- Todd Gilchrist, Variety
I first interviewed Severin Films co-founder-CEO, David Gregory, in the summer of 2020 for the release of their highly anticipated Blu-ray boxed set, Al Adamson: The Masterpiece Collection, which featured thirty-one remastered films by the B-movie maverick on fourteen discs with a 126-page book, commentaries, and a wonderful documentary directed by Gregory himself. Included in the set was a vintage one-way ticket for Severin Airlines which, unbeknownst to us at the time, served as a teaser for the jet-setting sexploitation bundle that was yet to come.
The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, with competition almost exclusive to major studio releases, was awarded Best Movie Boxed Set in the 2024 Home Entertainment Media Play Awards. When you stop and think about what that means for the world of genre film, it becomes clear that Severin is boldly going where no other boutique label has gone before - the exhaustive detail and sheer quality of every aspect of this set shines as brightly as the Greek sun in Divine Emanuelle. This landmark collection was produced by award-winning writer/director Kier-La Janisse who (contributing her own beautifully made film here about Laura Gemser, The Reluctant Icon) has been hailed as the brain trust for meticulously conducting a small cineaste symphony resulting in a major home video victory, whether you are a fan of the sexploitation series or not. Slant Magazine labeled the set "irresistible manna from heaven," and Screen Anarchy wrote that "there is no air in there, the thing weighs heavy like a brick." Beyond the initial set was an option to purchase a limited Around the World bundle, which included stunning merchandise like a replica of Emanuelle's camera necklace, passport, vintage photo, a Siam InterContinental Hotel pen (a real filming location which was demolished in 2002), a gorgeously designed magnetic fashion playset, a board game, and a stunning Severin Airlines travel bag to match the aforementioned one-way ticket to bring this beautiful behemoth full circle.
To write about the films included here would be pointless, as some of today's greatest critics and scholars have already contributed to this release with their deep-dive essays (it's not a booklet, as Kier-La pointed out, it's a 356-page tome) and exhaustive commentaries for every disc - even the 40+ hours of bonus features have their own bonus features! Instead, the focus here will be on the making of an award-winning collection by shining a spotlight on the artists who poured their blood, sweat, and tears into creating what many reviewers describe as the release of the year. What follows are conversations with every contributor to the boxed set that I could round up to discuss every last detail that went into creating this marvel of home entertainment. Included is a special focus on a non-canonical musical that made its worldwide debut here, Fanatico... When the Goddess Calls, one of the great treasures to be discovered in Black Emanuelle's box. It surprisingly had a bare-bones disc, which inspired the lengthy discussion below to serve as its own bonus feature. Christmas this year certainly feels like the perfect time to celebrate a film about a self-destructive cult, for no particular reason at all.
David Gregory (Severin Films Co-Founder-CEO, Producer): I had worked on the DVD of Emanuelle in America during my years at Blue Underground. Early on in the life of Severin we licensed six of the Black Emanuelle films to be released across two DVD box sets of three movies and a CD. Those volumes were tactfully titled Black Emanuelle's Box: Volumes 1 and 2. Then a number of years later, the rights to a few of them transferred to StudioCanal in France. We were doing a package deal for several titles with them, so it made sense to include the Black Emanuelle films in that deal: the first Black Emanuelle, which had never been released on disc in the U.S. before, Emanuelle in Bangkok, Emanuelle in America, and Emanuelle Around the World.
Kier-La Janisse started working with us as a producer around this time. I knew she was a fan of Gemser and some of these movies, so I asked if she'd be interested in producing the collection. Around that time, we produced the first of our really comprehensive box sets, the Al Adamson Masterpiece Collection, and not only did it outperform our expectations, but it was also really well received and something we were very proud of in the lengths that we went through to make it thorough. So began our ongoing, self-flagellating quest to outdo ourselves, or at least live up to the bar that we set with that collection. Soon we were neck-deep in folk horror, Andy Milligan, and Bruceploitation movies, and ideas started being thrown around for more ridiculously comprehensive box sets to immerse ourselves in for years to come. As we'd already licensed some Black Emanuelle films, it made sense that we go the distance with it.
One should not underestimate Kier-La's definition of comprehensive. I am an absolute enabler of such ludicrous folly, so it just snowballed from there into a deadly avalanche teetering on the precipice of a huge cliff-edge directly above Severin HQ.
Kier-La Janisse (Creative Director, Special Features Producer): I think it was always intended to be big in terms of including all the films - although there were definitely some like Amore libero that we got last minute, largely because both the rights and film elements had been elusive for so long, but it came together at the zero hour. And many of the Italian extras were a given just because we have Italian contacts who are in touch with all these actors, directors, and crew members from other releases. So, I think what I brought to it was definitely more diversity in the voices on the disc (it's always important to me to have more women commentators), as well as making the book the mammoth thing it is.
I wanted the book, The Black Emanuelle Bible, to stand as an important piece of scholarship. I worked with Luke Insect on the design for it and the packaging and envisioned the moving camera lens on the cover. And of course, all the merchandise! I tried to outdo what we did for the All the Haunts Be Ours box. I'm a vintage airline nerd, so I really pushed the travel angle in the merch. The jet-age aesthetic and the 'girl reporter' theme were the two things I was hanging a lot of my ideas on. The biggest challenge was really our workload among the team - our big ideas really push our small staff to the limit!
Luke, you've partnered with Kier-La several times before - how did you initially come to know her?
Luke Insect (Layout & Design of Box Set/Book): Kier-La and I first got in contact five years ago to ask if I'd be interested in designing the book Warped and Faded: Weird Wednesday and the Birth of the American Genre Film Archive, to which I obviously said yes! From then on in, we started collaboration frequently on Blu-ray packaging and books - The Blood on Satan's Claw, Santa Sangre, and All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, just to name a few. When she introduced me to the project it was a no-brainer, even though I'd never seen any of the Black Emanuelle films!
The bundle is an absolute treasure trove...
David Gregory: Not content with way overextending our workloads on getting the discs, books, and packaging done, we also like to add colossal additional tasks onto our overspilling plates for good measure - and no one likes a tie-in item quite like Kier-La. She was a fan kid when it came to board games and lunch boxes, but, like me, she was bummed that there were only fun items created for more mainstream films and shows like Star Wars or the A-Team. Why not for all of our favorite exploitation films? We already poked this particular temperamental bear with things like plushies of The Sinful Dwarf and Anthropophagus, or jewelry for The Devil's Rain, so it was only natural we'd do the same for Black Emanuelle.
I greenlit every wild idea Kier-La sent my way because they were all great ideas and all items I wanted to exist and have on my shelves, but it was only when I saw the designs that I realized just what works of art these items would be. I'm very proud they exist. We did have to put something of a cap on future ideas based on how long it took to produce some items and how much they cost to ship, these were things that I did not take into consideration among the giddy elation of the proposals. My favorite item has to be the travel bag. A stunning design that is coveted not only by hardcore exploitation movie fans, but also by 'normals' because it's so damn stylish.
Kier-La Janisse: I envisioned and art-directed the board game, the illustrations for the board and cover were done by Drazen Kozjan, and the layout was done by David Levine with some help from Cindy Soohoo, who both work regularly with Severin's production manager, Amy Searles. Amy was the one who found the manufacturer and dealt with the files once we got to that stage.
Drazen Kozjan (Illustration): Kier-La's House of Psychotic Women is one of my favorite film books, and it was a joy to work with her. I was working with her on another Severin project, and she asked me if I would be interested in working on the Sensual World set, but the style was going to be different than what I was working on. I've worked in animation design and storyboarding for years, so I'm used to working on different types of things. Everything she wanted for the set, such as paper dolls, sounded great to me! I had seen maybe a handful of the movies over the years, and not for a long time, so it was great to visit and revisit the films.
Kier-La Janisse: I used to collect vintage boardgames but had to give it up and get rid of a lot of them because I was moving so often that they were getting wrecked. I kept all of my favorite and most valuable ones (which unfortunately UPS lost in a shipment and now I barely have any.) I'm a big fan of the visual design of games. I don't really care for complicated games, for me it's all about the design and the pieces and having a beautiful object that is also functional and social.
It's definitely a massive amount of work, but I tend to use existing games as the template for the actual gameplay. The basic design of the game - the general concept as well as the spiral going into the center - was inspired by the Victorian boardgame 'Round the World with Nellie Bly - she was a famous stunt journalist in the late 19th century and I was deliberately creating a lineage between her, the Black Emanuelle character, the history of female reporters, and the often-dangerous situations they have put themselves in for a story that, in many cases, exposes social injustice or high-level corruption. To me, that's a really important appeal of this whole project.
The lightning bolts and stars were inspired by the game Bonkers, which I used to love as a kid. I had to come up with a location image for all the squares, a command (like move ahead two or miss a turn), and in-jokes that you would get if you had watched the films. Most of those I thought up myself, but Amanda Reyes (who was my assistant all through that project and a formidable scholar in her own right) also made up some of the jokes along with helping me go through the films and selecting images for the squares. She did a lot of the work isolating the different countries Emanuelle visits, which was integral to creating the passport that came with the bundle.
Drazen Kozjan: Kier-La had a layout for the game with photos and a color palette. Initially we talked about the game itself having more line work drawings of scenes from the movies, but that proved to be too busy. Some of those elements ended up on the box cover art in an altered form.
Working on the magnetic dolls and outfits was a blast. While I was working on those, I sent Kier-La a finished illustration of Emanuelle peeking through the photo studio door as a separate element and she loved it. She suggested doing the whole studio as a playset since it was initially going to be just the doll. I was overjoyed to take a crack at doing that. I would love to have done more outfits - I did suggest a German Shepard figure, but that went down the Love Camp pit.
