Emmanuelle 5 (1987) User Reviews

Zzz

[Groverdox · 3/10 · 22 July 2019]

For the fifth Emmanuelle film, eccentric filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk took the helm, and American actress Monique Gabrielle, of "Bachelor Party" fame, played the sexually liberated woman of the movie's title. As is often the case with exploitation flicks, multiple versions of the movie exist. I was unfortunate enough to watch the French home video version, which features disgusting hardcore inserts of actual penetration that are thrown into the movie at random, and completely undercut whatever narrative the movie attempts. It also contributes to the movie's overall feeling of being an unwatchable mess.

Anyway in this one the typically free-spirited and sexually "free" Emmanuelle plays a soft-core filmmaker who also runs a dance studio.

Emmanuelle's masses of fans strip her naked at a premiere and she tumbles into some nerdy guy's boat. She is so famous he recognizes her immediately, and tells her why he doesn't approve of the garbage she directs. Of course they have sex anyway.

Borowczyk is not untalented as a softporn filmmaker. His sex scenes are pretty tasteful.

Apparently the nerdy guy is some kind of billionaire, but our Manny is also fighting off the advances of an oil sheik from some made up Arab country - Bengladistan or some such. Before we get to see how that turns out, we have to sit through a hardcore excerpt, this time with a black man with a big moustache. How does anyone get turned on watching this crap?

Manny throws a little hissy fit when she thinks her billionaire nerd is trying to "own her", like every other guy, so she goes to Bengladistan. I'm sure the sheik will have more modern ideas about feminism. Totally smart decision there, Manny!

Bengladistan requires women to cover up like Saudi Arabia or Iran. Just another reason why this trip was kind of a dumb move on the part of our free spirited lass.

In Bengladistan Manny meets some American guy who looks like Paul Reiser and warns her about the sheik owning women. They have sex.

Indeed, Manny meets a young woman who has apparently been kidnapped by the sheik. Either Manny or the young woman then masturbates with a rolled up serviette in a scene that comes out of nowhere, but isn't graphic enough to be a hardcore insert, so Borowczyk apparently intended its inclusion in the movie, confusing as it is.

Of course Manny ends up in the harem, where we get scenes reminiscent of the director's earlier "Behind Convent Walls", ie. nude gallivanting and lesbianism from women wearing pseudo-religious garb. The sheik introduces Manny to some of his 50 wives, including a young virgin whom he never plans on consummating, a crazy woman and a blind person. One of them is a beautiful dark skinned woman who is "smoking a herb that will make her child strong and handsome".

Manny has barely finished the tour when she gets rescued by Eddie, who takes her down a river. They're not so busy trying to evade the sheik's machine gun wielding henchmen that they don't pause to have sex.

Then Manny apparently ends up back in the arms of the billionaire. What happened to the guy who saved her? Who knows? Who cares?

Gabrielle was a beautiful woman, but she's not even looking that good here. The movie should have been about the beautiful herb smoking one, how she came to be in the harem, and her life there. That could have been interesting. What we end up with is pretty tiring to sit through.

Worthless addition to famous series

[dave13-1 · 2/10 · 23 April 2012]

Penthouse queen Monique Gabrielle stars in this low budget Andy Sidaris style 'thriller' as an actress lured to some fictional middle eastern kingdom to be a sex toy for its cruel ruler. With that plot line it had exotic (or at least lurid) potential, but the final product lacks the conviction of its cheesy exploitativeness. Even the nude scenes are boring and tame, and the whole thing looks about as authentically middle eastern as a set from Harum Scarum. What make the other Emmanuelle movies appealing is the way they drip with local color and jungly Asian atmosphere, not to mention steamy hothouse sex, and the previous installment (Emmanuelle IV) was still churning this out.

This is yet another series that went on too long. Avoid.

