Tag Archives: Emanuelle’s Revenge

Playboy Discovers Vengeful EVIL’s Hidden BDSM Room A Little Too Snug. “Emanuelle’s Revenge” reviewed! (Cinephobia Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Emanuelle’s Revenge now on DVD from Cinephobia Releasing!

A wealthy businessman philanders his way through woman in a pursuit of satisfactory conquest.  The formidable challenge of bedding a hard-to-get woman arouses him and the chase is all that more thrilling and erotic.  His persistence and perfect man act pays off with up-and-coming model Francesca, but for the playboy, Francesca becomes another notch in his belt and quickly implodes Francesca’s romanticized relationship after a sexual tryst in the public eye.  A year later, he begins his surmounting quest again with Emanuelle, a renowned writer in a lesbian relationship.  The beautiful and darkly seductive woman catches his eye and the game begins as he uses every excuse to rendezvous with her despite the Emanuelle’s partner standoffish opposition, but as his tenacity appears to be paying off as she leads him on, awarding his constant charm with favorable kittenish returns, Emanuelle is actually leading him straight into the jaws of a deceitful plan.

Italian co-directors Monica Carpanese and Dario Germani are copiously inspired by the heyday of Italian Eurotrash cinema.  The actress-turned-debut director Carpanese has starred in a handful of erotic and horror thrillers of the prolific trashy filmmaker Bruno Mattei, such as “Dangerous Attraction” and “Madness,” while also having a principal performance in the 2022 sequel to Joe D’Amato’s notorious cannibalism film “Anthropophagus.  Her colleague Dario Germani is also the cinematographer for the spaced-out follow-up as well as establishing himself in the genre not as a filmmaker behind the lens but also a director with genre films under the belt with “Anthropophagus II,” a dissimilar lover’s anguish in “Lettera H,” and a snuff-slasher “The Slaughter.”  Carpanese and Germani’s next collaborating venture continues with another D’Amato influence mixed with the popular erotic series, and its tangent spinoffs, of Just Jaeckin’s “Emmanuelle” that has official and unofficial sequels spanning all through Europe with enticingly, titillating erotic stimuli and thrills.  Their explicit explication of the near 50-year-old sexy-laced franchise comes in the form of “Emanuelle’s Revenge.”  Dropping the second “m” along with the choice of similar story and title moves the film closer to being a remake of the Joe D’Amato “Emanuelle and Francoise,” aka “Emanuelle e Francoise” or “Emanuelle’s Revenge.”  Carpanese pens the Marco Gaudenzi and Pierpaolo Marcelli produced script under the production flags of Flat Parioli, Haley Pictures, and TNM Productions. 

“Emanuelle’s Revenge” is carried by a small, four-person principal cast and half that for peripheral players within a dual-timeline story that provides the same cat-and-mouse game but with different, yet shocking outcomes on both of them.  At the tip of the spear is playboy Leonardo played by Gianni Rosato.  Sporting his best bandholz beard and pony bun, Rosato’s aggressive entrepreneurship extends beyond the working stiff hours and into the extracurricular activities of hunting down and dominating the opposite sex to sate his kicks for kink.  As the primary principal, Rosata receives the screen time that digs further into Leonardo’s psyche and what’s revealed about Leonardo’s nature is obvious trouble with an aggressive flirtation to the point where his whole game is akin to a stalker, showing up unannounced where he knows his targeted woman will be, obtaining their property that he has no right to, and essentially sucking their face with really bellicose kisses that look like they hurt.  Okay, maybe the latter is more overzealousness on Rosata’s part but certainly adds to Leonardo’s alarming behavior to which women seem to be attracted to as if giving into the idea that women prefer bad boys.  Such as the case in the first narrative with Francesca, a promising model with a now sex-relationship smart attitude after a previous relationship went terribly wrong with revenge porn.  Played by Ilaria Loriga in her own credited role, the young actress isn’t quite the epitome of innocence but is understandably weary to fall in love again with the persistent Leonardo but with all the foretell warnings of a disaster in the making, Francesca’s penned as sorely naïve and having learned not one single lesson of her past relationship with promiscuous men.  A year later, in the second act’s story, Emanuelle strolls into the picture under the olive-skin and deep eyebrows of Beatric Schiaffino who bats enticing eyes of the titular character’s hidden agenda. Schiaffino’s crafts a demeaner starkly different against her previous year counterpart as Emanuelle’s coquettishness doesn’t refrain from the fact she’s already in a hot-and-heavy relationship and matching Leonardo’s hot-to-trot escapade with a come-hither that’s just out of his reach. If a rake beckons a game of amorous desire, then Emanuelle enacts a game of her own, one of a lure to lead the blind right into her spider’s web and Schiaffino properly tightropes pleasure and purpose to a somatosensory stimulation level. “Emanuelle’s Revenge” rounds out with Luca Avallone as Leonardo’s licentious friend and business understudy, Ilde Mauri as Emanuelle’s lesbian partner, and Miriam Dossena as Leonardo’s 20-something daughter who suddenly pops into play in the Emanuelle story.

