Emanuelle e Françoise (Le sorelline) (1975)

Synopsis:

Emanuelle (Lindt) is out to avenge her sister (Gori), who committed suicide after escaping from her sadistic lover Carlo (Eastman). So she chains him up in her basement, drugs him, and forces him to watch her having sex. Carlo starts hallucinating all kinds of bloody horrors and cannibalistic doings, so he decides he has to break free and kill Emanuelle.

Review:

Just Emanuelle and Françoisebefore he embarked on an outrageous five-film cycle of Emanuelle and FrançoiseBlack Emanuelle films starring Laura Gemser (and a few sort-of connected additional films as well), Italian exploitation maestro Joe D’Amato actually chimed in on the rapidly growing European erotica craze inaugurated by 1974’s Emmanuelle with his first bona fide collision of shocking sex and violence. Better known to American video hounds as Emanuelle’s Revenge, Emanuelle and Françoise found him working for the fifth time with his most famous leading man, Anthropophagus and Absurd star and screenwriter George Eastman. Surprisingly, this one is almost as extreme as those later outings with its initially sexy antics soon turning sadistic before plunging into outright horror territory for the final half hour.

Deriving its plot wholesale from the Greek sexploitation film The Wild Pussycat, our sordid tale begins with sweet model Françoise (Cry of a Prostitute’s Gori) shopping around to find just the right cigar for her boyfriend, Carlo (Eastman). Unfortunately she comes home just in time to catch him in the sack with another Emanuelle and Françoisewoman, which prompts him to kick a despondent Françoise out on the street. Desolate, she reacts by hurling herself to her death in Emanuelle and Françoisefront a train, leaving behind a letter about her recent tragedies to be read by her sister, Emanuelle (Who Saw Her Die’s Lindt). As it turns out, Carlo was even worse than he appeared as he debased and mentally abused the poor girl in a string of increasingly seedy forced sexual situations, so Emanuelle decides to get even. That entails getting to Carlo close enough to drug him and imprison him at a remote villa in a soundproof room complete with speakers and two-way mirrors, so Emanuelle can torture him with an escalating series of sexual encounters that soon cause him to detach from reality quite violently.

Though it certainly works well as a softcore sex film, Emanuelle and Françoise really comes into its own once Eastman’s ordeal really kicks in and he starts hallucinating mass orgies, a crazed cannibal dinner, a bloody machete attack, and plenty more. It’s little wonder the film failed to really catch on with sex-seeking audiences at the time as it really bares its teeth in that final stretch (to such an extent it was released on British VHS as Blood Vengeance), but now of course it’s a pure sleazy delight with enough nasty twists to keep seasoned Eurocult vets on their toes.

— Nathaniel Thompson (Mondo Digital)