Schlock purveyor Joe D'Amato combines soft-core pornography with hard-core gore in this unwieldy combination of an EMANUELLE flick and a cannibal chomper. Made a couple of years before Ruggero Deodato's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST truly shocked the world, this low-budget Italian effort is a pretty weird movie, half boring and half shocking, and all dated. D'Amato has his eye firmly on the exploitation market – little surprise considering the director spent his later years churning out hardcore pornography – and for the first hour the film stops and starts as it delivers a series of sweaty, poorly-shot sex scenes, complete with the obligatory '70s cheesy music. Finally, D'Amato seems to shake off the confines of the porn industry and he turns the film into a low-rent cannibal adventure, where some authentic locations add to the experience and the gore flows thick and fast in the last ten minutes.

It's all very predictable and, for a man of D'Amato's standing, quite poorly made. The jungle locations look fantastic but many scenes are too dark, leaving the viewer squinting as they try to make out just what's happening. The casting is pretty good for an Italian film. Laura Gemser looks sultry and often strips for the camera, but her role here is to stand back from the proceedings and she doesn't really get involved too much in the cannibal stuff. Gabriele Tinti, Gemser's real-life husband, is very good in his professor role, and you barely remember he's in the film. Better is Donald O'Brien (ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST) as a sleazy, impotent good guy, and Susan Scott, who plays his sexy wife, Maggie. Scott is the real star in her sex scenes, which really push the boundaries of decency, and she shows herself to be an actress who certainly isn't shy when it comes to revealing her body. Scott's late-night encounter with her husband's black servant is one of the most unintentionally hilarious sex scenes I've ever watched, and a real highlight (?).

As for the adventure stuff, it's not very exciting and you can pretty much guess who's going to live and die. I did love the hilarious cannibal P.O.V. shots where we hear the natives murmuring, and the gore effects, while cheap and fake-looking, are designed to be shown in the sleaziest light imaginable; there's a definite sexual aspect to the killings, especially when the natives goes after the women. This leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth but it isn't disturbing in the same way Deodato's movie was, for instance, although some fake snuff footage early on is more effective. The action-packed escape at the film's climax reminds us what this film could have been like, and I did enjoy the ultra-cheesy man-torn-in-half-by-string death which is the most memorable bit in the film for me. But in all this is very cheap and dodgy stuff, and hardly satisfying for fans of either sex or horror films.

Sultry bisexual journalist Emanuelle (the ever luscious Laura Gemser) travels with several friends to a dangerous Amazon jungle to track down the last existing cannibal tribe for a scoop. Naturally, everyone gets more than they bargained for when they find said tribe. Director/co-writer Joe D'Amato scrupulously covers all the essential pleasingly lurid bases: abundant gratuitous female nudity and raw carnality, masturbation, lesbianism, straight copulation, a boa constrictor attack, a fair amount of grisly (and amusingly shoddy) gore, a close call with quicksand, gross gut munching, and an exciting last reel rescue and escape from the vile flesh-eating primitives. Gemser's smoldering erotic presence positively burns up the screen; she bares her beautiful slender body as often as possible and performs her sex scenes with admirable uninhibited aplomb. Lovely buxom redhead Nieves Navarro as the horny Maggie McKenzie and cute slim blonde Monica Zanchi as sweet innocent Isabelle Wilkes are likewise very alluring and attractive. This movie further benefits from familiar B-flick faces Gabriele Tinti as hunky anthropologist Professor Mark Lester and Donald O'Brien (the titular mad medico in "Dr. Butcher M.D.") as macho hunter Donald McKenzie. D'Amato's vibrant and agile cinematography gives the picture an impressive slick look. Nico Fidenco's groovy throbbing score hits the right-on happening spot. The insanely funky theme song "Make Love on the Wing" totally smokes in no uncertain terms. Recommended viewing for devout fans of 70's exploitation cinema.

Director Joe D'amato is perhaps Italy's greatest director of exploitative sleaze and can always be relied upon to go the extra distance when it comes to delivering gratuitous sex and violence. It's not that surprising, therefore, to discover that Emanuelle And The Last Cannibals not only delivers the usual smörgåsbord of gory delights typical of the genre, but also offers endless soft-core humping, near the knuckle scenes of female self-gratification, and a smoking chimpanzee.

Once again, D'amato's regular leading lady Laura Gemser plays sexually liberated reporter Emanuelle, who always gets her story, whatever the risks. This time, she discovers the existence of a cannibalistic tribe in the Amazon and puts together an expedition in order to explore the region. Inevitably, the team meet up with the local gut-munchers and suffer a variety of gruesome fates.

Fans of hot, hot women and cheesy gore will have a blast with this film, since D'amato is a director who has never needed an excuse to get his actresses buck nekkid or ladle on the splatter. The first half of the film concentrates primarily on the characters' sexual shenanigans, with Emanuelle getting it on with a couple of lucky guys (with Gemser showing viewers her full frontal as usual),whilst sexy redhead Maggie (Nieves Navarro) and tasty blonde Isabelle (Mónica Zanchi) go even further: both women have fairly explicit scenes in which they enthusiastically explore their own jungles, and Navarro gets jiggy with her native guide. The latter half of the film is more about the violence, and features some nasty disembowellings (including the killing of hot nun, Sister Angela),a beheading, impalements, and a rather laughable moment in which a guy is cut in half with a length of string (achieved via a particularly dreadful optical effect).

A wonderfully trashy ending sees Isabelle gang-banged by the cannibals and prepared for sacrifice, before being saved at the last minute by a totally starkers Emanuelle.