Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade (1978) Poster

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4/10
One of the lesser Emanuelle outings
The_Void30 July 2008
The Black Emanuelle series has some gems; but overall it's very hit and miss, and unfortunately Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade is one of the misses. The plot once against focuses on Emanuelle as she heads out to get an interview with some Italian criminal; but by chance actually happens upon someone that is into the white slave trade, and decides to investigate that instead. The film is directed by Joe D'Amato so as you would expect, there's plenty of sleaze and sex scenes; but actually this entry is somewhat more tame than some of the other Emanuelle flicks. The film actually appears to be going for a more softcore erotic feel; and although to be honest I generally prefer that to the hardcore style that most of these films feature; there's not enough in this film to really hold it together and the result is, unfortunately, rather boring. There are a few standout scenes, however; one that sees Emanuelle and another woman in the shower is worth mentioning, but you can get all this stuff in other, better, films. As always, the film stars the lovely Laura Gemser and once again she's very nice to look at and is definitely the best thing about the film. Overall, however, this is a rather dull entry in the series and thus is not recommended to anyone except hardcore Emanuelle fans!
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5/10
White Slave Trade
BandSAboutMovies15 December 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Starting with Bitto Albertini's Black Emanuelle in 1975, Laura Gemser would play the character - or variations of her - in a ton of movies like Black Emanuelle 2; Emanuelle in Bangkok; Black Emmanuelle, White Emmanuelle; Emmanuelle on Taboo Island; Emanuelle in America; Sister Emanuelle; Emanuelle Around the World; Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade; Emanuelle and the Erotic Nights; Emmanuelle: Queen of Sados; Divine Emanuelle; Emmanuelle in the Country; Violence in a Women's Prison; Women's Prison Massacre and the compilation Emanuelle's Perverse Outburst. This would be the last she'd make with D'Amato, who based this on Just Jaeckin's The French Woman, a movie that tells the true story of French brothel madam Madame Claude.

That's why this movie is also known as Emanuelle and the Girls of Madame Claude, who is played in this film by Gota Gobert (Private House of the SS).

After a trip to Africa with special friend Susan, our heroine dashes off to meet a prince and a gangster, but then she notices a man pushing a gorgeous yet comatose and wheelchair-riding woman through the airport and somehow ends up getting involved in a white slavery ring. Yet it all feels like Emanuelle is somewhat tired, as over the last three years she's done all that she can do. I mean, you go up against cannibals, snuff films and hit that many countries, you'd be exhausted too.

That said, a bad Laura Gemser/Joe D'Amato movie does not exist. There are just ones that are not as good.
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6/10
Quite enjoyable, great music
Industrious3 January 2002
This is a quite enjoyable little flick, though not as ingenious as Emanuelle and the last Cannibals. Unfortunately, it does not offer the same levels of gore and violence but somewhat compensates this shortcoming by excessive amounts of soft-core and an even more terrific sound-track by the same composer. The "safari"-scenes and the fight in the bowling-alley are unforgettable. Recommended to all fans of 70's sleaze but perhaps not to the general audience.
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Juuust Right!
lazarillo20 October 2009
Although it is still somewhat obscure, this is one of my favorite of the "Black Emanuelle" series. Some films like "Emanuelle in America" and "Emanuelle Around the World" are a little too sleazy, while others like the original "Black Emanuelle" are not quite sleazy enough, but this film is juuust right.

While hanging around Africa for some reason, intrepid reporter/photographer "Emanuelle" (Laura Gemser) stumbles across a white slavery operation (OK, so it doesn't exactly make sense to have a WHITE slavery operation in Africa where hardly anyone is white, but oh well). After hiding and taking lots of photos of naked, barely legal girls being paraded back and forth in front of potential "buyers", "Emanuelle" has a run-in with the vicious male transvestite who's running the operation. His rather confused sexual orientation doesn't stop him from raping her, but later they team up. There's some pretty graphic violence and another unpleasant gang-rape scene, but it's hard to take any of this too seriously when "Emanuelle" herself obviously doesn't (She eventually makes her way back across the Atlantic on a filthy trawler by agreeing to gang-bang the entire crusty, old crew).