Keep FF button close if you bother

[Acetylcholine · 3/10 · 15 March 2000]

Let's be honest, one does not watch a movie such as this for the intellectual kind of stimulation. It is softcore porn, and is closer to that genre than film. As such, the acting is near always amateurish and unrealistic; story line ridiculous if even existent; and most importantly, its structure is segregated into sex scenes with filler space between them to fake a movie format. A good softcore movie has many great sex scenes, and somewhat entertaining if imbecile filler space. "Emmanuelle 5" has only 4 sex scenes, mere 2 of which are decent, and 1:40 of BAD filler space. These numbers mean it's poop, don't waste your time.

Many versions exist of this film; none of them good.

[sidoious · 27 August 2002]

Poor Walerian Borowczyk. Such a promising career early on as an important player in avant-garde European cinema, his talents wasted by the time this movie was made. I can understand sometimes you have to pay the bills (ask Jean Rollin) by making porn, but this could have been made better. What, you ask? Porn? Indeed. This movie seems to have several edits for the domestic and international markets. American releases have had a 77 minute "R" rated cut I believe as well as the 85 minute "unrated" edition. The French version is roughly 85 minutes but will be virtually unrecognizable to most audiences. The first 20 minutes are an extension of Emmanuelle's "Love Train" movie which we see being screened by Cannes audiences. This 20 minute sequence contains 3 pornographic sequences, which look like they were intended for another film but found their way into Emmanuelle V. (The sex toys on display are those of Borowczyk, I guess to make these scenes "arty"). After these sequences, the film continues in the same way as the American versions except for a porno sequence in the ballet school and a porno lesbian encounter at the sheik's harem (with more of Borowczyk's "personal collection"). Monique Gabrielle does not appear in any of the porno sequences, just the softcore ones. The French version has little dialogue, but really, do you care what they're saying?

Both seen better days

[jaibo · 4/10 · 14 February 2009]

Borowczyk's penultimate film is a curious addition to the "official" Emmanuelle series, disowned by its director and unlikely to totally please either his fans or fans of the soft-core franchise. But there's enough of Borowczyk to interest his admirers, even though the result is undeniably a confused mish-mash, with a plot line which vies with Emmanuelle 4 for the most ludicrous of the good lady's misadventures.

The film begins with Emmanuelle (poorly played by the miscast blonde Monique Gabrielle) running into controversy at Cannes when her new film Love Express is premiered. Critics don't seem to agree whether its art, pornography or a twisted version of "Walt Disney" – a controversy similar to that generated by some of Borowczyk's earlier masterworks – and Emmanuelle is chased by a raving mob of paparazzi along the Cannes main drag, which strips her naked and would have ripped her to shreds had not she sought refuge in the speedboat of a passing millionaire. Despite the millionaire's distaste for erotica, he and Emmanuelle begin a romantic affair, which continues in Paris until Emmanuelle determines to accept the invitation of a mysterious foreign Prince Rajid (of some fictional Middle Eastern country). Rajid, a lunatic dictator and Orientalist stereotype par-excellence, kidnaps Emmanuelle and imprisons her in his harem. But the millionaire hires a SWAT team to rescue his beauty, and the two intensify their relationship by taking to the air in the white elephant plane designed by the millionaire's father, who seems to have had a touch of Howard Hughes.

Now, all of this from a rationalist POV is complete codswallop. But certain sections – most notably the clips from Love Express – demonstrate Borowczyk's usual artsy and disorientating approach to erotic mise-en-scene. Objects and transactions become more important than the frail human flesh, everything is glimpsed partially and framed from odd angles, the bodies in congress become simply another part of a systemized world. At times, the film seems like a random compendium of Borowczyk's abiding interests – we see erotic memorabilia, the raging sea, the female struggle against objectification, the male attempt to impose his own kingdom on the world of things (Prince Rajid's country has some affinities with Goto, Island of Love). But these affinities with Borowczyk's previous work are more like echoes from better days than a cohesive new artistic statement, and the film never creates the space in which these things – believable though extraordinary in The Beast or Immoral Tales – come across as slightly ludicrous affectations.