Kier-La Janisse: Once we thought we had a functional gameboard, we tested it virtually. Amanda's husband, David Cohen, is a computer whiz and created a way for us to have a shared screen and move the pieces around virtually to time out how long it would take to play. They both also game-tested an earlier Jean Rollin board game I made back in 2017. This is the fifth board game I've made. I actually made a different board game for Severin earlier than Around the World, but the box set it's for kept getting delayed, so Black Emanuelle beat it to production!
Was there anything that didn't make the cut?
Kier-La Janisse: There was absolutely nothing more I'd hoped to include, Severin let me make everything I could have dreamed of!
I love the Siam InterContinental Hotel pen!
Kier-La Janisse: The pen was just the hotel's logo and tagline, so not much design work on our part. It was modeled after a real vintage pen from the hotel! I figured it would be fun to include since we see her signing into the hotel in Emanuelle in Bangkok, and we based which direction the writing faced on whether she was right or left-handed!
Whose idea was the camera necklace?
Kier-La Janisse: The necklace was probably my idea, but it was Amy who made it happen. I sent her pictures of it, but she did everything else! She found the metalworkers and got a prototype made. She's as nitpicky as me, so she took charge of that and created a beautiful replica.
Amy, how do you go about finding the manufacturers?
Amy Searles (Production Manager): I won't be spilling my hard-won trade secrets here! But I will say that the most rewarding part of the merch creation process can also be the most problematic. I personally love how diverse some of Severin's title-specific merchandise has been recently. As a horror fan, I already have drawers full of black tees and stickers, so I find it very refreshing to move away from these standard offerings (not that there's anything wrong with them). To pursue these brand-new avenues means working with untested vendors. As much due diligence as I try to do before engaging a new vendor, there are no guarantees.
On the whole, we've actually been quite lucky, but there have been notable exceptions, like the manufacturer of the Black Emanuelle magnetic dolls. That manufacturer was unpredictable, unreasonably slow and unresponsive, but they had us over the barrel because I wasn't able to source many companies that could create die-cut magnetic dolls with matching magnetic playsets! It wasn't like the Siam InterContinental Hotel pen that we could have made with any number of vendors. At the end of the day, I hope customers remember an impressive product and not the amount of time they had to wait to receive it, but I know that's probably wishful thinking on my part!
How would you describe your role as Production Manager?
Amy Searles: Kier-La recommended me for the position at Severin. She knew I had a passion for the types of films that Severin releases and knew that I had relevant home entertainment experience after I did a little work with her on her documentary, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched.
Although I only served as Production Manager on The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle (Kier-La creative directed the boxed set completely), I am also Creative Director at Severin. This means that I work to source the artwork and stills for our various releases and work with graphic designers to create packaging, merchandise, and social graphics. The Production Manager aspect weaves the administrative in with the creative. For example, while I might art direct a Blu-ray wrap, I also ensure that the wrap gets printed, shipped to the appropriate replication facility, and that the facility then sends completed units to our distributor.
When was this idea first proposed?
Amy Searles: Kier-La and David were in the trenches with this project long before I was involved. They worked to source and license the films. The sheer number of films was already daunting, but something that not everyone may be aware of is that most film licenses are for a specified period of time. The process of ensuring that all of the films were available, restored, and ready for release within a reasonable licensing period (that wasn't likely to promptly expire) required some three-dimensional chess that I'm glad I didn't have to be a part of!
Amanda, how did you become involved with the project?
Amanda Reyes (Research, Copy Editing, Transcription): I was hired on as Kier-La's assistant while she was knee-deep in the Black Emanuelle box set and she threw me into the mix right away. I have to be honest, Kier-La did all the heavy lifting. I was there to proofread, provide transcription and copy edits, and do a little research here and there, as well as giving her some space to bounce off ideas. I didn't really experience much in the way of challenges because Kier-La had a really clear vision of what she wanted and was great at laying out her expectations regarding the work I'd be doing. I was very lucky because it was an enormous project, but I had all the guidance you could want.
Some of the content on the board game is laugh-out-loud funny...
Amanda Reyes: Putting together the board game was an absolute blast! As I have said, Kier-La really has control over her ideas and vision, so she knew basically what she wanted and needed. For my part, I got to do the fun stuff. I found some images for the board and helped to create those jokey squares. It was too much fun, and working on that part of the project was a highlight for me.
It's mind-blowing how much work went into it...
Amanda Reyes: Yeah, it was incredibly ambitious, particularly because Kier-La wanted to make sure the release invited different perspectives to the films and to Gemser. Again, I was just there to help facilitate her strong vision, and to sometimes be a sounding board while she thought out loud about different aspects of the release. It was a lot of fun, and I got a great view into the complex and sometimes thankless role of a Blu-ray producer.
"The Reluctant Icon" is such a beautiful tribute. Do you remember what first made you a fan of Laura Gemser, and was this documentary always something you saw in your mind for the set?
Kier-La Janisse: Thank you! I've been a fan since I was a teen, really, when I saw my first Black Emanuelle films. I knew I wanted to do something special for her, although I definitely didn't intend to narrate it myself as a video essay. Originally, it was going to be an interview with Manlio Gomarasca, who had done the longest interview with her, but then I kept feeling like I didn't want it to be a talking head piece, I wanted it to be something that reflected her ethereal nature a bit more.
I started working with the editor, Stephen Broomer, and animators, Leslie Supnet (who did all her bits with transparencies on an overhead projector) and Ashley Thorpe (who did the rotoscope stuff - which I'd asked him to model on this great short film called Tussilago I saw years ago), and I wrote a script incorporating bits from Manlio's interview and supplementing it with other context that was important to me. I then read the narration as a scratch track for the editor and animators to work with, but I always intended to hire someone more famous to narrate it. But then every time I wanted a small edit, we had such a hard time re-synching the narration that I just thought there's no way we're going to get the edits to match up if I have a whole new narration put over this. I should have gotten the narrator to record and then they animate to that, but it was a chicken and egg thing. I felt I needed to show them the film to get them to agree to do the narration. Eventually we were short on time, so I just kept my own voice in as the narration to avoid having to re-edit the whole thing to match the timing of a new narration.
Ashley, how did you become involved with Kier-La?
Ashley Thorpe (Animator): I believe she may have asked around for animators to work on the project, and Rob Nevitt of Celluloid Screams suggested me on Facebook. I knew from that first Zoom chat with Kier-La that this was going to be an amazing film. She is so smart, and she absolutely astonished me with her encyclopedic knowledge of British television from the 60s and 70s. As with Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, Kier-La had a very clear visual idea of how she wanted the animated sequences to look rather than vagaries, pointing me towards particular television sequences that she wanted to reference or evoke. That may sound like I was given a reduced limiting palette, but I was given enormous freedom to work within and around those perimeters. It was a fantastic project to work on and I'm very proud of what I created with her.
The visual idea of The Reluctant Icon was a marriage of vintage retro halftone and period-accurate textures with big bold colors. We initially discussed how those elements would interact, and how the colors and textures would sit with the rotoscoped clips from the films. I spent a lot of time looking at seventies wallpaper patterns, which was very nostalgic. The environments were built in Photoshop, and then it was all assembled in After Effects. I would rotoscope certain iconic moments from the films, then create background environments using the wallpaper textures as environmental elements. I particularly love the wave-pattern wallpaper and how it becomes the water that Laura rises from in the Last Cannibals clip. The stylistic direction was all Kier-La, really. She pointed me in the right direction, and I would then go off and play with the elements to see what sang when placed together.
What inspired you to become an animator?
Ashley Thorpe: I was really only good at art and English in school, so I spent years trying to figure out what on earth I was going to do. I studied film and fine art at university and discovered animation - that was it, I was instantly in its grip. I had been a fan of everyone from Ray Harryhausen to Len Lye, but never had access to anything that would allow me to do anything. It is a discipline that has no boundaries, you are not limited by anything other than your imagination. It's still the reason that I love it so much and why I teach animation workshops to children. It opens up the world.
What were your first encounters with a Black Emanuelle film?
David Gregory: It was Emanuell in America when I was working at Blue Underground, so I was quite late to the party. It was an excellent trial-by-fire because it was supposed to be an Anchor Bay title, but Bill Lustig had us make a clip reel of the Pedro the horse and snuff scene to send to their head office, thereby ensuring that they canceled their plans to release it and immediately organized a sub-license to Blue Underground without further negotiation.
Luke Insect: This set was my first introduction, and I think I watched all of the screeners that Kier-La sent over within a week! It's fair to say that I lived, breathed, and dreamed Black Emanuelle for quite a while, and I fell in love with Laura Gemser. I think the one that sticks out to me in that week is Emanuelle in America. After watching them all non-stop and becoming a bit delirious, they started merging into one another, but that one hit on a different level of perversity, I think, and sticks in my memory.
Ashley Thorpe: A group of friends in my twenties at university were binge-watching all of the banned cannibal movies from pirated VHS tapes when Last Cannibals popped up. I remember being particularly struck by Laura Gemser's astonishing beauty, and the strange marriage of eroticism and horror the film possessed. It was a real curiosity for me at the time.
Andrew Furtado (Post-Production Supervisor): I didn't see one until I worked for Severin. We were working on Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals when my girlfriend - now wife - walked into the office and said, "You guys are doing an Emanuelle film?" She knew who Black Emanuelle was before I did! I thought it was pretty great, overall. It was really entertaining and the right amounts of sexy, sleazy, and horror that I look for in this kind of movie.
Joe Rubin (Color and Restoration, Founder of Vinegar Syndrome,): I definitely don't remember the first Black Emanuelle that I saw, but more than likely it was Emanuelle in America. I've never been in love with the franchise - to the extent that it even is a franchise - it is very uneven, and I wouldn't single it out as anything particularly important to me. The D'Amato films are far and away the best of them, they are the most memorable and most transgressive.
Samm Deighan (Commentator, Historian): I am struggling to remember which one I saw first, but I want to say it was Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals - which was a totally bonkers film that made me want to watch the others in the series. I love Joe D'Amato and have a real soft spot for Italian cannibal films, so I knew going in that I was probably going to enjoy it. I think it represents the peak of Italian exploitation movies in a lot of ways, in terms of how it is often tasteless or even outright offensive and is very aware of the audience it is attempting to target.