Even though “Emanuelle and Francoise” has never traipsed across my eyes, from what I’ve read the Joe D’Amato and the coproduction of Monica Carpanese and Dario Germani share a lot in common, but the modern-day version of this sordid tale of lust and revenge sticks to the venereal veneer only whereas D’Amato engages a cannibalism and other ghastly horrors. “Emanuelle’s Revenge” seduces with melodramatics, frisky fantasies, and contemptible thralldom because of one man’s wandering libido, focusing tremendously on the building game of mostly pavalar rather than diving into shock value. The narrative begins with a suicide of Francesca, jumping half nude off a busy passenger vehicle bridge, and this segues into Leonardo’s assertive activity into Francesca’s life and so the tale’s non-linear format is already incredulously fated with tossed in opening scene just to grab attention. When following Leonardo’s uncomfortable pursuit, and uncomfortable henpeck kissing, of Francesca, the audience is just along for the ride up to the point of incident where they’re abruptly blue-balled by cut-to a year later without knowing why Francesca decided to throw in her life towel. The brain and our movie-watching experience eventually catchup with the fact everything will be explained at the climatic, but the format jars the assimilating process a tad. Throughout the narrative, there’s plenty of a T&A to go around as I believe nearly every actress with speaking lines drops at least her top, living up to the long history of “Emmanuelle’s,” or “Emanuelle’s” fleshy affluence and erotic elements. Considering the plot twist, Carpanese’s approach doesn’t compel any creativity into the mostly remade erotic-revenger and makes contact with formulaic properties that poison any kind of novel ideas that might have been indited in the inner story layers.

Arriving at number 8 on the spine for Cinephobia Releasing, “Emanuelle’s Revenge” is now on DVD, presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The MPEG-2 encoded DVD9 has a sleek look albeit tumbling through a bitrate spread of 5 to 7 Mbps. Some surface coloring suffuse, especially on skin where similar tones seep into the adjacent due to block boundary artifact, but the amount is very little and doesn’t sully much to render the picture an admixed wash in the lion’s share of soft lighting. Details are okay here with the stunning urban landscapes and more opened metropolitan venues, such as a rooftop party, opening up audiences to the chic levels of high society’s profanation of control and sex. The release offers two Italian language audio tracks: A Dolby Digital 5.1 surround and a 2.0 stereo. If asked, I would suggest less channels as they are redundant and useless and go for the 2.0 stereo as there’s not much frequential range in what is essentially a talking head film with an exposition driven narrative. Dialogue is clearly and cleanly stated overtop other audio layers with a powerfully boosted stock file soundtrack in parallel unison to the theatrics. English subtitles are optionally available and the error-free translations keep up with dialogue pacing. Only other Cinephobia Releasing film trailers, including “Brightwood,” “The Goldsmith,” “The Human Trap,” and “Amor Bandido,” are available bonus content. The black background front cover delineates deliciously Beatric Schiaffino as the titular Emanuelle sitting open robed, in thigh-high laced stockings, and on her wicker chair throne. This image reminds me of a mistake in this revealing scene with the very first image of Emanuelle sitting in the oversized back chair resembling closely the front cover image, but the subsequent scenes have her once flesh exposed chest to midriff covered up with censurable continuity. Inside the DVD Amary case lie no insert and the same provocative front cover Emanuelle image more centrally cropped down and blow up to emphasize the seductive siren. The not rated, 83-minute feature is limited to a region one playback. “Emanuelle’s Revenge” spices up the contemporary franchise with erotic entails, exorbitant egos, and illicit indecencies despite its sacrificing of pacing and organization for sleaze, skin, and a side dish of kink.