The film was taken out of his hands some time between shooting and release, so I guess we'll never know how close this film is to Borowczyk's conception, or whether he could have made an artistically successful contribution to the Emmanuelle series. Like the Kristel Emmanuelle films, Borowczyk's heyday was in the 70s, where there was a market for upmarket soft-core confections which he then managed to subvert into something far more rich and strange. Emmanuelle 5 is worth seeing for both Borowczyk and Emmanuelle completists, but be aware that both had seen far better days.

Walerian Borowczyk's erotic masterpiece!

[fennis2000 · 10/10 · 16 June 2006]

Emmanuelle 5 is Polish surrealist Walerian Borowczyk's penultimate theatrical feature, a film who's merits are hotly debated among cult and art film lovers. Some see the movie as nothing more than a commercial sell-out, others as an interesting addition to his body of work. It's also the last quality entry of the official Emmanuelle franchise. Adding to the confusion is the fact that there are at least three versions: the theatrical European version, the heavily edited US version (including new scenes produced by Roger Corman!), and a European home video version including extra hard-core scenes that feature none of the principal cast.

This time round Emmanuelle is portrayed by Monique Gabrielle, who is, in a jarring change, a bleach blonde American actress. Never mind that the character is supposed to be French, it kind of works, mainly because Ms. Gabrielle has the sense to play the role with just the right nod and wink. And while no actress came close to Sylvia Kristel's beauty, charm and class, Monique makes the role her own. Since the film dispenses with any previous character back story, here she portrays Emmanuelle as a single, free-spirited woman who makes erotic art- films and runs a dance studio out of her beloved loft in Paris.

The movie opens with a "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" style montage of Cannes, with a documentary-like narration giving us an overview of the famous film festival held there every year. It seems Emmanuelle is premiering her latest film, Love Express, in Cannes... causing a scandal in the process. In fact, we first see her in this film within a film, in a beautifully shot sequence on a set of craggy rocks overlooking the roaring ocean. At a press conference later, she must defend her film to close-minded reporters who accuse her of creating pornography. It's all obviously a reference to Borowczyk's own experiences at the very same festival. After the Q&A, Emmanuelle's producer, a smarmy French type, introduces her to Prince Rajid, a wealthy sheik who own's the fictional Arab country of Benglagistan. He's apparently obsessed with Emmanuelle and wants to premiere the film in his homeland.

Outside, an adoring throng of male fans awaits Emmanuelle, all desperate for a touch of the famed beauty. Things quickly escalate and soon the mob is stripping her of every last article of clothing, sending her jumping onto a stranger's departing boat for safety. Her unwitting saviour is Charles D. Foster, a nerdy, but handsome young millionaire who disapproves of Emmanuelle's erotic films. Sparks fly, and before you know it, love is in the air. Is a happy ending in the works? Perhaps, but not before a journey back onto the Love Express and Prince Rajid kidnaps Emmanuelle, putting her in his harem.

The version most people know is the English language American edit (which in addition to the new Corman scenes also utilizes Borowczyk's outtakes), perhaps the reason Emmanuelle 5 is dismissed by some. The new scenes, while amusing, just don't gel with the traditional European style that people expect from Emmanuelle films. While the original release of Emmanuelle 5 certainly doesn't lack a sense of humor, Corman's New Horizon version goes over the top with campy 80s comedy, seeming more like a companion to Bachelor Party (also starring Ms. Gabrielle) and other films of that ilk. It's also clumsily edited - the transition between film quality is jarring. What they attempt is admirable (give the story more cohesion, tighten the pacing), but apparently they didn't even bother doing a final film print edit, it was all put together on 3/4 video with a series of bad fade-ins and bleeds. Apparently they opted for a quick home video release and couldn't be bothered to finish it off right. This version is also only available in a terrible full-screen DVD transfer.