Jason Duron (Director of E-Commerce and Digital Marketing): My parents moved us to a town outside of Baltimore when I was sixteen. God was smiling down at me because she put an incredible video store less than a hundred feet away. This place had a VHS clamshell of Trap Them and Kill Them (a.k.a. Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals). My younger self thought I had seen the hardest movie ever, and I was stunned by this beautiful woman named Laura Gemser. Unfortunately, we didn't have the internet, and Fangoria wasn't spotlighting stuff like this, so I had no idea that a Black Emmanuelle cinematic universe existed for many years, which made Trap Them and Kill Them all the more notorious to me.
Amanda Reyes: I wasn't that familiar with the franchise when I was hired on, although I was aware of the films and always thought Laura Gemser was an interesting person and actress. After watching the films and helping Kier-La with some of the extras, I really grew to love Laura and the movies. That was the greatest joy of that project.
Marc Morris (Research Assistance): Titles I would have seen around the early 80s on UK video were Mondo Erotico, Velluto nero, Emanuelle: Queen of Sados, and Eva Nera. When I realized most of these had been censored, I tracked down unedited versions and was amazed at how much was missing from the UK releases. In fact, I named my website Mondo Erotico.
Francesco Massaccesi (Translations): I believe it was Emanuelle in America in a heavily censored television cut. I watched it with the lack of curiosity with which a young boy might absentmindedly watch a movie on a hot summer night! In the 1990s, during my childhood, cult and genre cinema was shown on television late at night, so there was always a forbidden feeling about staying up late and furtively watching certain films. Of course, I could often happen to stumble upon said movies at the video store - and in my town there were at least six or seven of those. The covers, descriptions, and a few pictures often made for great imagination trips.
Jennifer Moorman (Essayist): I think Violence in a Woman's Prison was my first. I felt a mixture of horror, disgust, pleasure, and excitement... which - as a horror fan - is an emotional space I tend to enjoy occupying. As I suggest in the essay, I think the film itself is deeply ambivalent and so is my reaction to it, but ultimately, I do find it to be complex and subversive in ways that exploitation cinema is rarely given credit for.
Erin Wiegan (Essayist): For quite a long time I was only familiar with the film I wrote about, Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals. To be honest, I never really got into the Emanuelle movies as a genre. My entry point was zombie and cannibal films, and more broadly, European horror of that period.
Mark Raskin (Audio Restoration): Sadly, I do not remember - though I was a child of the Cinemax 80s, which undoubtedly introduced me to Ms. Gemser after hours on some young Friday night...
Sebastian del Castillo (Color and Restoration): I don't remember the first one I saw, but I do remember when I was a kid that Cinemax would play the Black Emanuelle films late at night. I would secretly watch them hoping my mom wouldn't come upstairs and catch me. I thought they were so exotic and stylish. So, needless to say it was a real treat to work on them as an adult for an incredible box set release, a full circle kind of thing.
Lindsay Hallam (Commentator): The first Black Emanuelle film from 1975, and the main thing that struck me about it was Laura Gemser! She manages to add, dare I say, a touch of class to everything she does, no matter how sexual or extreme. It all seems to come very naturally to her, she never seems to lose her strength or control, no matter what happens to her.
Jesus Teran (Quality Control): It was more than likely Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals. My dad would rent VHS tapes all the time, and I remember this being at one of the video stores we'd go. I do remember first seeing Laura Gemser on Murder Obsession in the mid-80s, though.
Blake Monahan (Quality Control): Cinemax had a decent rotation in the late 80s of European softcore films as part of their After Dark series. Emanuelle in Bangkok was a film they showed quite frequently, so Black Emanuelle was on my radar early on. It would be another decade, though, before I discovered Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals. That's the film that really set me down the path to fandom.
John Buell (Disc Authoring): I think my first was Sister Emanuelle, only because disc five was the first disc I worked on. I quite enjoyed it and knew that I was in for a good time for the rest of the set!
Claudio Fuiano (Production Consultant): The first I saw was Emanuelle Nera in 1975 and the impression left on me was the sensuality of the gorgeous Miss Gemser, the exotic locations, and of course the superb score by my very dear friend, the late Maestro Nico Fidenco.
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| (Concept art for magnetic playset by Drazen Kozjan) |
Claudio, when did you first start collaborating with Severin and how did you become involved with Black Emanuelle?
Claudio Fuiano: David and I share a great friendship based on a mutual respect and esteem. We met each other for the first time here in Rome, my city, several years ago. In recent years we have been happily collaborating on Blu-ray and 4K projects, coupling movies with a CD containing the movie's score - a very cool combo project that fascinates me every time.
This super box set was of course brilliantly produced by Kier-La Janisse, with whom I was in close contact with during the development of this great project. My job was to select the best Fidenco tracks from the Beat Records archive, which was assembled by Enrico De Gemini. I love them all.
Your nickname is "Mister Soundtrack"...
Claudio Fuiano: I do not remember who created it, but that nickname makes me smile. My thirty-three-year-long career started like a game, collecting soundtracks since I was a kid. "Rescuing, Restoring, Preserving," these three words are always in my heart and mind on every CD or vinyl project. I use original recording master tapes, DAT tapes, or a vinyl source when the master tapes are lost in space.
How did you get started as a Research Assistant, Marc?
Marc Morris: I have known David and Carl since the late 1980s when I would meet up with them at the many Shock Around the Clock events at the Scala cinema in London. I've been collecting Euro-cult and weird movies on VHS and Betamax since then, and we would all exchange tapes. Through tape collecting, I managed to get a job in Soho working for Redemption Films in the 90s.
John, how would you describe the job of disc authoring, and what was your journey to Severin?
John Buell: I'd say it is the perfect combination of left brain and right brain skill. Getting to use your creativity to design the menus, and then math and computer science to do the compression and authoring. It requires a lot of esoteric knowledge that no normal human should worry themselves with. I did all of the menu design, authoring, and encoding for the set. I worked tirelessly with Andrew Furtado as well as the quality control department to get all of the discs done, the biggest feat to date. I'm really proud with how simple, yet elegant, they turned out!
I have a background in computer engineering and worked for Intel for ten years. When I left the field to pursue more artistic endeavors, it just made perfect sense to do DVD and Blu-ray authoring/encoding! A collaborator friend of mine moved down to L.A. from Portland to work for Severin and connected me with David Gregory and company to help with their authoring. I eventually founded a company called Vital Passenger and have since authored over a thousand discs for dozens of clients.
Samm - your track for Black Cobra Woman, like all of your commentaries, is truly wonderful and so insightful...
Samm Deighan: My commentaries tend to be a blend of historical and cultural analysis, production details, and scene-specific analysis, and I always have a good time talking about seventies exploitation films. With Black Cobra Woman, the real challenge was that I knew it would be included in a box set and there's always a struggle about what information to exclude; it's very hard to have separate critics and historians talking about films in the same subgenre - or even moreso made by the same director, cast, and crew - without a lot of information overlapping. I mostly tried to focus on my love for the film and D'Amato himself and break down how it fits into the larger series.
Amanda - your commentary with Erik Threlfall on "Looking Good with Laura Gemser" had me placing an order for Shelly McKenzie's "Getting Physical: The Rise of Fitness Culture in America." Did you attempt to reach out to anyone involved in making it?
Amanda Reyes: The commentary for Looking Good was so much fun to work on! It was so funny because that workout video is an extra, so the extra got an extra! I was so happy Erik could do it with me, because he's such a fan of 1980s popular culture, I knew he'd be a great partner and a lot of fun to work with.
In terms of research, no, I did not reach out to anyone - although I considered Corliss Randall because she's amazing! Mostly Erik and I just watched some other celebrity workout videos, as well as some movies like Perfect, and we read old articles from the eighties that centered on exercise. Kier-La actually recommended the book Getting Physical and it's an incredible read. I think she originally considered me for the commentary because I'm a bit of a gym rat, but that book really enhanced my understanding of the history and culture of exercise. The approach, of course, wasn't meant to be very serious, and we just thought, "let's have fun with this." And we did!
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| (Concept art for board game by Drazen Kozjan) |
Lindsay, your commentary states that Sister Emanuelle opens with one of the most shocking images in the series...
Lindsay Hallam: My statement is a bit of a joke, as the first image is of Emanuelle in a nun's habit! It is an image that seems to go against everything we have seen of her in every other film.
Sister Emanuelle is the first commentary I recorded solo. Previously I had recorded two commentaries with Kat Ellinger and Miranda Corcoran, and Kat really guided us through those. The prospect of speaking by myself for ninety minutes was very daunting. Kier-La asked me to do the commentary as I had recently worked with her on Severin's Nasty Habits box set where I wrote and edited a video essay, so I already had some knowledge of nunsploitation.
What is your process for creating a commentary?
Samm Deighan: At this point, I've done so many commentaries that I honestly don't know how to answer this question in a concise way! Sometimes the challenges are environmental. My New York City apartment can get pretty loud and recording when you have COVID when there's a hard deadline is absolutely brutal! Sometimes the issue is needing to do a full commentary for a longer film, which is taxing when you're working under tight deadlines. Maybe the biggest challenge is that researching, preparing, and recording a commentary takes a lot of time, and most companies don't actually pay very well. Maybe there are one or two individuals out there who are an exception to this rule, but it is impossible to make a full-time living recording commentaries, so it is often a challenge to have to juggle them around other work.
