"The Advocate"
The Advocate (1993) was covered and reviewed by Scoopy a day or two ago, but, as I always love courtroom dramas, I dove in. The film is everything Scoopy said it was, and goes into fairly intricate detail as to how the upper classes use the superstition of the masses to hide their price fixing, how the clergy seduces "Good wives" in the confessional, and even goes a long way towards explaining the belief in witchcraft and magic so common with the peasants. Best of all, it packages all of the main plot, and all of the motivations and beliefs of each segment of society, but it does it without ruining what is a very good yarn.
See Scoopy's review for the nudity summary. I agree that this film is a C+. It is a very good film, but might be a touch cerebral for some.
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Amina Annabi
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Harriet Walter
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Lysette Anthony
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Sophie Dix
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Unknown
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Emanuelle in America (1976):
Spoilers. Not that it matters.
You may think that sequels are a fairly modern
development in films, dating back to Rocky, the Godfather, and Jaws.
After all, there is no movie called To Kill Another Mockingbird, or
Some Like it Hotter, or Citizen Kane 2: The Revenge of Rosebud.
Well, maybe you're right about "big"
movies, but sequels, serials, and pseudo sequels were the staple of grade-b
filmdom for years. The first Tarzan flick had a seemingly endless string of sequels,
for example. For the exploitation movies, sequels were their
bread and butter. If a formula worked, they used it again and again.
Sometimes, a rival company would title its films to make them seem
like sequels to a successful film from the competition. A classic
example is Ilsa: the Wicked Warden. It does not use the character of
Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, and it does not even have a character in
the film named Ilsa. But it stars Dyanne Thorne, the star of the
Ilsa films, so the marketers and distributors wanted to capitalize
on that name recognition and conveniently forgot that Thorne's
character was named Greta!
Emanuelle in America has a very similar pedigree.
The original "Emmanuelle" was a movie based on the real diaries of a
real woman, Emmanuelle Arsan. Emanuelle in America is not based on
Emmanuelle Arsan's diaries, and there's no character named
Emmanuelle at all. It is about a globe-hopping sexual adventuress,
a premise which is sort of related to the original Emmanuelle premise, since
Arsan had been a diplomat's wife, and the REAL Emmanuelle films
feature exotic locations. If you're really sharp, you've noticed
that I keep changing my spelling of Emanuelle. The scam films
changed the spelling to one "m", hoping to step one degree further
away from litigation. I guess it worked. These guys didn't sue each other
that much. These are small potatoes productions, and lawyers are
expensive. Even if they had gone to court and won, a settlement
would have been impossible to determine. In the shadowy world of
drive-ins and grindhouses and unrecorded cash transactions, the
sales and rentals were tabulated, shall we say, somewhat informally.
If you could prove that you were entitled to 100% of the profits of
Emanuelle in America, it would be very difficult to say how much
that would be, and you can bet that the "official" profits were
minimal, if there were any at all on the official books.
Emanuelle in America is actually one of the "Black
Emanuelle" films starring Laura Gemser. (Gemser also had a
non-starring role in the second of the real Emmanuelle films.) Not
only is there no Emmanuelle Arsan in the Black Emanuelle films, but
Gemser is not even black or African. She is an Indonesian, and her
skin is a beautiful reddish-brown color. I guess that "Rust
Emanuelle" didn't sound as good. Oh, yeah, and she doesn't spend
much time in America either! Most of the action takes place in
Venice, the Bahamas, and other ports of call.
So there you have it for Black
Emanuelle in America. No black woman, no Emmanuelle Arsan, pretty
much no America.
Quick notes:
1. Before Tom Green came along, I think this must
have been the Citizen Kane of horse hand-job movies. What am I thinking of? It is still the
Citizen Kane of horse hand-job movies.
2. It seems that the film was meant to be modular,
capable of being re-assembled into several versions, softcore, hardcore, or hardcore with
extreme sexual violence.
a. The DVD has all the footage, including
extensive 8mm footage of extreme gore and torture, in a mock snuff
film. This is really not my kind of stuff. There was nudity amidst
the violence, but it was disgusting - Women hung up by meathooks in
their vaginas, women having their breasts sliced off, etc. Not only
do I have no taste for this, neither have I a stomach for it, and
was nauseated by this footage. It was, one must concede, very
realistic. Too realistic.
b. The other "disposable" footage is hardcore
action featuring people who have no lines or maybe a couple of lines,
and do not appear in the any other context except in that footage.
Since they are not relevant to the plot, this footage could easily
be excised to create an r-rated film as coherent as the uncut
version. Of course, that was got a high hurdle to clear. Lewis
Carroll's poems are as coherent as this film.
c. The first half of the movie is a tame R - not
even any spread shots. Then, suddenly, it's penetration, double oral
shots, and snuff films.
3. The damned film doesn't have any credits except
a list of names at the end. I could have identified two more
actresses if I knew who played which part.
The film is strongest in the areas of sexual and
violent content. There is plenty of sex and violence, and the
portion in the film proper is
photographed quite competently on good film stock. (The snuff film
is made to look like what we imagine a real 8mm snuff film to look
like.) Gemser doesn't do
any hardcore, but she shows it all, and she's gorgeous.
The film is very weak in every other way. It's
dubbed (poorly). It really has no story arc at all. Laura is a
fashion photographer and free-lance investigative photojournalist.
Some scenes are completely irrelevant distractions from the forward
movement of the story, but I'm not sure that matters, since the
story really goes nowhere.
