Emmanuelle 2 - L’Anti-Vierge

 

Boat Full of Sea Men

Emmanuelle 2
Aka Emmanuelle L’anti-vierge
Directed by Francis Giacobetti
France 1975
Severin Films Blu Ray

Trigger warning: Taboo and illegal practices discussed and sometimes condemned. 

Okay, so I enjoyed Emmanuelle 2 a little more than the first movie in the series (reviewed here). That being said, it doesn’t really play with your expectations much in that it’s more in line with what I’d expect from a soft core erotic movie of the time and, I’m sure this is probably more the film that many audiences were expecting the first film to be.

That being said, for this audience member it certainly set up unrealistic expectations because its proper French title on the print is Emmanuelle L’anti-vierge and claims to be based on that book by Emmanuelle Arsan. However, having already read that book in preparation for watching this movie (you can read my review here), I’d have to say that very little of that book works itself into the ecosystem of the film adaptation. More on that a little later.

The plot, or anti-plot in this case, since it’s almost a reboot of the previous film and it’s practically non-existent, starts with Emmanuelle getting on a boat full of sea men and then travelling on a ship, in a dormitory with a load of tempting women, to be reunited with her diplomat husband Jean, who has been away on business for a couple of months. Then, with their ‘open marriage’, the film becomes a series of sexual encounters between the two of them and various lovers.

Sylvia Kristel reprises her role as a somewhat more intelligent (it seemed to me) iteration of the character (she seems to have lost the naivete of her book incarnation to some extent here) but, this time round, her husband is played by Umberto Orsini… who seems much more likeable.

The film has fantastic cinematography and every location, with slow fluid camerawork which seems to explore the environments in order to ‘find’ the characters, looks absolutely beautiful. Needless to say (or needles to say, if commenting on the ‘sexy acupuncture’ sequence) this also goes for the sex scenes and all the actors come off well in these.

Highlights for me would be that somewhat silly but fleshly decorative acupuncture sequence, a slight scene where Emmanuelle sexes up a tattooed guy in the changing rooms of the local polo club and their sounds are expertly mingled with the sound of the match outside and the panting horses… and a six way massage scene where the two take their friend Anna-Maria (played by Catherine Rivet) to a parlour where they are laid out on three tables and given erotic, body to body massages by three women simultaneously.

And here’s the thing about that last scene I talked about. The saucy masseur who sexes up Anna-Maria is an early appearance by none other than the great Laura Gemser, who would of course begin her long, iconic run as Italy’s Black Emanuelle (with one M only, for copyright reasons) the same year.

One other scene of note is when Emmanuelle is looking through some kind of cine-viewfinder while someone takes her from behind and the BDSM, double penetration, strap-on cartoon she is watching is intercut into the sequence. I love it when live action films present prominent animated scenes as part of their make up (it’s a pretty neat cartoon actually).

Okay… so there are some problems too. A prominent character from the first book, Christopher, makes it into this movie in some scenes from that book, kinda. Anna-Maria is more baffling because she’s treated here as a completely new character, played by a different actress to the pseudo-iteration of her in the first film (who had a slightly changed character name too, if memory serves). So that’s confusing.

And a big long monologue from Jean to that character in the second book is chopped up and interspersed through three scenes, with some overlaps to other characters and versions of those sentiments from the first book. Which is actually a better way of doing it in terms of the pacing within a cinematic context, I would say.

So most of the book is gone, including some really interesting scenes, characters and locales and, I have to wonder why, since the second book seems to have many more opportunities for cinematic opulence which have all been ignored here. Certainly, Emmanuelle Arsan’s philosophy of giving oneself to anyone regardless of your own desire is not adhered to or raised here. The only moment where there is a trace of her and her husband’s outlook on life regarding that particular aspect seems to be that, after making love to three sailors (not at a prince’s party with many sailors, as in the book) in a brothel called the Jade Garden (which, again, is nothing like the secret glass palace which serves a more intense version of it in the book), she at least takes money for her services. So that, at least, is an echo of boring character Mario’s ideas (and, fortunately, he doesn’t make a similar appearance in this movie at all).

As for the vile underage sex theme which somehow subtexts the novel, I’m pleased to say it’s been circumnavigated by this version completely. Emmanuelle and Jean do, indeed, deflower Anna-Maria towards the end of the movie (both together in this version of events) but it’s clearly stated here that she’s 18 years of age… and not five years younger as in the books.

All in all, although really a lot less interesting in terms of ideas found in the book it misleadingly purports to be an adaptation of, I found Emmanuelle - L’antivierge (or Emmanuelle 2 as it is more popularly marketed as, in many countries) to be a much lighter and entertaining picture than the first although, to be fair, it does also lack the substance and gravitas of the original Emmanuelle.

 

EMMANUELLE ARSAN AT NUTS4R2

Novels
Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle L’Anti-Vierge
Laure

Movies
The Sand Pebbles 
I, Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle (1974)
Emmanuelle 2 
Good Bye Emmanuelle
Laure
Emmanuelle (2024)

Saga Erotica - The Emmanuelle Collection 

Invaders Of The Lost Gold

Gemser And Makepeace

Invaders Of The Lost Gold
aka Horror Safari
aka Safari Cannibale
aka Greed
Directed by Alan Birkinshaw
Hong Kong 1982 
Severin Films Blu Ray Zone A

Wow. This is the kind of movie where you really have to wonder how it exists and why it was ever made. Answer... because it was financed by notorious, low budget ‘opportunity seizer’ Dick Randall (who produced and sometimes acted in such films as Pieces, The French Sex Murders and even Bava’s Four Times That Night). He was kind of a green light and a red light for movies both at the same time but, yeah, nobody could deny his passion for cinema, for sure.