Most of the serious sleaze is relegated to the second half of the movie, but the first half is much more sexy. "Emanuelle" teams up with a friend, played by very pretty Italian actress Ely Galeani (who was also in "Emanuelle in Bangkok") to get a scoop on a con artist hiding in the dark continent. Of course, they get the story, first by "doing" him and his friend and then by both "doing" him in a three-way scene while they all smoke strange drugs out of a hookah (god, I love the socially irresponsible 70's!). Galeani's character also has an interesting way of "paying" her African auto mechanic in an interracial sex scene that takes place in a lube pit while "Emanuelle" watches and pleasures herself (this scene was kind of borrowed from the first "Black Emanuelle", but director Joe D'Amato manages to improve on it). I also actually kind of liked the cheesy Euro-disco title song "Run, Cheetah, Run", which they play during all the hottest sex scenes with Galeani and Gemser, and which will have many viewers drooling like Pavlov's dogs whenever they hear it by the time the movie ends. Recommended.
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8/10
Entertaining soft-core romp with the always delectable Laura Gemser
Woodyanders19 November 2012
Warning: Spoilers
Liberated and uninhibited photojournalist Emanuelle (the ever-delicious Laura Gemser in peak yummy form) once again finds herself in considerable peril and enjoys her usual array of torrid carnal encounters while posing undercover in a prostitution ring that traffics in white slavery. Director Joe D'Amato, who also co-wrote the cheerfully raunchy script with Romano Scandariato, relates the eventful story at a brisk pace, maintains a blithely sleazy tone throughout, and captures the merry spirit of the 70's sexual revolution in the carefree pre-AIDS era of safe sex with total strangers. Naturally, D'Amato not only loads this picture with oodles of scrumptious bare female skin and sizzling soft-core couplings, but also covers the satisfying sensuous bases by including a wide variety bawdy pleasures that include straight copulation, lesbianism, masturbation, an especially hot'n'steamy threesome, and even a couple of (off-screen) gang bangs for good sordid measure. The sturdy cast of familiar solid pro Italian exploitation faces keeps the movie humming: The luscious Ely Galleani as Emanuelle's lusty'n'loyal gal pal Susan Towers, Gabriele Tinti as slimy flesh-peddler Francis Harley, Venantino Venantina as secretive businessman Giorgio Rivetti, and Pierre Marfurt as the dashing Prince Arausani. Special kudos are in order for Nicola D'Eramo as creepy transvestite Stefan, whose unexpected kung-fu fight set piece in a bowling alley provides a definite wacky highlight. The exotic globe-trotting locations add an impressive sense of scope. D'Amato's glossy cinematography makes neat and invigorating use of a constantly moving camera. Nico Fidenco's funky-throbbing score hits the get-down groovy spot (the catchy thumping disco theme song "Run, Cheetah, Run" is a real hoot!). An immensely fun drive-in flick.
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6/10
It's D'amato-lite Emanuelle, but still quite fun.
BA_Harrison25 March 2010
Whilst in Nairobi to interview reclusive gangster Giorgio Rivetti (Venantino Venantini), feisty photographer and reporter Emanuelle (Laura Gemser) stumbles upon the existence of a powerful prostitution and white slave trade racket operating out of the US.

After banging Rivetti, rolling in the sack with a prince (Pierre Marfurt) and showering with her best friend Susan Towers (the gorgeous Ely Galleani), Emanuelle returns to NY to go undercover as a poor woman willing to sell herself for sex. Infiltrating a high class brothel, she sets about the dangerous task of exposing the unscrupulous organisation.

The last of the Emanuelle films to be helmed by trash king Joe D'amato, White Slave Traders is a surprisingly tame affair in comparison to the director's other entries in the series: Emanuelle in America, Emanuelle and the Last cannibals, and Emanuelle Around the World. Where those films relied on scenes of hardcore sex and extreme gore to shock their audiences, this one sees old Joe content to present the usual smörgåsbord of soft-core sex acts and lightweight sleaze that typify the character's non-D'amato adventures.

Fortunately, the story is actually half-decent for a change (well, by Emanuelle standards) and there is just enough gratuitous nudity and outrageous silliness still make it worth a watch: during the course of the film, Gemser rubs one out whilst watching Susan shag a mechanic, partakes in a drug-fuelled menage-a-trois, runs naked through the African bush, satisfies an ageing senator, humps kung-fu transvestite Stefan (Nicola D'Eramo), and is rogered by a gang of thugs in a bowling alley. You'd think that by the end of the film she would be exhausted, but in a fittingly trashy finale, the game girl offers herself to a group of fishermen in exchange for a lift back to the city on their boat.

