Emmanuelle V stars Monique Gabrielle and is helped along in one
extensive sequence by the presence of three pair of hooters, owned and operated
by Heidi Paine, Roxanna Michaels and Michele Burger. Those three gals and
several other topless and nameless women cavort as members of a prince's harem.
The man looks Indian and dresses Indian but he keeps a harem and operates it
like a prison.
The sequence of scenes with Ms Paine, Ms Michaels and Ms Burger are the pivot
point for the whole movie, for with them Emmanuelle 5 veers from the path of
previous Emmanuelle movies - passionless sex with random figures - to a Jess
Franco WIP feature. It is Emmanuelle in Love Camp. Lots of bullets, lots of
blood, dead folk everywhere...and it just does not work. That kind of shit would
scar anyone, especially since a lot of folks Emmanuelle was supposed to care
about get blown away. But Monique's Emmanuelle goes from the insouciance of a
moron on Viagra through hell on earth only to wind up in the feckless passion of
a good lay, all without missing a beat. It annoyed me to no end. No number of
hooters sported by no gaggle of gorgeous women makes up for that kind of idiocy.
Who to blame? We could start with the screenwriter, I suppose - these are his
words on the screenplay. But I get the sense you could hand Monique Gabrielle
the best screenplay ever written - my own vote would be either The Big Lebowski
or Silence of the Lambs - and even if she had no lines she would doom the
production to failure. Ye gads, but that woman cannot act. She makes Bo Derek's
acting style look and sound like Judi Dench's. Monique is a black hole into
which all acting talent disappears, pulled in by the gravity of her awfulness.
That is so obvious throughout the movie that whenever anyone else has a line, or
a wordless scene in which they are on camera, you feel a sense of relief that
here is a real person, not someone's pasteurized, processed and pre-packaged
preconception of what a bimbo fuck machine ought to look and sound like. I
recall a press release for this film claiming they had found the perfect woman
to replace Sylvia Kristel as Emmanuelle. Someone must have misplaced her and
hired Monique instead.
Not since George Lazenby (may he rest in peace) was hired to replace Connery
as James Bond has such a purportedly long search turned up so empty.
So, I get it - the movie is bad because the lead actress is bad. Next. The
redeeming qualities are in these clips and collages. Monique in her pre-inflated
days had a kick-ass body and in Emmanuelle 5 she gives us a complete survey -
she dresses, she poses, she bathes and she sport-humps. Add Heidi, Roxanna and
Michele plus a passel of naked unknowns and you have all there is to offer. Had
the producers shown the decency to make this a strip-and-wiggle offering - no
words, only bodies - they would have done the world a favor. But they and
Monique had delusions of competence and the result is an extravaganza of awful.