If you can track down a copy of Borowczyk's original theatrical edit of Emmanuelle 5, do so. It's a smart, interesting film well worth owning, and has a lot more going for it than Monique Gabrielle's bare breasts.

don't blame Monique

[RavenGlamDVDCollector · 6/10 · 14 January 2017]

I haven't watched the movie in full yet, I am just coasting along merrily taking in the view, and the golden- tressed curves of the road makes for a pleasure-filled ride. In the meantime, just dropping all you two-bit critics a line to stress that you cannot fault Monique Gabrielle for this. She has a charm (besides the obvious ones) and she does as best she can for a movie with clear limitations. I don't think anybody else could have filled her shoes, even if she seems to be carrying them the whole time.

Serious movie, clearly NO, but pretty heroine SURE ENOUGH. Should have been done different, but it has to play to a very demanding audience WHO DOES WANT EXACTLY THIS KIND OF SCENERY, THIS KIND OF PLOT so do bear that in mind. Things happen way too soon and heavy-handed for us with the (ahem) refined tastes, but our salivating grease-monkey brethren want it no other way, and they'd be bored if the movie came in at a slower, more subdued pace, hence the unbelievably ridiculous Cannes scene. Nice view, though. Very, very nice, thank you.

Monique at her best

[wolfhell88 · 10/10 · 15 November 2001]

Monique Gabrielle at her best. No other actress who played this part can compare to her. Here she can show that she is not only sexy and beautiful she can also act and that is a fact many people forget when they see her breasts. For fans of Monique this movie is a must!

A mammiferous disaster

[artie-8 · 12 January 1999]

If your thing is frequent viewing of all varieties of colossal mammillae and the constant fornication the heroine engages in with every Tom, Dick and Harry (and I emphasize Dick.) don't miss this movie!!! If you have an IQ anything above moron, avoid it like the plague. The acting is beyond atrocious . The story line? You mean there was one? This film is such an accumulation of excrement that no professional would review it .All the participants must have used phoney names. If anyone was paid , it was an abomination! To be fair though, Dominique Gabrielle does have one hell of a figure. It is the crime of the century that they made her act.

Little to do with Emmanuelle maybe, but fun!

[unbrokenmetal · 6/10 · 11 May 2008]

For Monique Gabrielle, "Emmanuelle 5" did not become a long lasting breakthrough, but kept her in business. The story is pretty straight: Emmanuelle is kidnapped by Rajid who locks her up in his harem. Rajid behaves like a dictator and snores: "Women are weak", so he obviously didn't get to know Emmanuelle well enough yet. Friends of Emmanuelle want to rescue her, but wait until plenty of women inside the harem have been filmed long enough ;-).

Director Borowczyk was celebrating the character of Emmanuelle: "She is free, without prejudice, and she has confidence in herself" (quoted from "Cinema" 4/87). And she even gets a machine gun this time which makes confidence easier, I bet... Even though is has very little to do with the original Emmanuelle, Vol.5 is at least fun, moving faster than any other contribution to the series. The scene which sticks to everybody's mind is right at the beginning, when an enthusiastic crowd tears Emmanuelle's clothes off at a film festival, so her only escape is a jump on a yacht whose owner is understandably bewildered. I voted 7/8/6/4/6/7 for the six cinema films of the series.

(Edit 2017) Nine years after my review above, I got a copy of the German version to watch. We are talking about an entirely different movie here compared to the US version. In the German version, which also includes censored remains of a French video version, there is hardly a linear story and the editing is experimental, to put it mildly. I am not surprised that the American distributors decided to shoot additional scenes and re-edit the whole mess to make it more commercial - less art maybe, but a lot more enjoyable.

A death knell for Emmanuelle

[lazarillo · 7 August 2007]

While I don't want to rave too much about the 1970's Emmanuelle films, either the "official" French series with Sylvia Kristel or the more notorious unofficial "Black Emanuelle" series of Laura Gemser and Joe D'Amato, there was always SOMETHING interesting about them. This movie marked the point though where the series became totally worthless. First off, they cast American B-movie bimbo Monique Gabrielle in the title role. It's not just that she is a worse actress than Kristel or Gemser (which she certainly is), but she is also totally wrong for the European flavor of the role. It's like casting Queen Latifah in the lead role of "Memoirs of Gisha".