I think they call that 'working your passage'.

5.5 out of 10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.
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Better than Average
Michael_Elliott25 February 2008
Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade (1978)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Reporter Emanuelle (Laura Gemser) is doing a story on the white slave trade and tracks everything to a gangster living in Africa. Not happy stopping there, Emanuelle comes back to America and begins working undercover. This is probably the best of the D'Amato/Gemser Emanuelle movies but that's not saying too much. Unlike the other films in the series this one here at least manages to be entertaining without having to have a woman jerk off a horse as was seen in Emanuelle in America. This film here has a pretty interesting story and it moves along without too many boring spots. Needless to say there's a lot of sex scenes with Gemser taking on various men and women and these here are without a doubt the best scenes. D'Amato makes most of these very erotic, which is another thing missing from others in the series. I wouldn't say Gemser gives a good performance but she is comfortable in the role and you can't complain about seeing her naked throughout the film. The scenes in Africa are well shot and it's nice seeing some of the wildlife. Some of the American scenes were lifted from Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals but this just adds to some of the cheap fun. Original title: Via della prostituzione, La.
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7/10
An Unearthed Exploitation Classic
Falconeer4 August 2021
The quality of a film often suffers when the director decides to make it a "hardcore" feature. D'Amato's "Emanuelle In America" is a good example; remove the unappealing and artless hardcore shots and the nauseating "ejjaculation" inserts, and all that is left is a substandard, highly forgettable movie. This explains why "Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade" is, technically speaking, one of the best in the series. Without the porn angle to sell the product, D'Amato can concentrate on the important aspects of making a good movie; like a coherent and interesting story, and softcore erotic scenes that are truly artistic and extremely sexy. Anyone who finds the scenes of ugly men, "blowing their loads" on ugly bimbos, hotter, and more EROTIC than "the mechanic scene" featured in "White Slave Trade..." well, that audience shouldn't be reviewing these movies at all, because they just "don't get it..." In this long-lost entry in the Italian "Emanuelle" series, follows "Emy" Jordan, the reporter who travels to foreign lands to uncover stories too shocking for normal journalists, going to places, and dealing with people considered too dangerous for the average female reporter. Revisiting familiar territory, Emanuelle stumbles upon an international White Slavery ring while vacationing in Africa. Fans will recognize this story from both "Emanuelle In America," as well as the brutal but impressive "Emanuelle Around the World." Only this time D'Amato concentrates more on the quality, and it is recognized mostly in the writing and the introduction of some characters that are actually interesting and not simply one dimensional bodies who are there just to take off their clothes. Not that this film isn't filled with sex and nudity; it simply has more going for it than smut. Emanuelle's romantic interlude with the daughter of a foreign diplomat is really quite nice, and sexy without being exploitative, bringing to mind the girl/girl love story from the original, French "Emmanuelle" series with Sylvia Kristel. The rediscovery of this lost film is truly a great thing, and true fans of the series will be thrilled with the discovery of "Emanuelle and the White Slave trade." Those looking for the "love butter" and the "clam shots," might as well pass this one up.
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7/10
D'Amato stretches Emanuelle as far as she will go
jaibo16 April 2009
Warning: Spoilers
The final Black Emanuelle collaboration between director D'Amato and actress Laura Gemser is perhaps the most conventional, structurally, of their films together. It still flits madly between genres, like some crazed canary battering its wings against its cage, but it does keep Emanuelle as a central protagonist in a recognisable three act structure, with a single plot going all the way through.

The first half hour takes place in Nairobi, giving D'Amato the chance for some Mondo-like shots of wildlife and tribal ritual. Emanuelle is trying to secure an interview with a European businessman who lives the life of a baron in the country, and we see her infiltrate his defences through cunning guiles and seductions. This first half hour includes a typical soft-core encounter, as Emanuelle's friend and guide gets laid by her garage mechanic in his pit, plus a couple of nifty sexual montages, one interspersing lovemaking with tribal ritual, the other filming a love scene from behind columns, the camera tracking round and the screen going black as it glides behind a post; these two scenes bring into play the usual soft-core soft-soap of sex being associated with primitivism and loss of consciousness. But as usual, D'Amato has bitterer fish to fry, and the first half hour also has Emanuelle witnessing what looks like the trafficking of a woman against her will.

