Black Country Emmanuelle? In ‘Emmanuelle and Friends (197?)’

EMMANUELLE AND FRIENDS
1975? Released on Mountain video in 1980

“Hi there, I’m Emmanuelle, I’ve just had a super holiday in Thailand with some friends, I’ll introduce them later”.

Emmanuelle and Friends is a mystery movie from the early days of video, “an adults only video sex presentation” supposedly filmed in Thailand and Birmingham (!), its made up of three short films though can only manage a meagre 24 minute running time. All of these shorts look as if they pre-date the 1980 video release date by a few years. Just to confuse matters further the first opens with the title card “Emmanuelle from Bangkok” the only credit, thus contradicting the video box over what the film is actually called.

Rolling around naked with a Thailand brochure, Emmanuelle complete with a voiceover that sounds like someone attempting an Honor Blackman impersonation, reminisces about her recent Thailand holiday “just thinking about it turns me on”. Emmanuelle certainly had a lively time and subsequently remembers seducing Fiona “a very good friend” and hooking up for bedroom romps with Peter “he’s just well….”. Minimalism is the name of the game in Emmanuelle and Friends, with the entirety of this segment taking place in the same room, or to be more specific the same bed. Everything time we cut back to the bed, different variations of people are on it. Eventually Emmanuelle, Fiona and Peter get their wires crossed and end up bringing their partners back to the room at the same time leading to protracted bout of group sex “I even got a bit confused at times” giggles Emmanuelle. Of course eagle eyed viewers, in fact viewers with any sort of eyes, will soon cotton on that there is nothing remotely Thai about Emmanuelle and Friends. Still the film adamantly does its best to convince you otherwise, blasting generic ‘Oriental’ music away on the soundtrack and cutting Thailand travelogue into the middle of the sex scenes without much rhyme or reason. The big question is if Emmanuelle loves the sights and sounds of Thailand so much, as her voiceover professes, why does she never bother to leave her hotel room.

Emmanuelle is dropped entirely from the second story which has an air of The Wife Swappers about it. Mary, played by an actress recognizable as one of the women in the film within a film in “Die Lollas”, arrives with her husband at their friends Penny and Peter’s place. Though the setting and car number plates are identifiable as British, the film places particular attention on Penny and Peter’s Beware of the Dog sign which is in Spanish (“Atencion Al Perro”). Mary and her husband barely get though the door before Penny and Peter suggest a game of strip-poker “just as well we’re all friends” thinks Mary. The kit-offery and card playing continue till yet another couple, Lucy and Martin show up. As Lucy is no good at cards she matter of factly suggests they cease all this malarkey and have an orgy instead, so a game of strip poker turns into a car keys in a glass affair. The sex here, like in the rest of the film, is stronger than you would see in British sex comedies of the time but a few shades away from being hardcore.

While the first and second tales try hard to convince the viewer they have been shot in Thailand and Spain, the third is firmly routed in mid-Seventies, confessions era, British suburbia. ‘Mary’ reappears this time as a housewife with nothing to do all day but eye up muscular handyman “Big Mick”. No common or garden handyman this, Big Mick is played by ex-champion bodybuilder Howard Nelson, a regular in Harrison Marks films, wearing the same tracksuit as he did in Marks’ blue movie “Duty Free”. As Big Mick is the lust object of all the local housewives, Mary is over the moon when he calls her up and asks her to come round. Contradicting her swinging adventures in the second story, Mary comes across as extremely sexually desperate here, and is soon stripping off and trying to impress the handyman. She gets no where “he seemed shy or something”. The director of Emmanuelle and Friends was clearly privy to Nelson’s asexual persona and plays on it to mischievously comic effect here. Try as she might, cavorting naked in front of him and feeling her nipples, Mary can’t seem to get Howard’s attention, he’s deeply engrossed in a copy of The Evening Standard. When he does finally catch sight of her, Howard reacts with a mixture of confusion and terror, hilarious in an ‘elephant scared of a mouse’ fashion. Eventually he obliges by stripping down to a pair of purple Y-fronts and a gold medallion in the shape of the word ‘SEX’ then begrudgingly makes love to her in the manner of a gym training session. The only time Howard seems at ease though is flexing his pecks as Mary fauns over his ultra-large chest, a narcissistic show of muscle for the ladies. While nothing special story wise, Emmanuelle and Friends does contain its fare share of memorable filmmaking eccentricities, the constant use of fade in/fade outs, the obscenely noisily male panting on the soundtrack which sounds like someone in the midst of a bad dream rather than moans of pleasure, and is used for all the film’s male characters. The appearance of a ‘Die Lollas’ actress as well as Howard Nelson especially does make you wonder if Harrison Marks was the films anonymous mastermind and if Emmanuelle and Friends could just be three of his mid-70’s Maximus short sex films glued together for the video era. Its easy to imagine Marks at work creating a one room, short sex film appropriation of the Emmanuelle style (all you need is nude extras, a bed, a wicker chair and some clumsily inserted Thai travelogue). As well as a British sex comedy version of his pal Nelson’s daily problem of Howard’s muscular frame making him the target of attention from Marks models, like Sue Bond. Emmanuelle and Friends may want each other, but all Howard Nelson seems to want is to be is left alone. “I’m sure I’m more interesting than the sports page” Mary complains to the disinterested muscleman.

Despite clearly never being hardcore, the film (under its ‘from Bangkok’ moniker) was re-released onto the R18 market in the mid-Eighties.


Text: Gavcrimson 2006
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