Glamorous, but passive and browbeaten fashion model Laura (the eternally ravishing Laura Gemser) and her abusive photographer husband Carlo (Gabriele Tinti in fine slimy form) go to Egypt to visit Laura's wealthy, horny, and bitter friend Crystal (the fetching Susan Scott). While staying in Crystal's palatial abode, Laura befriends Crystal's cheerful free-spirited daughter Pina (charmingly played with considerable happy gusto by slinky blonde dish Annie Belle) and falls under the charismatic spell of shifty spiritual guru Horatio (hunky Al Cliver). Writer/director Brunello Rondi boldly goes against the expected trashy lowbrow soft-core exploitation grain with this unusual feature: The barely there meandering narrative unfolds at a leisurely pace, most of the characters are mean and/or miserable, a strangely glum vibe pervades throughout, there's a heavy and provocative central emphasis on unhappy people coming to terms with the horrible emptiness of their dreary lives, Carlo demeans Laura by forcing her to pose with dead animals, the bloodied bodies of slain folks, and even on a stinky pile of camel poop, and the whole thing culminates in a startling bizarre climax with Laura freaking out after drinking goat's blood (!). The solid cast holds the picture together: Gemser, Tinti, and Cliver do brave work in their demanding roles, Feodor Chaliapin Jr. is both funny and heartbreaking as washed-up old has-been ham actor Hal, and Ziggy Zandor impresses as Pina's lusty and frustrated sister Magda. Gastone Di Giovanni's sumptuous widescreen cinematography offers plenty of breathtaking shots of the gorgeous desert locations. Alberto Baldan Bembo's heady score does the intoxicatingly trippy and sensuous trick. A praiseworthy oddity.

Laura Gemser steals the show as you would expect. Key scenes include her being forced to model naked next to roadkill, modeling on top of a humongous mound of camel dung and towards the end she indulges in drinking the blood of a baby goat she stabbed to death while being hypnotized. Overall the sleaze is moderate but the Egyptian atmosphere is mesmerizing and engulfs you in its desert wasteland and also wows you by including ancient Egyptian sites like the Abu Simbel temples at the end of the film. The soundtrack is amazing and the small cast is filled with off beat, deprived and eccentric characters but in all the story just feels a bit lacking.

What we have here is yet another Laura Gemser film being passed off as a part of the popular Emanuelle series. The film has nothing to do with the Emanuelle character and in fact Laura Gemser is simply called Laura in this. The Italian title literally translates as 'Black Velvet', but even that title has little to do with this film. It's also known as Emanuelle in Egypt and Black Emmanuelle, White Emmanuelle (which is the title I saw it under) and to be honest I'm not really surprised that none of the titles really define it - as this is a very hard one to give a meaningful title to. The film takes place in Egypt and basically just follows a bunch of characters. There's no real narrative to the film so it basically just does whatever it likes for ninety minutes or so. We do have a mother character with two daughters and a servant she likes to seduce, along with a chauvinistic photographer and his girlfriend, who he treats badly; by making her pose with a load of corpses, for example. The characters then have sex in various combinations.

The best thing about Black Emmanuelle, White Emmanuelle is undoubtedly the setting and cinematography as the film really does look great and actually it's a shame that the story wasn't better. The beautiful scenery is matched by some beautiful female talent - Laura Gemser obviously takes part although she shares her screen time with other beauties such as Annie Belle, Ziggy Zanger and Susan Scott. The two male stars are Al Cliver and Gabriele Tinti - which lead me to believe that this film may have been the result of the cast wanting to have some fun in the desert, seeing as the two were at the time going out with Annie Belle and Laura Gemser respectively. Curiously, director Brunello Rondi; who I just assumed was a hack, did collaborate with Federico Fellini on two of his most praised films - 8½ and La Dolce Vita. Whether or not you like this film will really come down to whether you value style over substance - there is none of the latter, but the film does look very nice and there are least some memorable scenes. I do have to say I rather enjoyed this film - although I'd have preferred it with some sort of plot.