Lindsay Hallam: I am an academic, so for me the research is a huge part of the process. I tried to track down what had been written so far about the series in academic work such as books and journals, finding only a few articles. I also did some searches online and in magazine archives, but again there wasn't much. I decided to then focus more on discussion and my own analysis of the film. I also explored aspects such as the Italian film industry at the time and audiences, what was happening in Italy at the time in terms of political and social changes, how the film related to other key nunsploitation films, and how the film and the series in general relates to my previous work on the philosophy of the Marquis de Sade. I then identified important scenes in the film that I wanted to discuss in more detail. Further research was done through watching more Black Emanuelle films, as well as other films by the director Giuseppe Vari, to see how the film sat within his wider filmography.
I then started writing a document that became my "script", where I tried to plot out the order of the topics that I would cover in the commentary. Given this was my first commentary, I started writing it out almost word for word, but then I soon realized if I did that it would take me forever! There are parts where I had bullet points of what I wanted to discuss, so I wasn't just reading straight off the document. The amount of research involved takes a lot of time and then writing it all up. I usually record my commentaries twice, the first time just to get a sense of the order and to see if I have too much or too little (it's usually too much, and then I edit stuff out). The biggest challenge is nerves and trying not to get tongue-tied and lost as I am talking!
What first inspired you to write about film?
Lindsay Hallam: I think it was the fact that Kier-La trusted me to be able to do the commentary, and also my background in researching nunsploitation previously, that gave me the confidence to be able to write and speak about this film specifically. I also have written and taught about the Italian film industry during this period and the genre films that were being made (although I have written more about Italian horror cinema of this period), so I knew the historical context of where the film comes from.
Amanda Reyes: I don't know that I can answer that question! I started writing about movies so many years ago, in the very early 2000s. It was for an old website dedicated to horror, they were looking for contributors and I submitted a few reviews. Television came later when I was asked to write for a fanzine. I ended up researching a lot of TV movies for the article and was reminded how much I love them, so I split my time between big and small screen horror and still do today. I honestly can't say what the exact inspiration was, except I loved movies and want to share that love.
Samm Deighan: The short version: masochism. The longer version: I started writing from a pretty early age and basically can't live without it, but it took a while to find a subject that I really loved exploring consistently. In my teens, I wrote everything from poetry to fiction to creative nonfiction and journals. I was an English major, so I wrote a lot of academic essays and fell in love with that, which only expanded when I went to grad school. When I started writing regularly about film, I think it was so exciting because I take more naturally to nonfiction and, in my opinion, really good film writing requires you to have a wide base of cultural and historical knowledge, so I just kind of became obsessed from there.
Francesco Massaccesi: I started as a kid writing for movie and video game magazines and websites near the end of the nineties. Being only fourteen years old, I initially got paid in free movies, games, or gadgets. It took me a few years to start seeing some money. I went through a few years of uncertainty, but more or less after college I got into the film, comic book, and literature fields on a permanent basis. Choosing this kind of work was a very natural process, I couldn't do anything else.
How did you become involved with translating?
Francesco Massaccesi: Writing is a waiting business, even when you've already signed the contracts and agreements, and I thought that translating and adapting films would be a fair compromise between doing something profitable during waiting spells while still working on something that I enjoy. My first job for Severin was for Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals back in 2018. Since then, I have worked on dozens of titles for them, including featurettes. I also wrote the comic book adaptations for two of their releases, The Theatre Bizarre and Mardi Gras Massacre.
I always try to make the transition from Italian to English as faithful and harmonious as possible. A lot of time, however, you have to condense certain phrases because they may contain multiple repetitions of the same words that would break the pace of the translation. On the other hand, when I have to translate slang phrases, I always try to find a form that comes as close to Italian as possible. For example, I used cockney slang to translate the heavy Romanesque lingo used by Tomas Milian in Brothers Till We Die for 88 Films and Free Hand for a Tough Cop for Fractured Visions. I wrote essays for both of those as well.
Jennifer Moorman: I was hooked after my first film class as an undergrad! I had wanted to be a professor from a young age, but until that point had been studying English literature. I think it was specifically a screening of The Thin Blue Line that lured me away from literature and toward film studies, and I subsequently ended up getting my PhD in Cinema and Media Studies at UCLA.
The film itself blew me away, but I was particularly inspired by its real-world impact. Publicity around the film led to the case against the subject (Randall Adams) getting overturned, and ultimately his release from prison. Beyond those specific consequences, the film encourages viewers to question the carceral state, the ways that film and other media can distort and misrepresent reality, and the very idea of "reality" (as objective truth) itself. So, it got me thinking about the power of media more broadly, and the ways that it influences our understandings of ourselves, each other, the institutions that govern our lives, and the systems we inhabit. As a police and prison abolitionist, I think the subject matter of that film held particular appeal for me, and that's also true of the Black Emanuelle women's prison films, of course.
How did you become involved with Severin's release with the writing about the prison films, and what was your creative process?
Jennifer Moorman: Kier-La, the project's brilliant creative director, reached out and invited me to contribute in some way. I proposed this topic for the book's essay and she was enthusiastic about it. I watched each of the films, taking copious notes, and then took some time to reflect. From there my writing process tends to be fairly organic. As tends to happen when I'm passionate about a topic, in this case the ideas simply flowed. I took some time to revise and sent it off to her.
The Black Emanuelle Bible mentions your completing a book manuscript, "The Softer Side of Hardcore"...
Jennifer Moorman: This book builds off of my PhD dissertation, where I begin from the question, what happens when women do the looking in a genre defined by a male gaze? Examining women's creative contributions to various production cultures and pornographic subgenres, I argue that pornography - even in its mainstream, seemingly apolitical incarnations - opens up a space for women's authorship, sexual expression, and even overtly feminist praxis, and demonstrates the ways in which the porn industry, somewhat counterintuitively, can provide more opportunities for women to have creative control than those offered within mainstream media.
Readers may be familiar with the idea that women's bodies constitute pornography's primary form of currency, but The Softer Side of Hardcore offers and contextualizes the surprising insight that this phenomenon has also enabled women to direct and produce at rates that far surpass those of Hollywood. These women filmmakers describe a variety of strategies that they use either as a direct means of political action or to exert subtler and more personal forms of agency, in the creation of sexually explicit cinema. In meaningful ways, though to varying degrees, they seek to revise male-directed, masculinist visions of women's sexuality.
To quote Shine Louise Houston, one of the filmmakers I interviewed for this project, pornography is a "place where money, sex, media, and ethics converge." It is that very convergence that can make discussions of the adult video industry, and particularly its gender politics, so polarizing, but at the same time, such an important object of study. In locating the convergence of money, sex, media, and ethics within the specific structures, texts, and individuals that make up a complex and variegated industry, with a focus on generated creative labor, my project advances a nuanced picture of a media form that is frequently oversimplified in both academic and popular discourse.
What advice do you have for those pursuing work as writers?
Jennifer Moorman: I don't think I have any practical advice with regard to finding work (as I don't have any experience with making a living as a writer per se), but I do have one notable tip for the writing process. I mentioned that the ideas for this project flowed, and it happened to be a relatively painless experience. But that's not always the case. Some days I simply can't get my brain to focus on writing. For anyone who is trying to complete a project, whether it's a shorter piece, or especially for a longer book or dissertation-type project, I highly recommend the Pomodoro Technique.
You start by deciding on an amount of time, and it should be shorter than feels intuitive. I tend to do thirty minutes. And then you decide which days you're going to write - maybe every weekday or maybe certain days. And then on those days at some point you commit to sitting down to write. Each day you set the timer, and you do nothing but write (or at least attempt to) for those thirty minutes (or whatever length you've chosen.) Some days you'll get into a groove, and you should keep writing for as long as you're able to after the timer goes off - maybe for several hours. On other days, it'll be like pulling teeth and maybe at the end you have ten or even zero new words on the page. And here's the key - on those days when you're experiencing blockage, you have to give yourself permission to walk away, safe in the knowledge that it will all balance out because on some other days you'll write for hours.
It really works, as long as you can give yourself that permission on those 'bad' writing days and then just move on without feeling guilt and hopefully rest or use the day for something else that would be productive in a different way or bring you joy. And as long as you do actually have some days where you're able to keep writing, I suppose. But truly, this is how I managed to write essentially my entire 400-page PhD dissertation in about six months.
Erin, do you remember when you first fell in love with writing?
Erin Wiegand: I've always had a passion for film, but for a very long time it was always something on the periphery of my life; I started running a weekly film night for friends in my early twenties, putting together little themed programs for each month and occasionally writing about them on a blog. I also wrote capsule film reviews for a zine I worked on called LiP, but it was never something I took too seriously. I then started a horror film theory study group with a few friends, reading classics like Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, and decided to pursue an MA in film studies part time. It was at that point I decided to go for a PhD and managed to get into a funded program - but even then, I knew I'd eventually have to go back to working a day job.
You had previously written on Italian cannibal films for the book "What's Eating You?: Food and Horror On Screen" in 2017...
Erin Wiegand: The Italian cannibal films interest stemmed from my MA research; the piece in What's Eating You was a reworked version of my master's thesis. I think I ended up publishing that simply because I saw a Call for Papers for the collection and submitted it. I then got involved with the Black Emanuelle release because Kier-La had found that chapter and asked me to write something similar about Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals to help situate it in the broader context of the cannibal genre and expand upon its general themes and why they're important. Sometimes, one bit of research can snowball like this - I never intended to 'specialize' in cannibal horror, but once you start digging, the more you end up having to say about a film, genre, or bit of history.
What was your creative process with "Man, Too, Can Be Hunted"? Also, having previously written about mondo, had you already seen the mondo movies in this set?
Erin Wiegan: It was a tough one to write as I was also just finishing my PhD at that time, so it was kind of a blur! I do remember being really unhappy with the first draft, and Kier-La was very patient and supportive, giving me some crucial editorial nudges to help find my direction with it.
