Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals – released in the USA as Trap Them and Kill Them – is a 1977 Italian erotic horror film, directed by Joe D’Amato (Aristide Massaccesi). The film is part of a loose series of Black Emanuelle films, mostly starring Laura Gemser and directed by D’Amato, which emerged in the second half of the 1970s.
Following the global success of the softcore sex film Emmanuelle in 1974, many film producers around the world climbed on the bandwagon. Possibly because the Emmanuelle producers had the world’s worst lawyers, or possibly because copyright was rather more lax at the time, many of these films managed to use the Emmanuelle name by simply changing the spelling – in the case of Black Emanuelle and its sequels, this involved dropping one ‘M’.
While the original Black Emanuelle, made in 1975, was simply a softcore travelogue very much in the tradition of the original film, but with Laura Gemser – actually Eurasian rather than black, but that seemed close enough for 1970s audiences – in the title role. Interestingly, the same year she made Black Emanuelle, she also appeared in Emmanuelle 2. This version of the character was a photo journalist, who found herself getting into all manner of erotic adventures.
Under the guidance of D’Amato – who took over the series after Black Emanuelle 2 – the films rapidly became more and more outlandish and shocking. By 1977 – a year in which no less than four entries in the series were released, Emanuelle was investigating snuff movie rings in Emanuelle in America, violence against women in Emanuelle Around the World and even became a nun in Sister Emanuelle! These films pushed the limits of good taste – Emanuelle in America has graphic fake snuff movie footage, hardcore sex and even a woman getting frisky with a horse, while Emmanuelle Around the World had violent rape scenes and hardcore sex inserts. It was no surprise, therefore, that D’Amato would combine the series with the newly popular cannibal films spawned by Ruggero Deodato’s Last Cannibal World. We should perhaps be grateful that he wasn’t pursuing the outrage a year earlier, or we might have had a Naziploitation Emanuelle film!
In Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, Emanuelle, while working undercover at a hospital, stumbles upon a girl who seems to have been raised by a tribe of cannibals in the Amazon (this discovery is made when a nurse has her breast bitten off!). She decides to make an expedition to the jungle to find the tribe, taking a professor (played by Gemser’s real life husband and regular co-star Gabriele Tinti) and Susan Scott along, among others. After much erotic romping with both sexes, Emanuelle and her party are captured by the cannibals…
It’s hard to see who this was aimed at. The film has plenty of softcore sex, but it’s likely that the audience lured by the Emanuelle name would be repulsed by the graphic gore (which included graphic castration and some very poor optically created dismemberment), while horror fans would have assumed the film to simply be soft porn. However, the film has since gained a cult following, and is now seen as one of the highlights of the Black Emanuelle series. The film is now seen as a precursor to D’Amato’s sex-horror zombie films Erotic Nights of the Living Dead and Porno Holocaust.
The main theme of the soundtrack, by Nico Fidenco, was released as a seven inch single.
DF