They did hire interesting if erratic director Walerian Borowzyc, but when he and Gabrielle clashed they fired him. Roger Corman than did an incredible hatchet job on the film Borowzyc had made. Most of what he cut out, I've heard, were the sex scenes involving the black characters. The European fascination for these kind of interracial sex scenes was not exactly a blow for civil rights (anymore than Joe D'Amato's fascination for equine masturbation was a blow for animal rights), but whether these cuts made the film less racist or more racist, they certainly ruined the rhythm of the movie, left Gabrielle and her equally untalented male co-star with too much screen time, and it's even hard to tell in the final cut that this film was shot on location on the beautiful island of Reunion--thus the movie loses all the travelogue appeal of the early series (other than an idiotic prologue set at Cannes where Gabrielle's character is chased and stripped naked by a mob of fans).

After this fiasco the producers tried to recapture the European-flavor and old magic with "Emmanuelle 6" and by dusting off Syvia Kristel and teaming her with washed-up former James Bond George Lazenby in a French television series. But finally, the "Emmanuelle" movies fell victim to silicone, both in the increasingly overstuffed breasts of increasingly untalented actresses, and in the "futuristic", computer- themed plots, which were apparently aimed at sexually frustrated "Star Trek" fans. But even if socially-maladjusted computer geeks weren't getting all their porn off the internet, they would probably be laughing their asses off at the pathetic "hi-tech" nonsense of "Emannuelle in Space" and "Emmanuelle 2000". A sad end for a series that was never good, but certainly deserved better than this.

Emmanuelle V

[Scarecrow-88 · 6/10 · 30 September 2009]

Emmanuelle, the globe-trotting whore, returns, this time portrayed by Monique Gabrielle, playing hanky panky with a US businessman, Charles Foster(..played by the nebbish Dana Burns Westburg) with considerable power and influence(..he has a New Jersey company which makes door knobs!)and her favorite photographer, Eric(Crofton Hardester). Foster wants her to settle down with him in the States, but that would mean she'd have to give up her Paris loft and dance studio, along with the sexual depravity she so covets. Meanwhile, rather dumbly, Emmanuelle whisks off for the Middle East at the invite of a wealthy Shiek who wishes to produce a film with her, when, in actuality, he wants her as part of his harem of 50 wives! Anyway, there she's briefly imprisoned along with other American and Arab wives(..all topless and horny of course)until Eric infiltrates camp and rescues her. The version I watched includes a local protector who helps Emmanuelle reach freedom(..he communicates with Foster, and the millionaire sends in a helicopter to lift the shack she was hiding to safety).

The film is credited to Euro-cult director Walerian Borowczyk, but this never felt like a movie he'd make. Instead, it seems like someone else, maybe this Steve Barnett guy, tampered with the product, tossing in random sequences featuring Emmanuelle engaged in foreplay and soft-core sex with whoever interests her appetites. I recommend this to those who wish to see Gabrielle naked, because she has a phenomenal body and I found her ease in front of the camera intoxicating. I think she provides the right kind of performance for the ridiculous, mind-numbingly juvenile material, playing around with the persona of Emmanuelle. I grinned constantly at how she approaches the men, working them into a frenzy, like my favorite scene where she slowly disrobes for Eric when he surprises her with a visit to her office in the dance studio, or demanding Foster's coat after turning up on his boat buck naked due to the rowdy Cannes crowd stripping off her glamorous wardrobe(..this feels the most Borowczyk out of the movie I watched). The Harem portion of the film looks like it was shot on cheap studio sets, and the most hilarious part is when Emmanuelle picks up a machine gun, blasting Shiek Rajid's(Yaseen Khan)soldiers as she and her men attempt to escape his jungle. There's never a moment in the film I ever felt was played serious, you can kind of see how this fifth film in the Emmanuelle cycle was more broad farce, almost poking fun at the character and her willingness to step into problematic situations. Most will call Gabrielle's performance "awful" or "the pits", but I think she could only play the character this way for the material just can not be taken with a grain of salt. Is it a far cry from Kristel, known as the true Emmanuelle, I guess so, but Gabrielle certainly has a body to die for and we get to see plenty of it. Is this superficial smut, sure, and I never felt it tried to be anything other than what was obvious.

