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Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977)

Dir: Joe D'Amato

Unlikely Reporter Emanuelle (Laura Gemser) is undercover doing a story on an Asylum.
Whilst there a nurse has her breast bitten off by one of the patients. Hot (in more ways than one) on the trail Emanuelle creeps into the girls' room and discovers her strapped to a bed. She proceeds to lift up the girls' gown and feel her up. Noticing a tattoo on her groin (where else!) she takes a picture (via a camera stuck in a dolls head!) and high tails it back to her Editor.

Grabbing (in more ways than one) a handy Anthropologist named Mark Lester (Gemser's real life Husband Gabriele Tinti) she discovers that the tattoo is from a supposed long extinct Amazon Cannibal tribe.
Professor Lester invites Emanuelle to view some documentary footage of some tribal beheadings and a castration (now here's a guy who knows how to impress a Lady!). The castration effect is actually very good as well until the pubic wig flops down and proceeds to blow around in the wind!

Sniffing a story Emanuelle (after indulging in a bit of groin grinding, with her very open minded or blind, boyfriend, roughly in the same area where the dog in Lucio Fulci's "New York Ripper" would later find a severed hand. Ahh…The romance) and the Prof set off on an expedition to the Amazon, a locale much loved by those delightful Italian gore Directors of course.

Now then, having only two characters (one of which is the heroine) would be no good for the gory deaths the viewer is expecting. So sure enough they meet some other characters including a Nun, Sister Angela (Annamarie Clementi) and a young Woman named Isabelle (Monica Zanchi) and two Indian guides (who are of course also known as 'Cannibal Fodder') who are taking supplies to the local Mission.
Cue more sex between Emanuelle and Mark while a masturbating Isabelle looks on.

After a gentle punt up the river (and a spot of mutual fondling between Isabelle and Emanuelle as a chain smoking Chimp looks on. Hey, don't blame me I'm just reviewing it, I didn't write it!) they bump into a hunter named Donald McKenzie ("Zombie Holocaust's" Donald O' Brian) and are informed that the Mission has been attacked and destroyed by savages.
Donald has also brought along his horny (of course) Wife Maggie (Nieves Navarro using her usual 'Susan Scott' pseudo-name) and hunky Black servant Salvador (Percy Hogan).
But is there more to Donald and his wayward Wife than meets the eye?

While slowing down the main plot yet again by hanging around Donald's camp site, Maggie enjoys a spot of masturbation while Salavador cleans his weapon (ha ha) before ordering him to follow her into the Jungle to test out his firing mechanism, much to her impotent Husbands displeasure (though he recovers enough to have a frustrated peep at the sleeping, semi-naked Isabelle and Sister Angela).

All these soap opera sexual antics eventually lead us to the heart of the matter when the Cannibals show up in the mood for a snack……

There is no denying the ravishing beauty of Gemser, but for most of the films running time her character comes across as nothing more than a manipulative nymph out to forward her own ends.
And very hypocritical with it. After informing her Editor about the events at the Asylum she says of the Nurse "She'll be alright, but she has lost a breast. But she deserved it, her homosexual tendencies were well known, seems she is the one that started abusing the girl".
What would this abuse entail the viewer wonders. Would it be something like what Emanuelle herself did when she stuck her hand between the Woman's legs whilst she lies, mentally disturbed, strapped to a bed?
At least the finale has her risk her life in an attempt to save one of her companions and she at last learns a bit of humility along the way. And her character really needed these scenes to make her in anyway sympathetic in the viewer's eyes.

The other performances are mostly bland with not even hammy old Donald O Brian making much of his role. Though all the Female actors are suitably attractive and nearly always naked. So most, if not all, is definitely forgiven.

The film is also saddled with some worse than average dubbing, especially on a conversation where Emanuelle's voice suddenly stops mid sentence as she eats.

The score by regular 'Black Emanuelle' Composer Nico Fidenco is a bizarre mix of Easy Listening, Electro Jazz, tribal beats and Male and Female vocal effects. It's certainly a very noticeable part of the film, but can get annoying, especially with the frequent uses of some truly dreadful Euro pop warbling by someone called Ulla Linder. The 'Eurovision Song Contest' would have been proud!

The gore effects (seemingly done as a one off by famous exploitation Producer Fabrizo De Angelis of "Bronx Warriors" fame) are suitably nasty and graphic, but hardly any are remotely realistic looking due to the almost studious close up filming of them that shows up the latex skin work.
The same trap Umberto Lenzi fell into with "Cannibal Ferox" but what Ruggero Deodato skilfully avoided in the way he photographed his gore scenes in "Cannibal Holocaust".

One effect in particular, involving half a hanging corpse, is especially bad (and also a wasted opportunity to show some top-notch gore) as it simply consists of an after the event, hysterically bad optical effect.
And of course, given the sex angle of the film, the gore is also sexualised with plenty of real (and latex) groin and breast shots on Female victims.

The sex scenes are typical 70's Euro soft core, but some of the masturbation sequences verge on the 'harder' side of soft core and are certainly stronger than what you would get in your average U.S. Zalman King crap fest.

As usual though D'Amato shows no sense of pacing and the film is Directed without any kind of visual flair.
But whereas in "Anthropophagus" or "Absurd" he had only tedious sequences of walking/sitting around, in between the gore set ups in "Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals" he at least has some sex and skin to fall back on.
Most of the sex may never be that involving, but at least it ensures that there is nearly always something exploitative on screen. Which, in an Exploitation film, is pretty essential.

But it has to be said, despite the films many faults and shortcomings, "Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals" certainly delivers in what it's title promises and contains more than enough exploitation goodies to ultimately satisfy as a simple, trashy bit of extreme entertainment.
And given that it's a very early entry in the 'Italian Gut Muncher', arriving at the same time as Deodato's excellent "Jungle Holocaust" and pre-dating both "Cannibal Holocaust" and "Cannibal Ferox", D'Amato is to be congratulated in sign posting some of the stronger elements that would come to epitomise Italian 'Shock Cinema'.