Emanuelle’s Revenge now on DVD from Cinephobia Releasing!

EVIL Has an Eye On You! “The Goldsmith” reveiwed! (Cinephobia Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Goldsmith” on DVD From Cinephobia Releasing!

Childhood friends and career criminals Stefano, Arianna, and Roberto plan their next heist of an elderly couple.  Suspecting the older husband to be a jeweler with a hidden lab stashed with product, the trio work off a plan based off a third party’s overheard intel that the house is well worth the score.  Successfully penetrating the home’s security system, securing the elderly couple, and discovering the jeweler’s hidden cache of priceless jewelries, the felonious friends believe they hit big in their home invasion scheme until the lab door suddenly closes behind them and they find themselves at the mercy of the old man, free from his confines and divulging intimate knowledge about each one of them over a videocam feed peering inside the lab.  Trapped, relationship destroying secrets are revealed by their seasoned captor who has something more odiously consequential in store for them than just letting their skeletons out of the closet.

The age-old idiom of to have a heart of gold, used to describe person’s generous nature, does not apply to Italian director Vincenzo Ricchiuto’s 2022 home invasion and survival thriller “The Goldsmith” where the absence of generosity gives way to greed, treachery, and one jeweler’s search to see inner beauty.  Known in Italy as L’orafo in the production’s native tongue, the writer-director’s debut feature tackling both sides of the creative spectrum in writing and helming is co-written alongside Germano Tarricone, co-writer of Italian horror thrillers “Eaters “and “In The Box.”  Together, “The Goldsmith” does play on the idiom more than meets the eye with the immeasurable principal characters that twist to knife harder in their gutting revelation or deceitful explanation.  From production companies Almost Famous Productions, Minerva Films, DEA Films (“The Perfect Husband”), and in association with Hurricane Studios, “The Goldsmith” is executively produced by Tarricone and the Ted Nicolauo directed “The Etruscan Mask” producer, Antonio Guadalopi.

The intimate casting provides a tight story primarily set at the older couple’s home with brief secondary story parallel and flashback sets confined to a mechanic shop, outside a bowling alley, and inside a nightclub.  The three thick as thieves are the nervously confident Stefano (Mike Cimini), his oversexed girlfriend Arianna (Tania Bambaci, “The Perfect Husband”), and the careless drug addict Roberto (Gianluca Vannuci, “Lui non esiste”) who become ensnared by an enigmatic goldsmith (Giuseppe Pambieri, “Yellow Emanuelle”) and his wife (Stefania Casini, “Suspira” ’77).  Cimini, Bambaci, and Vannuci favor ruffian routine but their performances are undercut by the script’s lack of development between Stefano and Arianna’s reclined relationship and the significance of why Stefano did a heist job on his own without his crew that seemingly had some unclear intensity in the backdrop on why he had to go at it alone.  The confusion of the first fib explanation from Stefano is quickly swept under the rug by the second bombshell that involves Arianna and Roberto, one that clearly overshadows Stefano’s deceit tenfold with its more transparent and personal complexion, and Arianna’s fib is more he-said, she-said that throws more shade toward the triangle-friendship as lie-after-lie quickly devolves an already brittle relationship into a flatlining hate to where they turn on each other, or at least two of them do.  The more interesting characters of the bunch are definitely the older couple with ulterior motives, luring bad people into their home just to trick them into being a part something far more sinister for their health.  Pambieri and Casini show their veteranized chops, delivering distinct lines within their distinct character voices and mannerisms but working together as a unit in a deranged, but endearing dispositioned husband and wife, especially Casini with her semi-handicapped character’s lady of the house demeanor that wears a crooked smile underneath.  “The Goldsmith” rounds out with Andrea Porti, Matteo Silvestri, and Antonio Cortese.

