Mondo Esoterica Mini-Reviews

Emanuelle Around the World: XXX European Cut (1977)

Laura Gemser stars in this hardcore version of Joe D'Amato's film. Severin Films R0 DVD.

Storyline Summary:

The storyline is identical to the softcore version of the film, see the full review of Emanuelle Around the World for more information.

Notes:

Prepared for the French market, this version of the film differs from the soft-core cut by including about 3 minutes of extra footage. Some additional penetration shots in the Guru's palace orgy, an extended version of the rape of Cora Norman, an extended version of the scarred man raping a blindfolded girl, vividly extended versions of the beastiality sequences and extended version of the Hareem sequence.
The footage was shot at the same time as the main part of the film itself and flows well with the rest of the shots. The additional shots are relatively short and do not slow the film down too much, and it is equally watchable in this European cut, as with the softcore version - notably the sequence with the scarred man actually plays better here as it does not cut away as suddenly as the softcore print does.
The Emanuelle character herself is only briefly involved in the hardcore sex, and only via a rather unsubtle body double.

Visuals	Original Aspect Ratio - 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen. Colour. The print quality is generally good, with good colours and detail and only mild grain. There are a lot of light scratches and marks throughout the print which can be distracting in a few scenes but are generally ignorable. Note: The opening and closing credit scenes are noticably lower quality, very soft like from a video source. Note 2: The hardcore shots are not noticably different in quality to the surrounding scenes.
Audio	English and Italian audio. Both sound fine, and the English dub is well done.
Subtitles	English (optional) - these translate the Italian track which is noticably different in places to the English dub.
Extras	None.
Region	Region 0 (worldwide) - NTSC
Other regions?	Not available elsewhere.
Cuts?	The film is believed to be fully uncut, a softer cut of the film was produced for most global audiences that has also been released on DVD by Severin [reviewed here]. Titles and credits are in French.

A much sleazier version of this enjoyable film that has more sex but less storyline than previous entries. Recommended only to those who can stomach the strong stuff - the softcore version is perfectly adequate for everyone else!

A good looking release of the film, although the lack of supporting extra features is a shame (a simple text box describing where this print played etc. would have been interesting)