This quickie, Invaders Of The Lost Gold, which was made in the Philippines, appealed to me mostly because of the two main actresses. It has Laura Gemser, famous for Black Emanuelle* and a whole host of other ‘single M’ Emanuelle movies (I think she even had a part in one of the ‘double M’ Emmanuelle movies at some point too) and, in the main lead with an ‘introducing’credit, we have Glynis Barber (replacing Britt Ekland who wisely dropped out before shooting started). Remember her? She played, among other things, Soolin in Blake’s Seven (in the later seasons when Blake wasn’t even in it), Jane (in the serialised BBC adaptation of the saucy World War two newspaper strip of the same name) and, of course, Makepeace in Dempsey And Makepeace (going on to marry her co-star Michael Brandon). This wasn’t her first role. I think she was doing Blake’s Seven before this... but I guess it’s her first feature film role, to justify the credit Dick Randall gave her. Either way, she’s probably the most competent of the performers in this movie... which given the big name cast, I think says more about her enthusiasm than anything else. I get the feeling from watching this that the rest of the cast are not exactly treating this film like it’s ‘A material’... which to be fair it decidedly isn’t... but whatever, she comes off as one of the most credible in the cast (as does Laura Gemser actually).

So I teased a big name cast and here it is... we have Stuart Whitman playing the male lead Mark Forrest (he’s twenty seven years older than Barber but she’s supposed to be his love interest), Edmund Purdom as Rex Larson (the villain of the piece), Woody Strode as the bodyguard/butler of the financier of the expedition in the movie (Barber plays the money man’s daughter) and Harold Sakata, who played Odd Job in Goldfinger, reviewed here) as a former officer in the Japanese army.

The film starts off in 1945, when an offshoot of the Japanese army, based in the Philippines, are attacked and almost completely wiped out by headhunters... but not before they hide their chests of gold in a cave to be collected years later when it’s safe to do so. Then, 36 years later, the villain of the piece... after killing one of the officers for non-compliance and then being cheated from collaborating with a second who kills himself... grabs Sakata to help on an expedition to find the lost gold. Much to his dismay, the financier hires Whitman, who Purdom’s character has treacherous history with, to lead the team and he also goes along, bringing his daughter and various other helpers.

And the rest of the film is watching almost the whole team get picked off one by one by, sometimes mysterious, attacks by wildlife or... well I’m not always sure... until we get a stand off between Whitman and Purdom with Barber looking on. The end... really nothing much to see here folks. That being said, the director has gone on record as being rightfully proud of pulling off a... mostly... cohesive adventure yarn under terrible circumstances and with a special Dick Randall budget (aka excessively low) while also rewriting the script day by day as the film shot.

It’s dreadful and not quite exploitative, apart from one scene near the end where Gemser sheds her clothes and goes swimming before dropping out of the picture in the most puzzling manner... and it has the occasional piece of ‘practical effects violence’, which they sometimes get away with but often don’t, in my opinion.

Whenever a major character dies, the film goes into a bizarre slow motion effect so you know something bad is happening... even though the details of that are not really present on screen. For example, a slow motion crocodile attack doesn’t have any shots of the crocodile or victim sharing the screen (and the crocodile in certain moments looks like it might even have been tracked in from another movie) but we’re somehow supposed to surmise that a character has been eaten. Of the slow motion deaths on display though, Laura Gemser’s swimming death is the most perplexing. One minute she’s swimming around backstroke to show some of the movie’s sexy assets... the next she is keeling over in slow motion in the water and, when her body is found, even the other characters can’t figure out how or why she died. I dunno... it’s as much of a puzzle to the audience... maybe a heart attack?

The music is bizarre too. Francesco De Masi provided the score but it feels wholly inappropriate to the images and I’d have said it was just needle dropped in from another movie. But the director mentions ‘doing the music’ so I can only assume it’s an original composition. I’d say it harms the film somewhat but, with the amount of harm it does itself anyway, it’s already kind of bulletproof.

I’d have to say though that, even though the film is kinda trashy... and not in a sleazy way, worse luck, just seeming like it’s cobbled together from air (no disrespect to the director, who obviously managed to make a lot more of it than many might)... I somehow really enjoyed this one and don’t regret my purchase in any way. I don’t know why but, I had a smile on my face from beginning to end throughout this one... possibly because of the juxtaposition of the various ‘unlikely bedfellows’ in terms of the acting talent. Severin’s Blu Ray transfer is beautiful (although the state of the slow motion sequences is, I suspect, not something they would possibly have been able to fix) and there are a couple of nice extras on here too. One where the director talks about the filming and we hear stories about the reluctant crocodile and the bizarre, eccentric and aggressive sense of competitiveness between Whitman and Purdom... and another which is two long interviews with the both the director and Dick Randall’s widow (she always has good stories) which are both outtakes from the documentary movie Machete Maidens Unleased (which I reviewed here).

And there you have it... Invaders Of The Lost Gold is not a film I’d recommend to anyone but saying that, it found a warm place in my heart and it’s the perfect film to programme in the middle of an all nighter moviethon to give the audience a bit of a pause before getting their second wind, I reckon. One I’m pleased to have on the shelf. 

*There should be a whole raft of Black Emanuelle reviews coming soon to the blog within the next twelve months or so. I'm eight fims into the box set at time of writing.