Page 170 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

D'Amato's direction, he literally rendered his heroine as 'monstrous' via Gemser's increased exposure
to horror, savagery and death. This direction of the cycle can be inferred by a brief consideration of
other key titles in the series, such as Emanuelle E Gli Ultimi Cannibali aka Emanuelle and the Last
Cannibals (1977). In this episode, the heroine investigates the existence of cannibals in the Amazon
jungle, after discovering ancient tribal markings on the vaginal lips of a white female mental patient
(This intercontinental theme of savagery once again links the emergence of a European 'symptom'
to an underlying ethnic problem.) In many respects, Emanuelle and the East Cannibals takes it's
travelogue roots to an extreme in the scene where Gemser and her anthropologist lover Mark Lester
watch Mondo-style footage of a ritualistic execution. The sequence, which conflates colonial fears
around sexuality and death (via the punishment of a couple's illicit relationship), features the graphic
castration and consumption of a man's penis.
These acts, as well as the savage butchering of a European couple that Emanuelle photographs
during the climax of the film once more confirm Tobing Rony's claim that anthropological cinema

represented 'a science strewn with corpses, one obsessed with origins, death and degeneration'. 20
However, as with the other films in the cycle Gemser's own blackness provides a position from which
to not merely judge and survey, but also to be assimilated to the Other. This is seen in the finale of
the film where Emanuelle disguises herself as a water goddess in order to rescue her white lover Isabel
from the cannibal lair. As she explains to Lester, As I look very much like them, they will believe their
water god has come to receive their sacrifice.'

FIGURE 32 Notions of primitive sexuality and ethnicity are conflated: Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977)

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