Compared are the French DVD by Neo Publishing and the Italian DVD by LF Film.

During an undercover research at a psychiatric hospital, reporter Emanuelle runs into a mentally disturbed woman who attacked a nurse and ate a part of her breast. Believing there is more to it, Emanuelle meets Professor Mark Lester who confirms that there might still be cannibals deep in the jungle. Emanuelle and Mark take a plane to the Amazon and start searching for cannibals in the jungle. They are accompanied by Isabelle Wilkes and Sister Angela who is supposed to take them to a mission. At first, they encounter the adventurous Donald McKenzie and his wife Maggie who pretend to be on a hunting trip when in fact they are searching for a crashed plane with diamonds on board. When the boats vanish and mutilated corpses appear, the two groups have to team up and fight their way through the jungle. In the process, they run into more cannbials than they wished for.

Joe D'Amato is a freaking genius. Being incredibly popular in the mid/late 70s, the two genres sexploitation and cannibal film were nicely mixed in his "Emanuelle e gli ultimi cannibali". The stunning Laura Gemser plays the Emanuelle character for the fifth time now. A sexually independant woman with strong will and assertiveness who runs into a girl most likely raised by cannibals during one of her investigations. The first half of the movie focuses on the preparations being made for the expedition and Emanuelles sexcapades. For instance, she seduces the professor and she has to say goodbye to her (more or less) longterm boyfriend as well before the journey begins. Having arrived inn the jungle and with active support of Mónica Zanchi ("Sister Emanuelle" and incredibly lascivious again) and Nieves Navarro (aka Susan Scott "Death Walks at Midnight"), the movie goes on even sleazier. Zanchi plays Isabelle, daughter of a friend of Mark's who has just blossomed into a woman, and watches him having sex with Emanuelle. When skinny-dipping with Emanuelle, she realizes she would like to lose her virginity as well. Navarro as Maggie McKenzie suffers from her husband's impotence and secretly gets busy with the black help - reluctantly tolerated by her husband. He does nt get his strength back until they find the diamonds but the happiness does nt last for long because they are being attacked by cannibals. At the end, the cannibals actually show up and they are responsable for a lot of bloodshed until Emanuelle as river goddess steps out of the water and saves the day.

The wild mixture of sex & violence causes a lot of concerns and a vivid history of censorship is the consequence. Even nowadays, there are claims that this version or that version is a little longer. Well, it is a fact that te French DVD by Neo Publishing and the German DVD by X-Rated contain the very same version. On the Italian DVD, the scene with the padre discovering the body is slightly longer. According to the IMDB, this scene (and a small part of the dialog during the taxi ride) is also missing on the NL DVD by Italian Shock. The cuts are probably a result of change of reels.

The Italian DVD by LF Films is in widescreen (unfortunately letterboxed 4:3) and it only contains Italian audio. There is no disc menu and a trailer before the movie starts. The quality of the French DVD is really good. Anamorphic and with slightly different framing than the Italian DVD. It contains Italian, French and English audio. When starting the DVD in the player, one can neither choose English audio nor can it be chosen during the movie. Very unfortunate if one does not own a player that can work around this obstacle. At the computer, this is not an issue though. Interestingly enough, the Italian DVD also shows the English title "Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals" as part of the opening credits. The French DVD seems to be based on a master without credits. Even though they look like the original credits, they are self-made. The writing has black surroundings and the name "Annamaria Clementi" is spelled differently. The end credits of the French DVD appear to be self-made as well. And compared to the Italian DVD, the end credits run a little faster.

Is the Italian DVD worth its money? As far as I know, this really is the longest available version on digital media (on VHS, the situation is a little different). Since the Italian DVD only contains Italian audio (no English subtitles) and since the longer scene with the padre is rather insignificant, one might as well get one of the other DVDs.

Opening comparison:

Italian DVD:

French DVD:

Screenshot Comparison:

Italian DVD:

French DVD:

Running time:

Italian DVD: 89:14 min
French DVD: 89:06 min




[00:49:20][00:49:37]

The camera pans to Mark, Donald and Isabelle after the others get startled by finding a body.

Italian DVD: 3 sec