In terms of mondo movies, I think there's far too much I'd want to say! I'm currently writing a book on mondo (based on my PhD thesis) and have a second one in the works on 'marriage manuals' and sex documentaries, including the mondo Emanuelle films in the box set. There are so many of these educational or documentary-framed erotic films from the late sixties and early seventies - I'm aware of at least sixty just between 1968-1972 - and I really hope that some more of them can get a proper release like Severin has done with the Emanuelle films, as I think they've really been overlooked as a crucial part of the history of theatrically exhibited sex films, overshadowed by the narrative feature films of the 'Golden Age' of porn.
Jesus and Blake, tell me about your work in Quality Control...
Jesus Teran: I had a distribution label named Slasher Video and met a friend through that who eventually became one of the main personnel in the retail area at Severin - I went in to help him out and never left. That was five years ago.
Black Emanuelle was a long process. I was originally sent files to work on subtitles and quality control for a few films about a year before the set was announced. I make sure the discs properly function, update and create subtitles, and verify navigation. The best is when we have to figure out what some of the actors are saying in alternate languages because they don't make sense - which is usually the case with Jess Franco titles, too.
Blake Monahan: In the early 2000s, I was programming a monthly film series called Mondo Movie Night. We booked 35mm prints for revival screenings and brought in directors like Bill Lustig for a few events. I used the traction from that experience to start working at Troma as the head of acquisitions and PR director. It was during my time there that I became involved in producing DVD bonus features. Our team was very small, so we all wore many hats, and quality control was one of the responsibilities we handled alongside our other tasks.
After leaving Troma, I worked on two films (which were never released) and directed a few music videos. I sort of checked out of the industry for a while after that, but the pandemic changed everything. I started watching a ton of films again, which rekindled my interest in collecting discs. Severin was already on my radar, as I'm a big Jess Franco fan. Around the time of Blood for Dracula, I happened to be listening to the Severin Films Podcast where Andrew mentioned how many times he had to watch the disc for QC. He jokingly invited any fans who wanted to help with QC to reach out.
A few weeks later, I did just that, and I've been helping with their QC ever since. It's coming up on three years now. During this time, I've thankfully grown as a QC tech. In addition to my work with Severin, I've been lucky to assist on projects for Arrow Video, Fun City Editions, and several other small labels as well. I absolutely love this work.
There are many different stages involved. Sometimes we review the film before it's authored onto disc to identify restoration errors or edit subtitles. Testing the functionality of the disc itself also requires considerable effort. Projects like the BLEM box tend to be the most labor-intensive, as they contain multiple discs with various films, audio tracks, and extras. These projects can take several hours or even days to complete.
How did you end up working on so many Severin titles, Mark?
Mark Raskin: David Gregory and I met at school - 1991, I think - and have worked closely ever since. After many successes together, it is truly a gift to have a co-pilot in the industry.
What originally inspired you to pursue music, sound design, and audio restoration as a career?
Mark Raskin: Sound and music were always my thing, back to very early childhood, recording television shows and creature double-features onto cassette from the television speaker. Any hi-fi equipment I could get my hands on was a gold mine, as was the radio with living in broadcast range of New York City, as well as the detailed quietness of the large woods behind our house.
Using headphones through the microphone jacks, home-brewed Scotch tape cassette editing, layering sounds via multiple playback machines, and recording whatever that sound was going to be. All facets of sound, playback, and recording fascinated me. Growing up, I would spend hours upon hours walking through the woods, listening to tapes, memorizing sound combinations and sources. In short, there was no other direction I could have reasonably assumed.
What is the process and biggest challenge of an audio restoration this size?
Mark Raskin: Organization, compartmentalizing, and flexible focus patterns. Biggest challenge? The source material conditions are truly a crap shoot, so try not to be shocked, no matter what you find.
Jason, how did you start in E-Commerce and what led you to Severin?
Jason Duron: I studied Technical and Creative Writing in school and got a job right out of college doing technical writing for the Walmart Corporation, I did that until I moved to Phoenix and wound up doing warehouse management. I was already friends with David, and we would see each other and talk for long stretches every chance we got. We even had competing tables across from each other (I ran tables for Full Moon once upon a time). One day, David reaches out and asks about my computer knowledge and if I was interested in filling in for a couple of roles in the company. I felt like that fan at the front row of a concert when the singer pulls them up onto the stage to join them for a song.
From about 2018 on, David was very trusting in my ability to market the brand. I ran the infamous YouTube channel, coordinated newsletters, came up with the bulk of merchandise ideas, and built our once tiny Instagram account into our most popular (and profitable) social media account. I was also in charge of creating the listings because of my training in SEO and internet marketing. One of my last projects was revamping 300+ listings, including vital keywords in search functionality, disc specs and special feature breakdowns, more salacious and graphic stills - basically anything I could think of to make everything pop.
What did your role in Digital Marketing look like on this project?
Jason Duron: This set was a work in progress for years. When it was originally going to be a smaller set of five or six films, I was already prepping the merchandise, but things went dark for some time due to our audience tripling over the next few years, which translated to bigger and better releases that required all of our attention, especially since our roster was still just a handful of people filling dozens of roles each.
By the time Kier-La Janisse joined and helped us release All the Haunts Be Ours, we had amassed many more Black Emmanuelle films and the entire project was handed over to her. What Kier-La did with this entire project is nothing short of spectacular. Wanting to ensure this release was a success, I hyper-focused on the listings, compiling dozens of stills and clip materials for Instagram and the newsletter. I was crushed when we lost the YouTube page - I had uploaded every Black Emmanuelle trailer we had, all of which were (mildly) appropriate... a day later, it was all gone. We fought it and argued that we followed the rules, but YouTube wouldn't budge. Despite this, the launch was successful, and I was proud of the work I put into it regardless of how minimized it wound up being.
What originally led you into the world of color and restoration, Sebastian?
Sebastian del Castillo: I went to film school at the University of Texas and was heavily involved in experimental film. I then worked as a negative cutter for about seven years in Seattle before moving back to Austin and getting a job as a projectionist at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz in Austin. I was also the Head Archivist of the American Genre Film Archive (AGFA).
Joe Ziemba (the then Art Director of the Alamo Drafthouse) and I decided to start a home video and theatrical distribution arm of AGFA, and I had to buy a film scanner, workstation, and the necessary software to learn how to do all this stuff on my own, with a little help from local friends. I was basically thrown to the wolves and am self-taught. That was back in 2016, and I've been doing digital restoration and color grading ever since. Although self-taught, I am DaVinci Resolve certified and have taken classes and online tutorials to better my skills over the years in digital restoration and color grading. YouTube was a big help in the early days.
How did you become involved with Severin?
Sebastian del Castillo: When I was the head of film restoration at AGFA, we were taking on client lab work when David and Andrew started reaching out to have scanning (before they got their scanner), color, and restoration work done for their releases. AGFA was also Severin's theatrical distributor, so we'd take bookings for Severin Films and create DCPs so they could be screened theatrically. Working with Severin is great! I really enjoy working with David and Andrew, they're wonderful and fun people, easy going, too. Plus, Severin puts out great films.
Can you walk me through the nuts and bolts of what you do and what your work on this set looked like?
Sebastian del Castillo: I received the raw scans from Andrew in either the CRI or DPX image sequence format. I would then import them into Phoenix and would do a heavy automated restoration pass. This will remove most of the dirt and debris, but it will also remove things you don't want removed and will create artifacts and what are called false positives, so I then have to do a frame-by-frame removal of all the bad things the automated pass did using a red filter that shows what the dust-busting algorithm removed or tried to remove.
Once that pass is done, I do a frame-by-frame manual pass without the red filter to remove any dirt and debris that I let through in the de-artifact and false positive removal pass. I then do a real time quality check to be sure there are no artifacts, false positives, dirt, or debris left behind. Digital restoration generally takes about two-to-three weeks to complete.
Once I am satisfied with the restoration, I export the restored files and bring them into DaVinci Resolve for color grading. I drop each reel into a timeline and do an automated scene cut detect to break up the shots. Each shot needs to be color graded. Once I have my timeline built and all shots have cuts, I start my color grading from beginning to end. I usually have a previous release reference file that I use as a reference for how the film should look, assuming that release was true to the artistic intent.
I think the Black Emanuelle films I worked on were all dupe negs and they weren't in the best condition. Italian film elements have a reputation of not being in the best condition, so it's an uphill battle from start to finish. Once I'm happy with the color grade, I do a real time quality check to make sure everything looks right and all the shots match in color and contrast, and I do any image stabilization that needs to be done. I then export the final master. Color grading generally takes about a week to complete. If they provide me with audio, I will do some audio restoration as well, de-hissing and removing crackles and pops. That usually takes a day or two.
Luke, your design is (as always) stunning for this set!
Luke Insect: Thank you! It was great working with Kier-La as she always has a strong sense of art direction and how a project should look. In a lot of the work I do, there is a completely open brief - which is also great - but I work just as well, if not better, with a bit of art direction.
Initially, she sent me the book Yes Yes Y'All: The Experience Music Project Oral History of Hip-Hop's First Decade, which documents the early days of hip-hop and its subcultures - so that really set the tone. There was a distinctly gritty seventies aesthetic to that book - earthy colors, grubby vintage New York City photography, round-edge boxes, and thick retro outlines, plus a superb selection of vintage Letraset fonts. One particular typeface being my favorite, Avant Garde Gothic designed by Herb Lubalin, which Kier-La also loves - that became the centerpiece of all the type layout. I even have a tattoo of that font!
Joe, how did you become involved with this project?
Joe Rubin: I assist on a lot of random Severin projects, and this is something that had been in play for quite a while. Initially, some existing but not very good masters showed up from one of the licensors that included Emanuelle in America and some of the other key D'Amato films. They were pretty bad, so I spent a couple of days trying to fix the colors to the extent that I could. When you're dealing with a color corrected file and trying to do color correction on it, you're beholden to how much information the previous colorist left in order to make changes, so in a lot of cases the data had been lost, so the ability to get it looking as good as it could have if a raw scan was available was compromised, but I did what I could.