“The Goldsmith” might be inherently wealthy with its immeasurable karat of everyone is a villain in the story but the story itself isn’t as rich with its struggling with poor development to connect the pieces together in a coherent way.   In the overall picture from a high-level perspective, the basics of the acts are evident to where we’re setup with these three criminals looting a home, they find themselves in a pickle with a couple not as enfeebled as described, and with the second and most rising threat plot point being the goldsmith’s eye on the prize for his captives.  Yet, the ancillary scenes muddle up the support.  Point in case, the opening scene of the three hoodlums running from a dressed down priest, and the only reason we know it’s a priest is because the actor is listed as such in the credits.  The scene doesn’t explain much other than the troubled youngsters have presumably stolen a cross and have murdered the priest after a length chase on foot, setting up Stefano, Arianna, and Roberto as the antihero principals but the scene impresses more importance, like a moment to refer back to yet that moment never resurfaces into the grand scheme of the narrative.  Other similar instances rear-up throughout, questioning the motivations and the associations often left unsatisfactory by absence of valuable fill-gap material.  “The Goldsmith’s” themes of honor among thieves and attempting to see the good within come over clearly through a blanket of dark iniquities on both ends, leaving no good feelings for any of the antiheroic roles that flipflop for higher ground in this Italian-made home invasion thriller. 

Coming in as release number six on the spine for Cinephobia Releasing, “The Goldsmith” comes to DVD for the first time in North America. The MPEG-2 compression encoded DVD is presented in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Unfortunately, the Cinephobia release has a substantial artefact issue with the higher information rate on format’s compression encoder, resulting in a contouring blob during the first act’s darker scenes. The front and center macro-blocking ring produces a lighter shadow that becomes more of a visual obstacle to see past. Once the compression levels out, we do see some seesawing delineation details in a rather hard-lit, noir-lite cinematography from Francesco Collinelli (“Demon’s Twilight”), but the majority of details come through nicely, especially on skin textures and tones. The Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound offers forefront dialogue with cleanness and clearness. No apparent issues with the digital recording as the sound design forks up good depth between medium and closeup scenes and through the video-com as well as a selective range with some of the gorier moments with squishy-scoops and hammer-bashes. English subtitles are available with good pacing and a flawless, accurate translation from what I can tell as I don’t understand or speak Italian but understand the roots of Latin-based language. Bonus features a feature-length behind-the-scenes raw footage of the principal photography and trailers for Cinephobia Releasing films, such as “Brightwood,” “Emanuelle’s Revenge,” “The Human Trap,” and “Amor Bandido.” Physical features include a standard DVD amaray case with the titular character in a dark black and gold yellow closeup one-sided front cover, peering into the metaphorical windows of your soul with the jeweler’s head mounted magnifying specs in an eerie image of individuality prospecting. Inside there is no insert included and the disc art is a downscaled version of the front cover image with title underneath on top of a black background. The 89-minute film is not rated and though not listed on the back cover, playback is suspected to be region 1 locked. “The Goldsmith” aims to pull the wool over one’s eyes, or more accurately, replace the eyes altogether, with the deluding lustrousness of a home invasion thriller turned into an eyeful scoop of insanity.

“The Goldsmith” on DVD From Cinephobia Releasing!