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The Emerald Forest
1985, 1080hd
All comments, clips and captures by Brainscan
Once before, eons ago, I did some DVD captures
of The Emerald Forest (1985) and offered a jaundiced
opinion of the movie, but that was my mistake on a
couple of levels.
First off, I did not send along videos of the many
scenes in which Dira Paes, Tetchie Agbayani and a host
of other women - by one count, in one scene, the number
is 28 - run around topless to reveal perfectly natural
hooties and bottomless enough to show off some very trim
Brazilian booty. My bad.
Allow me to fix that oversight by offering hi def videos
of almost 15 minutes of exposure, most of it showing us
two women known well enough, plus lots of other unnamed
or obscure gals, thrown in for good measure. This
movie has all the credentials to be a legend among those
of us who read the Funhouse every dadgum day.
Second sin of mine was to take the movie literally and
complain at some length of its underlying message that
life in the Amazon basin is idyllic – a paradise on
Earth – whereas anything else done anywhere else is a
scar on the buttocks of humanity. I had not
appreciated that Emerald Forest was meant as fantasy, no
less than Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or the
legend of King Arthur. But this is a fantasy
written by a teenage boy.
Think about a place with only two grownups, neither of
whom ever tells you what to do, and a large of group of
friends with whom you can frolic by day and by night, a
host of teenaged gals who wear next to nothing at any
time and then add the opportunity to spend your life in
a hammock with Dira Paes. Sign me the fuck
up.
The director substitutes bulldozers for dragons and
hawks for eagles, a jungle for the shire and brown
beauties for elves, but shoot-dang this could well be
the world that Tolkien imagined if you add a ton of T
and a hectare of A. So maybe it is something
Tolkien might have written when he was a horny
18-year-old. That view of Emerald helped me get
through it again, frame by frame, and it allowed me
tolerate the over-wrought acting of Powers Booth, as a
white man in brown world. In scene after scene, he
displayed all the mature restraint and measured grace of
Madame du Barry on her way to the guillotine.
1) A ten-minute video of Dira Paes in several
scenes – mostly in bright light
2) An outdoor scene of Dira with Tetchie Agbayani;
3) A group scene with Dira and about 20 other gals
herded by the much more darkly-skinned and warlike
members of the neighboring Fierce People. You might want
to watch this group scene carefully because you will see
evidence of full-frontal-ness, as the small fragments of
cloth covering their nether regions move with the
running motion of a few women. And you will see
that one of the extras in the scene cannot keep a
straight face even though her character should be
horrified and scared to death.
4) A second group scene in which Dira and other members
of their tribe say Buh-bye to Mr. Booth’s
character.
5) Tetchie’s own video, but since she hangs around in
subdued light, the scene was hard to capture.
Allow me to mention that Agbayani is a name straight
from the Philippines, as in Tetchie herself. One
wonders on what sort of raft a Pacific Islander gal
would make her way across the expanse of that ocean,
around Cape Horn or perhaps through the Magellan
Straits, up the Atlantic coast of South America to enter
the mile-wide mouth of the Amazon River and then
up-river, against a mighty current, to reach the wilds
of the Amazon Basin. Or perhaps the casting
director had a thing for her. Can’t blame him –
she’s a babe.
The captures:
I can understand why The Emerald Forest is a
forgotten film among the wide community of movie goers –
it just simply sucks ass as a work of cinema, praised
only for its visuals. But what about us of the
Funhouse, when those visuals include the yumminess that
was Dira Paes, nekkid for nigh on to 15
minutes??!! She and the film deserve much more
love.
Ms. Paes followed up Emerald with a long and
award-winning career in the cinema of Brazil, and you
can see why that is true in this movie. Henry
Fonda (I think) said that acting is what you do when
you’re not saying your lines. Look at her eyes and
her mouth, the angle of her head and the stance of her
body – even in the still captures – and you will see
that the gal knew how to act from the
get-go.
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