The project was then on the backburner for quite a long time - more films were acquired and the set expanded, and the one that I was most directly involved with were the multiple versions and reconstruction of Love Camp.
Kier-La was a key driving force in this project, very committed and keen in getting the set produced and really kept things moving along. She was instrumental in putting the collection together technically as well.
Speaking of, let's dive into the worldwide debut of Love Camp, or: Fanatico... When the Goddess Calls...
Kier-La Janisse: I like that the Fanatico cut explores more of the Divine One's origin story, as disturbing as that is! But this movie is also just goofy and fun. Of course it's not an official Emanuelle film, it was just retitled as such to cash in on Gemser's presence. We tried to include everything that had been marketed as a Black Emanuelle film in the set, even though they depart so much from the character established in the Joe D'Amato ones.
Andrew Furtado: Like all of the projects we work on, it was a group effort. Although there's a lot of people who work on these, the three key folks were Kier-La, who curated the films and produced the entire Black Emanuelle box set and wanted the title to be included, David, who struck a deal with the licensors, and I worked with the elements to compile the cuts.
David Gregory: The company that represented the film for international sales since its production and who had some involvement in the original production, Atlas International in Germany, house all their elements across several labs in Munich. A U.S. company had bought out several of their titles a few years before but were struggling to get the materials shipped to the United States. As there was very little movement on this, it was starting to seem like we wouldn't be able to include Love Camp in the box. This was a cause for concern because this is among the most interesting films of the lot.
Even though its pedigree as a Black Emanuelle film is tenuous at best, we had already decided that we were going to include the films that were Emanuelle in name only... and in some cases, only in one country in the world when it was re-titled for video. With the help of my friend and colleague Joerg Bauer, with whom I'd worked in various capacities as our German man on the ground since starting in the business, I was able to get an appointment at the storage facility where all of the Love Camp materials were held in Munich. It was quite the treasure trove of materials. We packed it all up and waited another few months for it to finally arrive in the U.S. before finding out exactly what we had.
Among the elements was a bunch of negative trims of Christian Anders' cut of the film, before Atlas went back in and added sex scenes without Anders' cooperation to make it a more traditional and more sellable Gemser vehicle. We also found original stills from the production of these additional scenes (some of which had Joe D'Amato in them, proving that he was the man they called on to shoot these sequences), as well as his work print. Using the work print, we were able to reconstruct his version using the superior negative elements. This is a fascinating artifact and a very bizarre movie; one we were delighted to be able to include in the set in its entirety.
Andrew Furtado: David had gone to Germany to locate the elements for the film and apparently found a treasure trove. He ordered the elements to be delivered to a local facility, and when he and fellow film preservationist Joe Rubin went to pick them up, there was a lot of stuff! Press photos, posters, trims, and reels and reels of prints. Basically, if it had Love Camp, Fanatico, or Divine Emanuelle written on it, he made sure it was sent over.
You want to cover your bases with film, you never know what condition they're in until you scan the elements. Things like moisture, water damage, time eating away at the emulsion, or thick glue on the splices causing stains on the element. It's smart to take whatever is available to have and not need, rather than need and not have.
Some producers or distributors keep everything. In this case, the former owner (Atlas International, before the title was bought by its current owner, Multicom) kept a lot of material. This isn't always the case, though. Sometimes we go to a location and find out the original camera negative is in their garage or shed, and they live in the middle of nowhere and their roof has a hole in it. We scan the element and then it goes right back into the same shed. But with companies like Multicom, they keep everything.
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Andrew Furtado: The film has three different cuts, two of which are known. The explicit cut (which had scenes added by the producer and ghost-directed by Joe D'Amato) and the original cut.
David and Joe grabbed the immediately relevant materials, original camera negative, and the interpositive of the explicit cut. There were four different audio tracks, two for each cut... or so we thought. What we discovered while I was syncing the audio tracks to the original camera negative was that the English audio was for a much longer cut. I compared it to the English audio track that came with the explicit cut, and it didn't match there. David and Joe went back to the facility to see what could help us figure out what was going on.
He came back with a box of original camera negative trims and a print that was one reel longer. Joe scanned everything and I got to work. I immediately noticed the English audio in question matched the print! The print itself was pretty gnarly, it was faded and marked up like crazy, but that's normal for unfinished materials. The strange thing is that the audio wasn't like a normal workprint audio, where it isn't fully mixed or mastered, this audio was ready to go! I went through and matched negative to the extended print and it matched almost perfectly. The trims actually covered the rest, and we had a full cut! The final film was totally different and, in my opinion, great!
The question then became, what do we do? I let David and Kier-La know the situation and what we had at our disposal, along with my suggestion to include the extended cut of the film as well as the explicit cut. From there I work with specialists to get the elements looking and sounding as good as they can!
Joe Rubin: This is the only time that the director's cut has ever been released - not just in the context of being available on disc, it doesn't appear to have been released in any capacity theatrically. This was a mystery I was really excited to help piece together. Andrew gets one hundred percent of the credit for taking all the pieces that I scanned and reconstructing it digitally.
Love Camp was a movie that I never really cared about watching until Severin acquired it, and what we received was the only version of the film that was initially not included in the collection, which is the German theatrical version, which is what the original negative had been re-edited to.
What do we know about the production history of Fanatico?
Joe Rubin: The original shoot was in October of 1980. It seems that before the thing was even edited, additional sequences were shot in Germany (or maybe Italy) in 1980, and there's a slight possibility that Joe D'Amato may have actually directed those sequences - he was definitely on set for them, but he might have directed them. Print the legend. These are all of the sequences that involve Laura Gemser, which would be added to the Love Camp re-cut. The original Fanatico version was edited down from 100+ minutes and all of the pieces survived, but it doesn't appear to have had any kind of commercial distribution, and that title was a discovery when we got the film. The working title of the film was Dorian and the Children of Light. Fanatico doesn't appear to have ever been released in any format.
The first film element we got was the original negative, which we discovered once it was scanned with the German cut of the film - this is another version of the film that includes some of the scenes that were from Fanatico, none of the additional reshoots. It seems that in Germany they tried to market the film as a thriller. Initially it seemed there wouldn't be material for the Love Camp version, the known cut of the film, but in doing additional research we did find an element for it. We continued searching through all of this material, we had tons of production stills which included numerous extended scenes or character interactions that didn't exist in either the German cut or the Love Camp version - most notably, the extensive flashback sequence with Tanga's origin story. There were all of these stills for this sequence with people in leprosy makeup, and we couldn't figure out what it was because there was no trace of it in the film, so we thought they were from another Laura Gemser production that happened to be mixed in. In starting to look through other materials, we found a few cans of negative cuts (which are normally bad takes) which in this case were full scenes and shot extensions that had been physically removed from the negative that correspond with all of this additional material. This was all gathered and assembled.
In the meantime, we had also found a whole bunch of different track elements that had different runtimes and mixes. As Andrew was syncing the different versions, he noted that one of the track elements had all of this additional dialogue and music that were not in any of the original cuts, so we were hoping that these negative cuts could correspond to the track. Andrew conceived to the technical side of digitally putting it all back together. Usually, I am very much against placing value on workprints, a term that gets thrown around today as this interchangeable representation of earlier cuts. Film workprints had one purpose, and that was being the physical editing guide to the negative matcher.
The negative matcher looked at the edge code on the workprint and matched it exactly to the corresponding section of the unedited negative. Therefore, a workprint always needed to match exactly to how the final cut of the film would look, with all shot durations and effects in place. Under normal circumstances, if a movie were to be re-edited, the work print would first be recut and then the negative re-conformed and synchronized. In this case, rather than re-cutting the negative, they created a dupe of the film, chopped out everything they wanted to remove, and inserted the fully edited new scenes while never touching the physical workprint which corresponded to the original cut. This is a rare instance of a film workprint being a useful editing guide to reconstructing an earlier, 'un-surviving-on-film' version. This is very unusual. Physical workprints do not usually have this value.
I know you said you're not a fan of the Black Emanuelle franchise, but did you become a fan of Fanatico?
Joe Rubin: I became kind of obsessed with it. It was more complicated than just scanning and putting it together - every couple of weeks for about two or three months we were going back to the facility that had all of the source materials to look for more of a scene we couldn't find, which became a running joke. It was rewarding to bring materials back and be able to look at them and discover that we had found another piece. When we finally had every single component, and it became clear that this lost, original cult film could be properly reconstructed, that was very exciting and rewarding.
In the process, it made me interested in Christian Anders and his bizarre career. He made a similarly demented, though not quite as good, kung-fu movie called Roots of Evil, and I became obsessed with that. When you're looking at film materials and how some elements were edited, you get insight into the technical process of how the film is made, so it became really exciting to look at all of the different picture elements that were in existence for the completed cuts of the film, including the German version, the cut internegative with original negative, the inserts for the Love Camp version, and an IP that was made. That was one of the most exciting aspects for me with this project.
The film is very dear to me, and it's a restoration project that I am very proud of. The film is definitely too long in all of its iterations, but that self-indulgent vanity project mindset in which it was made adds to what we enjoyed about it.
How were the materials located?
Joe Rubin: They were sitting at a lab in Germany. The owner got them out and they sat at their home in Los Angeles until we came along and started digging through it. It wasn't exactly difficult to locate the material, we knew where it was, the issue was locating all of the correct pieces for all of the different versions. The original negative is what ought to always be used if it's available. In most cases, it will correspond to the correct final version of the film, but in this case it did not - it corresponded to the German version. We had to go back in week after week to seek out new elements on the film to correspond with the other cuts.
It's so incredible that no one had seen it before this release...
Joe Rubin: It was very rewarding to discover that this film existed in so many different versions. To bring it back to Black Emanuelle, this is a great example of a non-canonical film - it's a movie starring Laura Gemser that happened to be released on video in a couple of territories under the title Divine Emanuelle, but that was never a formal title created by producers or distributors, it seems like it was put together by local distributors. Considering the film was made in 1980 and Gemser had the degree of notoriety that she did, the film was more easily marketable by calling attention to her presence in it by referencing Black Emanuelle, which speaks to the significance that franchise had in the film's exploitation marketing.