Spoilers coming:
Laura has a bunch of unrelated adventures. She
goes undercover in a harem, and finds some weapons in boxes labeled
"horse shoes". Then she films the orgies of the decadent rich people
in Venice. Then she investigates a "pleasure island", which is a
pay-for-play resort for the very rich. Then she starts to get wind
of a snuff film ring, and investigates some kind of ultra-patriotic
U.S. Government official, maybe a senator or representative (they
talk to one another while walking in front of the White House!). She
watches his favorite snuff film and feigns excitement, so the
senator drugs her with LSD and takes her for a real snuff-related
junket. She wakes up after dreaming that she saw
a snuff film being made in some exotic place, but it turns out that she was not dreaming.
She had enough wits about her to record everything with a secret
camera. She turns it in to her editor, and he's impressed, but the
publisher (presumably a member of the same corrupt world as the
senator) won't let them use the material. Laura tells the newspaper
to shove it, and goes on vacation in darkest Africa, or someplace
with stone age tribes and elephants, and she finds out that her
adventurous boyfriend has jokingly sold her to the tribal chief for
some pretty shells and a goat. After a day in the village, Laura and
her boyfriend wake up surrounded by Americans moving about the
village in hustle and bustle. It seems that the chief made a deal to
use his village as a setting for a Hollywood movie. Shocked and
disappointed, Laura and her beau run away from the village and find
a deserted beach. The movie ends.
I went into some detail in the above paragraph so
you could see that nothing in the film is much related to anything
else, and nothing ever gets resolved. Every dramatic conflict gets
forgotten when Laura heads off for a new adventure. The fate of the
weapons smuggler with a harem? Who knows? The fate of the people
making snuff films? Still makin' 'em.
Based on this description, this is a C. It is supposed to be a movie which
presents a flimsy storyline an excuse to showcase extreme sex
and violence. In the uncut version, it certainly delivers. No
rip-off here. If you want sex and violence, here's your film.
- Laura Gemser (1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16,
17,
18,
19,
20,
21,
22,
23,
24)
While I'm thinking about it, To Kill Another Mockingbird would
have been a good idea, because it would have brought back Karmic
harmony. You see, the Iroquois believed that killing a mockingbird
was wrong, and that the evil could only be undone by killing
another mockingbird. The lesson for you youngsters: if you go on a
mockingbird hunt, always kill an even number. OTHER CRAP:
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From
the Incredible Hulk to Kelly. Funny review from The Filthy
Critic, although I have no goddamned idea what he's talking
about.
-
DREW BARRYMORE naughty tattoo pics
-
RetroCRUSH looks
at the deleted material from the original King Kong. See Fay
Wray's breasts (in 1933!). See Kong stomp.
-
MTV cleanses Christina's suggestive new video
-
Dennis Miller emerges as a new voice for Bush re-election.
Miller likened Howard Dean to Neville Chamberlain, a very
reasonable comedy reference, but one understood by about three
people.
-
Samuel L spills Episode III spoiler
- More
realistic version of the Honda "cog" commercial
-
The lowest-rated movies of all time at Rotten Tomatoes, the
ones which got ZERO good reviews, sorted by year from most recent.
(There are three this year.) My main man, Roberto Begnini, makes
the 2002 list.
- The
national "do not call" list is growing at the rate of 1000 people
per second, despite a lack of publicity. Do you remember when
a ringing phone was a welcome sound? I haven't answered mine in
about ten years, except for familiar caller ID's.
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Rodney Dangerfield to remake 'Back to School'
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'Kung Fu' Carradine kicked by ex. Marina Carradine alleged in
a Los Angeles Superior Court declaration that the offbeat actor
engages in 'abhorrent and deviant sexual behavior, which is
potentially deadly,' according to TheSmokingGun.com. If engaging
in potentially fatal sex is a crime, Guy Richie could be in
serious trouble.
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Joey Buttafuoco to play gangster in independent movie
-
Canada has too many beavers. Canadians say that their beavers
no longer serve any purpose. Same is true for Bea Arthur.
- Clown Sex.
Weird stuff, especially the ol' custard pie in the twat trick,
which Soupy Sales seems to have missed.
-
The Ultimate Gay & Lesbian Cars. Huh?
-
: MAXIM ONLINE tribute to Charlie's Angels
Other crap
archives. May also include newer material than the ones above,
since it's sorta in real time.
Mailbox:
Just a quick note on your bit about
comedies and the AA's. THE PRODUCERS won for best original
screenplay, beating out 2001 and keeping Kubrick Oscarless (at
least for the major categories). From a bio of Mel Brooks:
In 1968, he wrote and directed his first feature film, The
Producers, starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, which
earned him an Academy Award for the best original screenplay
written directly for the screen. I go to your site everyday.
Even though my friends are not subscribers, they all know about
you and the site. We discuss a lot of your reviews and I often
share your links from the Other Crap section. Thanks and keep
up the good work.
T. L.
Yipes. Right you are. How did I not
know that?
"Now the Fuhrer, there was a
painter. He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon. Two
coats!"
More quotes from The Producers:
http://us.imdb.com/Quotes?0063462
Thanks
MOVIE REVIEWS:
Here
are the latest movie reviews available at scoopy.com.
- The yellow asterisks indicate that I wrote the
review, and am deluded into thinking it includes humor.
- If there is a white asterisk, it means that
there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined
there might be something else of interest.
- A blue asterisk indicates the review is written
by Tuna (or Lawdog or Junior or C2000 or Realist or ICMS or Mick
Locke, or somebody else besides me)
- If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too
ashamed to admit it.
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