O’Brien who played Donald Mackenzie reveals how he got his start in acting,
like most performers do, in the theatre. I was amazed at how much he had aged
whereas the aforementioned Annamaria Clementi looked so much younger.
From Switzerland to the Mato Grosso runs nearly nineteen minutes and
features Monika Zanchi whom genre fans will remember from the nutso 1977 outing
Hitch Hike with Franco Nero and the
incomparable David Hess. She also appeared in the ridiculous Spielberg spoof Very Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind
(1978).
The
last featurette is called I Am Your Black
Queen which runs just over eleven minutes and is a poorly-recorded
audio interview with Laura Gemser which is subtitled. She talks about how she
began, like most attractive young actresses do, by modelling. This is how genre
favorite Caroline Munro got her start. Her first film, Free Love, was released in 1974. Perhaps not so surprisingly, she
refers to her embarrassment over her nude scenes. Of the few movies that I have
seen of her, she rarely if ever looks comfortable in her own skin, almost as if
disrobing is a chore.
Last
of all is the requisite theatrical trailer.
As
I mentioned earlier, the first 3000 copies of this Blu-ray also include a
soundtrack CD of the film’s score. The running time on the 31-track CD is one
hour. It can be ordered here as part of The Laura Gemser Deluxe Bundle which includes a second film, Violence in a Women’s Prison.
Violence
in a Women’s Prison
(1982)
For
those of you familiar with the cinema of the late Italian director Bruno Mattei
(pronounced mah-TAY), you’ll know
that he’s an acquired taste. Probably best known for his 1980 outing Night of the Zombies (originally titled Hell of the Living Dead) and 1984’s Rats – Night of Terror with Geretta
Geretta of Lamberto Bava’s Demons
(1986), he directed many films under the pseudonym of Vincent Dawn. Violence in a Women’s Prison (1982), released
here in 1984 as Caged Women, makes no
effort whatsoever to avoid the clichés that plague the “women in prisonâ€
subgenre of sleaze flicks. It was shot back to back with Women’s Prison Massacre, also with Ms. Gemser. It opens with a
sequence that recalls John Carpenter’s Assault
on Precinct 13 (1975) where a group of inmates are loaded onto a van for
transport to a penitentiary by several male guards, one of whom could be the
winner of the John Savage Lookalike Contest. In this case, the inmates are all
female and all look like potential contenders for the cover of Glamour magazine.
Very realistic! One of the residents already in the prison begins to speak and
lo and behold, the voice of Carolyn De Fonseca comes out! As in Last Cannibals, Ms. Gemser (Laura
Kendall) once again goes undercover to expose the corrupt prison officials’ horrible
treatment of the male and female prisoners. She’s horrified to learn of the
punishments doled out contemptuously by the female wardens. She is also
examined by the prison doctor (again, her real-life husband Gabriele Tinti) who
himself is under the thumb of his superior who holds his murder of his wife
over his head to keep him in line. The action alternates between the usual sex
scenes and brutal violence, and the poor men are the victims of the usual
ludicrous depictions of male homosexuality. One sequence subjects Ms. Gemser to
an attack by rats (which anticipates Signor Mattei’s aforementioned horror opus
by two years). Think Orange is the New
Black gone wild. If you believe the onscreen subtitles, the film is beset
by “jazzy beat music†and it is jazzy
and pleasant to listen to. I’m not sure that it’s an appropriate score for a
film of this subject matter, but, like the bad dubbing, that’s part of it’s
charm.
There
are several extras on this disc, the most significant of them being the nearly
thirty-minute Brawl in Women’s Block, which is an on-camera interview with
Claudio Fragasso and his wife/collaborator Rosella Drudi. They discuss how they
came into the business, and Claudio tells a very funny story about how he wooed
Rosella when they first met by pretending to be a French New Wave film
director. They have been married for forty years and worked a lot together,
however like so many people, they basically got screwed out of a lot of money
from the producers. Claudio also discusses his work with Bruno Mattei. Rosella
talks about the continuity girl going from set to set on a pair of roller
skates when they were shooting two movies simultaneously. It worked for Steven
Spielberg when he was cutting Duel in
1971, so why not? Their beautiful tan cat, Milo, figures prominently in the
interview, however he’s mute throughout it.
There
is also a three-minute interview with the late Bruno Mattei who explains that
the film did well the world over due to its constant exposure in ancillary
markets.
Last
is a trailer.
Severin
Films is consistently turning out cool titles with even cooler packages for
fans which includes limited edition Blu-rays and merchandise related to the
film. They are one of the best companies producing DVDs and Blu-rays with the
die-hard fans in mind.
There
are several ways to purchase the film at this link which illustrates all the Laura Gemser
movies and merchandise available.