It speaks to a type of film that was, in the context of an exploitation production, still able to be made at that point. If it had been made a few years later, once video had killed the remains of the exploitation theatrical market, it would have been difficult to get anyone to pay for it. The fact that Atlas International put money up, probably around two hundred thousand dollars, is remarkable.
Was there ever a poster created for Fanatico?
Joe Rubin: No, as far as we can tell there was no marketing materials created for it whatsoever.
It's refreshing to hear that you collaborate with Severin, when technically they are your competitor in this market. Is that rare in this industry?
Joe Rubin: I wouldn't say that it's rare, there is a general friendly competition among the exploitation home video distributors. We're going to certainly compete in terms of going after some of the same titles and sometimes there will be more pronounced competition, but for the most part we all value what each other is doing and therefore can appreciate that there is more to be gained in collaboration than there is in cutthroat competition. I've known David for a very long time. He and I are especially more apt to regularly collaborate than I do with other companies, but I also work very regularly with Grindhouse Releasing, who of course do beautiful work. It's satisfying and it's reciprocal. I will work on a title that David has produced, and he will have insights on something I either didn't realize or have access to, and he will go out of his way to assist on titles that I am doing. We all work together to hopefully create editions of films that no one else would ever consider doing.
Where did your passion for collecting and preserving films originate?
Joe Rubin: As a kid, I had lot more stuff on video than on film, but I've never really looked at video as anything more than a utilitarian device. Once I learned about how these movies were made, something clicked in my head on how I need to watch and own these films. I didn't have the access or resources at that age in order to acquire films and do the work that I am now doing, but it was something that I immediately took interest in and focused on in every way that I possibly could. I started contacting filmmakers and acquiring elements without rights, which I didn't get into much later because finding rights to movies is not exactly easy in most cases, so I would be excited when I could find them, but I didn't have a reason to seek them out until the prospect of starting Vinegar Syndrome came to be.
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Andrew Furtado: I mean, c'mon! Christian is such a magnetic personality. It has the makings of a vanity project - he directs and stars, has original songs, a little bit of Kung-Fu... but the humility to see Laura Gemser and know she is a star who deserves to be the lead and higher power.
The story is fun, as are all the characters - my favorite being Gemser's servant, Tanga, who is a comedic genius with his stiff performance that fits so well into the world. At one point he is pouring Gemser a milk bath - she pinches his leg, and he reacts by flexing his pectorals... you can't train that kind of timing. The music is fantastic. It's one thing to give yourself songs in a film if you just want to sing (like in GetEven), but Anders is famous for his singing career in Germany! He gave himself some songs in this that are earworms.
It's just everything you want from a film like this. It would be one hell of a standalone release. I would love it to be seen by more eyes.
Where do the rumors of David Koresh appearing as an extra in the film stem from?
Andrew Furtado: I'm not aware of the rumors. I didn't even know this was a thing. Print the legend!
Did you unearth any behind-the-scenes footage of this film?
Andrew Furtado: If we had, you bet your ass it would have been in the set! Film was so expensive, and BTS on these were more in the way of still photography.
It really feels like we've produced our own bonus feature for Fanatico here...
Joe Rubin: Yeah, and if it helps more people appreciate or discover the film then it's a wonderful step. The film deserves to be remembered, or at least appreciated, in a greater context than just this one-off that is part of a larger box set. Even if it's not the easiest to approach or most commercial of the films, if you're in the right mindset it certainly stands as one of the most memorable.
You are constantly surprised while watching this film, like when Anders busts out the kung fu at the end of the film.
Joe Rubin: That was his obsession. I don't know how much you looked into Christian Anders, but he was a pop musician, and this film was purely a vanity project. When Divine Emanuelle came out on DVD from Media Blasters, it didn't really get any kind of attention. It wasn't very appealing to the average view of these types of films, which is a shame.
Speaking of original cuts, Vinegar Syndrome's release of "Kiss Me Monster" made me fall in love with the film after seeing Jess Franco's extended Spanish version.
Joe Rubin: That's interesting, because I am actually not fond of the Spanish cuts, but I am also not into Franco's slow stuff. I like it when he is more outrageous. My favorite Franco film is The Bloody Judge, and I know that is a strong outlier in his filmography, and I think that's because it doesn't have that plotting which is so off-putting in his films. But it's different! In terms of comparing that to Fanatico, what I really like about that cut (to put it into Jess Franco terminology) is that it demands a lot more from the viewer in terms of attention but is also so much stranger. Love Camp was clearly an attempt by the producers to take something that was totally un-commercial and un-marketable and try to make it into something that was marketable in more conventional sense. Unlike Fanatico, the narrative structure is more original and not trying to be as outrageous and outlandish - it's safer. It's something that someone in the early eighties would have gone to as just another sex film with a silly plot, whereas no one was going to go to Fanatico and think, "yeah, this thing makes sense." It's confusing too in how long it takes to establish its narrative about killing the people who are not loyal to the cult. If you're looking for that type of film, you're not going to get it. By its own logic, it doesn't care about that - it doesn't want to give audiences that level of satisfaction.
Would you label it a musical?
Joe Rubin: Yeah, it has numbers performed by the cast and follows traditional musical logic, or at the very least it relies on the logic of a film like Body Double, which is not a musical but has a musical sequence in it that comes out of nowhere. The whole suicide sequence where they are singing "This Is the End"... sure, we can accept that this is a demented cult, so they have someone belting out a song during a mass suicide, but I don't buy that. It feels, as musicals often do, a form of breaking the fourth wall. The song is not for the characters to be informed by, or partake in, the context of traditional narrative logic, it's there to serve as a dramatic technique for the purpose of the story. To that extent, it's very effective. Maybe if it's not a traditional musical, it's still in the vein of films that are standard narratives with unprovoked musical numbers.
What was your biggest challenge in producing this set, and what are you proudest of?
Andrew Furtado: I mainly work with features and collecting all the final extras before we get it into quality control and the discs into authoring (one of our quality control people fell in love with the films and actually went on a poster purchasing rampage as he checked discs.) The hardest and most rewarding things for me were fixing previous releases' mistakes and providing this stuff uncensored and as close to the filmmaker's vision as we can make it. The crown jewel being Fanatico.
Some other things I'm really proud of are going back to remaster the credit sequences on Emanuelle in America, getting rid of the modern digital titles that have plagued previous releases. Rebuilding all the later-era Joe D'Amato re-edits where he took scenes from previous Emanuelle films and put a story together. Both Porno Esotic Love and Emanuelle's Perverse Outburst were compiled from seven-to-ten different films. Kier-La had an Emanuelle expert go through and log which films were being sourced. Afterwards, Marc Morris of Nucleus Films and I matched the negative between all of those films to make them available in HD for the first time. Turns out it wasn't just Joe's Emanuelle films, so we had to go back and license other films to get access, scan, and include that footage. Finally finishing those was very rewarding.
Amy Searles: I love a good gimmick, so in terms of the boxed set I'm proudest of how the spinning wheel on the front cover of the packaging came out. That was totally Kier-La's idea, but it was up to me to communicate the concept to our printer, test mockups, and suggest functional improvements. The end result is fun, saucy, and a little silly - and totally unique to physical media.
In terms of the merchandise, I adore the Severin Airlines travel bag. David and Kier-La really indulged me on that one. It would have been more cost-effective to forgo certain details, but I had my heart set on custom lining and Severin logo zipper pulls. They not only let me do it, they let me overdo it!
I also snuck my birthday into Emanuelle's passport.
Lindsay Hallam: Getting to be a part of such an incredible and historic box set was an honor, and I was really inspired by being a part of the set with so many other amazing contributors, especially the women that were involved who gave a new and unique perspective on the material.
Joe Rubin: In terms of what I am proudest of, I'd say it was when we finally found those negative cuts that encompassed the Fanatico version of the film. Until then, we didn't know what we were going to have for that version. I vividly remember being at the facility that had the materials, and the woman who works there pulling the cans for me to look at and realizing that these were the negative cuts and were what we had been searching for. That was immensely rewarding.
Kier-La Janisse: My biggest challenge was overcoming all the men who acted as gatekeepers to the character and the series, and whose perspectives have historically dominated discussion of it. I did not entirely succeed in this, but I made a dent, at least. So that was both the biggest challenge and the thing I'm most proud of.
David Gregory: That YouTube ban was bot censorship, and just a glimpse of what we can look forward to in our future. Not that we were able to get a human being to explain it to us, of course, despite much effort on our part. We assume that in uploading a barrage of trailers with 'Emanuelle' in the title that YouTube's bots thought they were under attack from a hostile army of pornographers hell-bent on filling their wholesome site with filth. They obviously didn't look beyond the titles of the videos, because we went to great lengths to cut out or blur any nudity from the trailers, especially to meet YouTube's purity requirements. But that annoying wrinkle aside...
I'm very proud of this set, and particularly proud of Kier-La's production of it. It was a massive undertaking, and in addition to the work she created for it - her short on Laura Gemser is absolutely sublime and a good example I use when people dismiss 'extras' as if they're quick things that are created equally for all labels. We take our extras very seriously and often go quite far above and beyond for them, seeing as they're often considered expected bonus materials that are part of any boutique label package (don't get me started on the one I'm finishing right now for our next big box set). She found producers around the world to take on specific subjects relating to all the films. Outstanding work.
The fact that the box was recognized with critical acclaim and awards is, honestly, as it should be. There is no more impressive box set that came out last year, and only a few contenders to that throne from any year in the disc era, even among big bollocks companies who have the deep pockets to spend on such things. Even though I, and many others from the Severin team and all of the independent contractors along the way, were heavily involved the entire way through the multi-year production, Kier-La is the one who is the primary author of this achievement.