Back in New York, after rekindling her affair with a fashion photographer, Emanuelle does a James Bond and goes undercover into the world of the white slave trade. A striking sequence in a plush hotel has her peaking in on an auction in which young girls are bought like cattle (we share her hidden POV); she then pretends to be a poor girl and is taken up by a trader, put on a sex farm and told to please the rich, powerful old men who go there. The owner, one Madam Claude (a reference presumably to Just Jaeckin's 1977 film of that name), keeps a tight house, forbidding her workers to stray outside of their allotted apartments on her ranch. Of course, Emanuelle strays and discovers that Madam is trafficking very young girls from the ranch to foreign climes. This discovery puts Emanuelle in considerable danger, a danger nicely prefigures by the nervy POV walk we do with her on arriving at the airport to depart for the San Fransico-based farm.

The most intriguing character in the film is Stefan, the burly transvestite duenna at Madam Claude's. Always in drag, he bosses the girls around and seems like Madam's best arm, but despite being cast as a eunuch at a harem, he falls for Emanuelle's charms and sleeps with her. This makes him vulnerable, as when he catches her taking pictures for evidence he decides to help her – but that brings down the wrath of Claude's thugs onto his head, and despite putting up a spirited kung fu fight, he is violently murdered. Stefan operates in a strange position in the sexual politics of the film – he works for what is ultimately patriarchal power, farming girls like cattle for old men, but his emotions and his low position in the food chain feminize him as much as his dress. It is no surprise that a man who doesn't play the male role "properly" finds himself as disposable as the women seem to be in this world.

Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade, like its predecessors Emanuelle in America and Emanuelle Around the World, uses the soft-core genre to ask some hard questions about the darkness sexuality can encompass as well as the commoditisation of women in a patriarchal system. It isn't as gobsmackingly out there as either of those films, but it does move at a steady pace as well as taking its audience into uncomfortable areas around the exploitation of women. It is no surprise that D'Amato made no Emanuelle film after this (except a cynical compilation) as he was beginning to repeat himself, and had darker areas to explore than could be borne by the soft-core genre which he'd taken to its limits.
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7/10
Nothing special, but a generally agreeable dose of Laura Gemser.
Hey_Sweden11 February 2022
Ever-intrepid investigative reporter Emanuelle (Laura Gemser) is currently in Africa, having tracked down an elusive American gangster (Venantino Venantini). It doesn't take that long for him to succumb to her charms (and those of her friend Susan (Ely Galleani)), and he agrees to an interview. But the tale doesn't end there. Emanuelle becomes intrigued by another American character, Francis Harley (Gabriele Tinti) whom she spies while on this current assignment, and she learns that he's involved in the white slave trade. Back in America, she gets into his good graces, and begins working as a prostitute in a bordello run by Madame Claude (Gota Gobert). But she could really be risking her neck if the Madame and others find out that she's actually a journalist.

"Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade" is overall an engaging example of this kind of soft-core entertainment. The story is enjoyable, but undeniably the attraction for most viewers will be the very generous doses of sex and nudity. (Emanuelle always seems to be up for a roll in the hay.) It's quite good in its first half, as it's just as much a travelogue as it is an exploitation film. Director Joe D'Amato also photographed the film, and the sights & sounds of Africa are impressive to take in. The story gets more conventional in the second half, but the striking Gemser proves to be always easy to watch. Worth noting is the films' sense of humor: Susan likes to take her Range Rover to the mechanic not to get it inspected, but rather to get it on with the mechanic (James Sampson). An in-drag male character, Stefan (Nicola D'Eramo), manages to kick some ass while wearing a wig and dress. Also, the final moments are really priceless.

An eclectic soundtrack composed by Nico Fidenco, and a decent supporting cast including Tinti, Venantini, Galleani, Pierre Marfurt as a prince, and Bryan Rostron as Emanuelles' photographer boyfriend are also among the films' virtues.

Generally regarded as a better entry in D'Amatos' "Black Emanuelle" series, this is a fun viewing for aficionados of trash cinema.

Seven out of 10.
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