dasa108 Review of Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals

Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977)

If you are looking for cannibals, beauty and a well-made film, this is the best of all.

[7/10 · 30 October 2020]

This film is absolutely fantastic. It has it all: perfectly chosen locations in Colombia, a casting of beautiful women and actors who offer in what they need in their role, a splendid photograph, pleasant music and an address that gives the viewer exactly what they are looking for. A reporter finds a psychiatric patient who was in a cannibal tribe. The reasons for her how she ended up alive there are a mystery, especially considering the end of the film. When the protagonist talks to the newspaper manager, she finally decides to do an investigation based on an unusual mark on the patient's groin, found after an expert verification. The anthropologist in question seems like the kind of professional who doesn't delay in love matters: everything is resolved directly in bed. Already on the journey, we see a team of collaborators who look like future victims. We see they're superhuman. No one in their right mind would be without clothes sleeping in the jungle, mosquitoes and all kinds of vermin would kill them. But in this jungle, everyone is eager to have little clothes, to give themselves prolonged baths without soap and that require curious external help, and where promiscuity camps with the strength of a Julius Caesar sweeping Europe. Finally they find the indigenous people, who get rid of one by one of the team members. Let's accept that they deserved death: if you're looking for a tribe of cannibals, what's the reason for going around at night to do something silly? Finally, we had to rescue a blonde young woman whose temptation for the bodies of her same sex predicted rather murky issues. The rescue team, made up of reporter and anthropologist, decides on a plan while being collectively raped. The final rescue is unusual, but we assume that the Indians, having wasted their strength with the blonde, may accept almost anything as divine, especially if a woman devoid of clothes comes out of the water to rescue the blonde. The moral reflection of the end, where the death of many people is resolved with a laconic "it is not our fault". Joe D'Amato was a true teacher in expressing fantasies and exceptional situations in an extraordinary way. There were none like him. He was a craftsman of a film genre who screamed to be revived. His talent will be remembered forever.