Our post-supervisor, Andrew Furtado, would be the other person who needs major props for helping this beast across the finish line. His work on it was formidable, and a lesser person in his position would have quit or been sent to Bedlam... whichever came first. There are many others. It did take a lot of people to get it here.
What advice do you have for those interested in working in the home entertainment industry?
David Gregory: I can't really speak for the entertainment industry in general, because our tiny corner of it is a very specific niche. In order to do what we and the other boutique labels like Severin do, you really need to be into these kinds of movies and be obsessive about their preservation. It's a lot of work for what often is not huge rewards, but there are certainly enough like-minded people out there who are into what we do that make it worthwhile. And we love it, so, overall, it's a pleasure to do.
What is your advice for those interested in pursuing a career in film restoration, and do you have a film that you are most proud to have played a part in restoring?
Andrew Furtado: Honestly, be passionate, patient, and always ready to learn... and have an ergonomic mouse. This isn't a glamorous job, and it is extremely time consuming. I've been doing this since 2013 and am extremely proud of what I work on. I loved this project, especially because it has some of the first titles I worked on when I started at Severin. Being able to revisit, rediscover, and improve on my mistakes was a real eye-opener.
I've fortunately been able to help a lot of filmmakers out on giving their films a new life. My first real restoration project was with Clive Barker's Nightbreed. I was fortunate enough to work with him to re-edit his film using the original script to make the movie he wanted to make back in 1990, before he was removed from the project. At the end we recorded a commentary where he watched the film in its entirety for the first time and he was so happy. I know it's cheesy to mark your first as your favorite, but that really hit me and showed me just how important this is, and can be, for some folks. I've never forgotten that.
Amanda having been involved in so many aspects of this set, what did you enjoy most about this project?
Amanda Reyes: I work as an archivist in my day job, and the greatest joy I get from that is when you fall in love with the subject you are working on. It doesn't happen all of the time, but when it does, it's like nothing else.
There's something so fulfilling about preserving a legacy, and that's what Severin has done with the Emanuelle films. They have given a fresh perspective to the series, and through their beautiful restorations and in-depth extras, they've allowed audiences to reassess what is truly a great franchise, and not just some throwaway thing that is meant to be seen and forgotten. I learned a lot about Laura Gemser and her life during that, and she is so incredible and fascinating. I really loved getting to know her as an actress and person, and despite some of the more controversial elements in some of the films, it's hard not to feel a real warmth regarding them. That was something I was not expecting.
Winning the Best Movie Boxed Set in the 2024 Home Entertainment Media Play Awards is huge, and I never dreamed I'd see Variety publishing an article about Black Emanuelle!
Luke Insect: I know, it's amazing! I've been nominated for awards in the past, but never actually won! I think just the package as a whole works so well across the content, imagery, text, and aesthetic - absolutely everything has this strong generic look, which I think hits the world of Black Emanuelle on the head. The book was really important - often, you'll get a boxed set which looks lovely, but then the booklet lets it down, using standard layout with generic text flooded in. I think The Black Emanuelle Bible is as important and considered as everything else here, including the films themselves. We took time designing every page and detail, and we wanted to be able to select a random spread through the book and have it look beautiful on its own. I hope and think we managed that. And the content of the book is absolutely incredible!
Mark Raskin: Luckily, there is a whole box of 'em available at Severin, so it will never come to that!
Kier-La Janisse: For a general audience I would choose Emanuelle in Bangkok. I think Emanuelle in America is the best film, but it's a bit confrontational for most people. But since Emanuelle in Bangkok has the same writer and is really the genesis of her photojournalists character, it lays the groundwork in many ways for Emanuelle in America.
Luke Insect: I think Emanuelle in America - let's knock the socks off, go hard or go home! I also have a soft spot for Divine Emanuelle. I'm kind of obsessed with that whole 'hippie cult gone wrong' thing, and it certainly goes wrong for the beautiful ones who join The Children of Light!
Ashley Thorpe: Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals because it's such a curious marriage of horror and eroticism. I know there are other titles that have that dichotomy, but I am biased towards that one. Who doesn't love a good sevenites cannibal movie?
Andrew Furtado: Emanuelle in America, uncut. Mostly because it's touted as one of the most shocking films of all time, and it is still shocking. My answer would have been completely different before working on this set, but after learning so much from the extras and commentaries about how it was a love letter to the absurd, with Joe D'Amato and Maria Pia Fusco trying to think of the most insane things they could put into a film, then doing it - that's so punk and awesome. Being in a theater of people unable to comprehend the insanity they're about to see, knowing all that you know! It's like you'd be in on the joke and laughing along with D'Amato and Pia Fusco with every audible gasp.
Joe Rubin: It depends on the context. I have talked to people who have watched both versions, and Fanatico is a polarizing film. It doesn't, like many Black Emanuelle films, lend itself to an easy watch. If you compare what they did in the Love Camp version, the biggest change that was made was establishing that Tonga is being sent out by the Divine One to kill the disloyal members, which you don't find out until around seventy-five minutes in, as opposed to forty minutes in the Love Camp version, which really changes the way the film is structured. I believe Christian Anders thought that the budding romance between the senator's daughter and him was the most exciting and important element in the story. The Fanatico version really adds to the vanity project feel of it, but for those without much familiarity of what a Black Emanuelle film is, I probably wouldn't have this be their initial exposure because I feel like it might turn them off. It's the sort of film that you have to build up to. In terms of what I would always champion as the movie that is going to take you out of your comfort zone, watch this one.
Fanatico wasn't conceived as part of a cycle, it was an outlier in terms of content and is a tough sell unless you're in the perfect mindset for it. Even if you're grossed out or unnerved by them, you have to start out with the D'Amato films, they are emblematic of what these movies were. Either Emanuelle Around the World or Emanuelle in America would horrify people in a different way. Those films are more in keeping with what you would expect out of a Joe D'Amato movie in terms of overt brashness and explicit unpleasantness.
Amy Searles: I suspect you're looking for a more sensational answer, but I would go with Emanuelle Around the World just because I fucking love George Eastman.
Sebastian del Castillo: I think I would have to say Black Cobra Woman, because it is awesome!
Samm Deighan: Probably Emanuelle in America, which is a pretty transgressive sexploitation film and is probably not for everyone, but I think it represents the highest highs - and certainly the lowest depths - the series was willing to go. I do love that they are all so different and take liberties about Emanuelle's character and backstory.
Amanda Reyes: Honestly, I kind of really loved the two mondo Porno Nights of the World movies. They're really silly, but also very tame by today's standards. I was drawn to the innocence of them, and loved the idea of globe-trotting through them, even if it's all staged. Some of the segments are just hilarious, goofy, and really fun. I'm not sure those are great recommendations for a newbie, but they're the ones I thought were the lightest and sometimes weirdest. But, of the more traditional entries, I quite liked Emanuelle Around the World, particularly the George Eastman segment, which is so funny. And I think Emanuelle in America is terrific. Either of those would provide a good gateway into the series because they encompass both a lightheartedness and darkness that can be seen throughout the franchise.
Lindsay Hallam: While I do think Emanuelle in America is the one that will really electrify audiences, I actually really like Emanuelle in Bangkok as well. I really enjoy how Emanuelle is a true force of liberation in that film for everyone she meets. It's also part of the series directed by Joe D'Amato that incorporates elements of the mondo film, and the cinematography is fantastic.
Claudio Fuiano: Without a doubt the first I watched, Emanuelle Nera, for all of the reasons I listed about the first impression it left on me as a kid.
Jason Duron: Emmanuelle Around the World would be the best for the big screen - it has a strong feminist approach, it's incredibly sexy, Gemser is a fashion icon in it, it's sleazy... it has everything!
John Buell: It would have to be Emanuelle in America because I would love to hear the audience reaction to the horse scene. Classic D'Amato.
Francesco Massaccesi: Perhaps Emanuelle in America for its psychedelia and narrative visual structure full of fragmentations and parallelisms.
Jesus Teran: It would have to be the first Black Emanuelle. It started a great series that went on for a long time - some great films and music were created in the process.
Drazen Kozjan: Fanatico... When the Goddess Calls would probably be the one. There's great stuff in all of them, it's so tough to pick. Emanuelle: Queen of the Desert is a favorite - it's the last one I watched that I had never seen, and I enjoyed the overheated violent men's adventure pulp dialogue. I was expecting an attack by giant crabs at any moment! The cinematography was fantastic with great compositions and camerawork.
Jennifer Moorman: Probably Black Cobra Woman, quite simply because it's my favorite of the ones I've seen! It ends the way that nearly all exploitation films must, but until that moment it is a gorgeously shot, excitingly queer, and anti-patriarchal film. Gemser's performance is electric, and that scene in the lesbian bar in Hong Kong is truly the stuff dreams are made of.
Erin Wiegand: I unfortunately have to admit that I'm not actually a Black Emanuelle fan, so I'm not sure I'd have any of them at the top of my list to program a screening. There are some films and genres where I have a strong interest as a researcher, but not as a programmer, and others that I love showing to an audience but that I'd never be interested in writing about.
Marc Morris: Probably Emanuelle in America to watch their shocked expressions!
Blake Monahan: Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals would probably be the crowd-pleaser, but I'd have to go with Velluto nero. Annie Bell is absolutely gorgeous in that film, and the soundtrack is fantastic. I bought an enormous poster on eBay immediately after watching it.
David Gregory: Depends on the audience, because you're going to upset the average viewer with many of these movies. "I saw Emmanuelle in Space on Cinemax and it was crazy!" or "My Mum and Dad went to see Emmanuelle at a theater in Paris, they were pretty open minded." or "Cool! Let's throw on Emanuelle Around the World and relive the folks' courting days or your sneaky early cable viewings, eh?"
For someone with a good resistance to the transgressive side of exploitation cinema, I have to go with Emanuelle in America. A movie unlike any other.
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