Violence to Animals in Film: Emanuelle and the Porno Nights of the World

Heads Up, Ears Down

This blog accurately identifies depictions of violence and cruelty toward animals in films. The purpose is to provide viewers with a reliable guide so that such depictions do not come as unwelcome surprises. Films will be accurately notated, providing a time cue for each incident along with a concise description of the scene and perhaps relevant context surrounding the incident. In order to serve as a useful reference tool, films having no depictions of violence to animals will be included, with an indication that there are no such scenes. This is confirmation that the films have been watched with the stated purpose in mind.

Note that the word depictions figures prominently in the objective. It is a travesty that discussions about cruelty in film usually are derailed by the largely unrelated assertion that no animals really were hurt (true only in some films, dependent upon many factors), and that all this concern is just over a simulation. Not the point, whether true or false. We do not smugly dismiss depictions of five-year-olds being raped because those scenes are only simulations. No, we are appalled that such images are even staged, and we are appropriately horrified that the notion now has been planted into the minds of the weak and cruel.

Depictions of violence or harm to animals are assessed in keeping with our dominant culture, with physical abuse, harmful neglect, and similar mistreatment serving as a base line. This blog does not address extended issues of animal welfare, and as such does not identify scenes of people eating meat or mules pulling plows. The goal is to itemize images that might cause a disturbance in a compassionate household.

These notes provide a heads-up but do not necessarily discourage watching a film because of depicted cruelty. Consuming a piece of art does not make you a supporter of the ideas presented. Your ethical self is created by your public rhetoric and your private actions, not by your willingness to sit through a filmed act of violence.

Emanuelle and the Porno Nights of the World

Emanuelle and the Porno Nights of the World (Emanuelle e le porno notti nel mondo n. 2). Bruno Mattei (as Jimmy Matheus), 1977.

😿 😿 😿 😿

Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, released 2023. English dub by/of Laura Gemser. Runtime approximately 85 minutes.

Summary: As part of an alleged New Guinea wedding ceremony, numerous baby and mature domestic pigs are viciously clubbed to death followed by their evisceration and the assailants playing with internal organs, 40:12-41:52. Nightmarishly brutal evidence of why humans are the only unworthy life forms on the planet. Les Blank allegedly commented “Four stars, could have been five with some Schlitz beer cans on the set.”

Unfortunate hostess Gemser is visibly awkward with her introduction that this film is “the best” of her world tour, as Emanuelle and the Porno Night of the World is made of leftovers from the slightly less abysmal [nothing here and the] Porno Nights of the World. The most entertaining scene in Emanuelle and the PN o/t W is the nightclub skit of Snow White and the Seven Four Horny Dwarves, filmed in Holland, we are told, an assertion Gemser supports by holding an Italian-language copy of Snow White. I also was slightly curious - not entertained because it was horrible and boring - but slightly curious about the futuristic Space Erotica show because it featured a dramatically lit IV drip stand in the center of the stage for no reason. Perhaps Euro-70s’ vision of something robotmorphic from the prop closet of the future.

Similar to [nothing here a/t] Porno Nights of the World, short transitions of Gemser’s beautiful face introducing the next tedium are the stingy smears of enticing wheat paste binding jumbles of crudely hacked construction paper. This time she is behind the wheel of a car endlessly bluescreen cruising the same two blocks of The Vegas Strip, arbitrarily identified as Atlanta, Austria, Copenhagen, whatever.