{jatabs type="content" position="top" height="auto" skipAnim="true" mouseType="click" animType="animFade"}
[tab title="Movie Review"]
Eurotrash cinema by way of slinky and naked snake handling? Yummy.
If gorgeous and exotic topless women dancing open-mouthed with a damn big snake wrapping around them as an organ soundtrack plays with a chorus of female voices chanting “Gee-gee-I” turns you on, then this gem from the stickier side of the theater aisle is definitely for you. Emmanuelle and the Deadly Black Cobra is sleek and sultry and, as it stars Jack Palance (who was having success in Italy with Rulers of the City and The Cop in Blue Jeans) wooing a very beautiful Laura Gemser (the Black Emanuelle series), is also all sorts of not-so subtle sexploitation done the Italian way.
But the Emmanuelle part is simply to make some money tacked on after the fact of Gemser’s rise to unclothed fame. Sadly, there is no Emmanuelle here; that’s saved for the other five films she did with Joe D’Amato. But there are plenty of deadly black cobras and they all want to bite the hand that feeds them. Code Red, knowing its audience, releases the Emmanuelle and the Deadly Black Cobra in HD from a brand new 2017 scan and the results are stupendous.
Judas (Palance) studies snakes. He LOVES them and has a lot of them in his apartment. His brother Julius (Gabriele Tinti) is not as smitten with them as he is. Doesn’t matter, though, because once Judas spots Eva (Gemser) in Hong Kong night-clubbing professionally with her snake dancing, well, it’s all over. He tries to get her to take care of his snakes. She is too afraid of Judas to agree to it. Good girl, right there. Trust your gut.
But he is a man on a mission. He wants Eva AND her charming abilities with snakes all to himself. He is a lonely man who, as he states to her after she refuses his advances, likes “the scent of” Eva. Creepy.
Written and directed by cinematographer Joe D'Amato (who made five Emmanuelle flicks with Gemser), this one being the first), Emmanuelle and the Deadly Black Cobra is unsurprisingly high on style and swagger. There are some great shots throughout the film courtesy of his eye. There are also some pretty dull ones, too, as much of this film feels like its selling Hong Kong to tourists.
Regardless of its stop-and-start faults, the movie lavishes us with a solid thought to maintaining a strict attention to detail and, as charming cocktail melodies sprinkle out courtesy of composer Piero Umiliani, we fall victim to its intoxicating bedroom romps and struggle to break free. Just as Palance dolts on Gemser throughout the movie, we too are spoiled. The film is; however, substantially light of purpose and lacking in the development of memorable characters. Blame D’Amato’s soft-core sensibilities.
Palance, like the way he prefers his snakes, keeps his fangs in. He’s pretty mild-mannered throughout the flick, hiding in the wings. He’s not much of a charmer but he doesn’t have to be when he is on the prowl for Eva; he just spends and spends again. Eva; however, has no problem finding friends to slip her hands up their skirts or across their crotch. She just needs to keep ducking the watchful eye of Judas.
The female of the species is more deadly than the male. Emmanuelle and the Deadly Black Cobra is all the proof you need.
[/tab]
[tab title="Details"]
MPAA Rating: Unrated.
Runtime: 98 mins
Director: Joe D'Amato
Writer: Joe D'Amato
Cast: Jack Palance, Laura Gemser, Gabriele Tinti
Genre: Drama
Tagline: Every New Embrace Brought Her Strange New Delights...
Theatrical Distributor: Aurora Film Corporation
Official Site:
Release Date: February 22, 1980
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: January 9, 2018
Synopsis: Judas (Jack Palance, One Man Jury, Without Warning, Alone In The Dark), a wealthy playboy living in Hong Kong, is obsessed with snakes. His apartment is full of them, and he treats them as if they were his children. One night Judas’ brother (Gabriele Tinti, Eerie Midnight Horror Show) persuades him to accompany him to see a dance act at a nightclub. Judas is astounded to see that the act consists of a beautiful Asian woman (Laura Gemser, Black Emmanuelle, Erotic Nights Of The Living Dead) who dances nude while holding a python. He is immediately smitten, and winds up hiring her to take care of his snakes while he’s away on business. However, things start to take a sinister turn, in this Gemser classic, now first time out legit and in HD from a brand new 2017 HD scan! Audio Commentary with Writer Mirek Lipinski No
[/tab]
[tab title="Blu-ray Review"]
Blu-ray Details:
Home Video Distributor: Code Red
Available on Blu-ray - January 9, 2018
Screen Formats: 1.78:1
Audio: English: Mono
Discs: Blu-ray Disc; Two-disc set
Region Encoding: Locked to Region A
Code Red presents Emmanuelle and the Deadly Black Cobra on 1080p courtesy of a new HD scan. Framed in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio and featuring a crisp DTS-HD Master Audio mono track, the erotic travelogue skin flick has never looked better. The new 1080p transfer is full of all sorts of saturated and pristine colors. Black levels are solid and the dance numbers – with blazing red backgrounds – are sexy and satisfying. The film looks and sounds pretty solid. It is filled with fine grain textures as a few pops appear here and there. Overall, this is as satisfying brand new HD widescreen master from Code Red.
Supplements:
Commentary:
-
Recorded by Writer Mirek Lipinski, the feature length commentary is interesting and funny as Lipinsky talks at length about the gorgeous women, the bedlam of the shoot, and the need for pubic hair trimming in Bangkok.
Special Features:
Fans get the new HD scan, the commentary from Lipinski, and the film's Italian trailer, plus bonus ones for The Curious Female, After the Fall of New York, Blastfighter, and Hands of Steel.
- Original Italian Theatrical Trailer
- Trailers
[/tab]
[tab title="Trailer"]
[/tab]
[tab title="Art"]
[/tab]
{/jatabs}
