In this 1982 entry into the long-running Black Emanuelle series, titled as either Emanuelle Reports from a Women's Prison or Violence in a Woman's Prison depending on the cut, our intrepid heroine, played by Laura Gemser once more, goes undercover in a notorious prison complex, to determine whether or not all the stories are true.
Somehow I don't think it will give the game away to say that they are, especially as the trash auteur responsible is Bruno Mattei ( Hell of the Living Dead , SS Girls Caligula and Messalina etc.) once more deploying the 'Vincent Dawn' pseudonym.
The WIP formula demands brutal officials, whom we get in the form of Lorraine De Selle's governess and Franca Stoppi's head warden. Looking like a stern librarian with her glasses and hair pulled back into a tight bun, De Selle tries hard to make you forget her role as one of Gemser's lovers in Emanuelle in America , but doesn't quite succeed. In contrast, all Stoppi has to do is deploy that look, that withering gaze, to recall Joe D'Amato's Beyond the Darkness to let you know something unpleasant is about to follow.
The formula also requires the resident lesbian, here all the more unpleasant as a snitch to the guards. Oddly, however, the filmmakers depart what expectation by having our heroine domiciled not in the lesbian's crowded cell but with a harmless-looking, slightly cracked old timer with a pet cockroach.
As a Gemser film, formula dictates that her real-life partner Gabriele Tinti will show up at some point. And, lo and behold, there he is, the prison doctor, wearing a prisoner's grey uniform below his lab coat; he is an inmate in the adjacent men's prison for the mercy killing of his wife.
Finally, of course, formula demands lashings (groan) of sadism and torture. First, Laura is sentenced to a night in the hole for throwing the contents of the slopping out bucket over a couple of the warders. It doesn't seem too bad, until the rats come crawling out the sewer pipe, crawl all over her and start biting; while the sequence doesn't quite convince, it's definitely an improvement on the painted gerbils of Rats: Nights of Terror . Later, she gets placed in a metal drum while the warders bash on the outside with their truncheons – not nice.
The plot finally kicks in once Laura's true identity is revealed. (Depending on the cut of the film one is viewing that Gemser is playing Emanuelle is either made clear at the outset or only around the time that De Selle finds out, Emanuelle being deprived the use of one of those nifty spy cameras on this occasion.) Will Emanuelle be able to make her expose of the regime before they can surreptitiously break and do away with her?
Gemser is, as ever, gorgeous to look at (if perhaps too stick-like for some tastes) and happy to disrobe, but inexpressive. In this case, however, her blankness actually works with the film rather than against it, coming across as a kind of stoicism.
Mattei's direction is functional but effective, with the film as a whole benefitting considerably from a sparse score by Luigi Ceccarelli, dominated by a few repeated piano, harmonica and synthesiser led-motifs.
The same personnel also made Blade Violent / Emanuelle in Prison / Emanuelle Escapes From Hell back-to-back with this one, further adding to the "what film are we watching again?" confusion.
Copyright © K H Brown 2002-2005
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