Ah Emmanuelle

[Dr. Gore · 15 April 2005]

*SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT*

I bought this video. The most important thing to know about "Emmanuelle 5" is that Monique Gabrielle gets naked a lot. She has a tight body and loves to strut it around. She's Emmanuelle! That's what Emmanuelle does. No man can control her. No woman can keep her. No clothes can cover her. She will live her life her way and there's not a thing any jealous billionaire can do about it. Emmanuelle is for all to love. Don't get greedy.

So Emmanuelle ends up on an island run by a maniacal dictator. He wants to host the premiere of her new film and force her to join his harem. Does he really think he can control the wild and untamed Emmanuelle? HA HA you fool! Don't you know? No man can control her! Soon Emmanuelle will make a break for it with the help of a photographer and an AK-47.

Well, this wasn't a good movie but with this many breasts on display, I can't complain too much. Gabrielle doesn't quite have the range necessary to tackle the demands of being Emmanuelle. You know, like being able to act sad, happy, excited, distraught or just about any other emotion you can think of. She has sex about four times and looks pretty good doing it. There are also a lot of scenes in the harem where the topless women roam. Overall, this Emmanuelle isn't worth the time but if you must see it, I doubt you'll get too upset watching it.

A disorienting freak show...

[Falconeer · 6/10 · 30 August 2009]

"Emmanuelle V" is the first entry in the infamous series to not feature Sylvia Kristel, the Dutch actress who made the character legend. Monique Gabrielle takes the reins, and is admittedly awful in the role; her acting is abysmal, and she lacks the classy, Euro-style beauty of Kristel, and even Mia Nygren, who was featured in "Emmanuelle IV." It is easy to dismiss this as trash, but the film does possess a unique style, and features some striking, avant garde imagery throughout. This opinion is based on the European theatrical version, as I have yet to see the version edited and altered by Roger Corman for North American release. The Euro version runs for 84 minutes, and features almost non-stop nudity and sex, which is what one expects from this genre. E5 is an editing disaster, random, surreal imagery is splattered across the screen, in a jarring, repetitive style. For the first half hour, the film seems to go nowhere, but it certainly gets better when Emmanuelle heads to the Middle East, to find herself entrapped in Prince Rajid's harem. There are some truly fine sequences, like when Emmanuelle is picked up and driven to the Prince's castle, by the Arab boy who calls himself Rocky Stallone! The boy seems to be enamored by Western culture, calling himself Rocky and popping in a cassette of silly 80's rock music. When Emmanuelle tries to give him some money, he refuses, wanting instead, only a kiss from the beautiful movie star Emmanuelle. The boy meets with a sad fate later in the film, while Emmanuelle must escape the fanatic Rajid. "Emmanuelle 5" is a garish, but undeniably stylish and entertaining film. Very politically incorrect, these kinds of films simply are not made today. Obviously this entry in the series is only connected to the first four in name only. Emmanuelle is not the classy and delicate French wife of an Ambassador, but rather an airhead, bleach blond American film star. There is no other connection, and this film can be watched on it's own. The uncut European DVD is the one to look for, however director Walerian Borocyvk claims in interviews that he had little to do with the filming of either version. This is a bit hard to believe as so much imagery seen here is exactly his style. Not a very good film, but this one certainly deserves a cult following.

Poor

[Michael_Elliott · 14 November 2008]

Emmanuelle 5 (1987)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Emmanuelle (Monique Gabrielle) is at Cannes showing off her latest film, which is bought by an Arab prince. Emmanuelle goes to his small country for the premiere but soon she is held captive by the evil ruler who won't even allow women to show their legs or touch themselves but that's not going to sit well with our star. Apparently there are three versions of this film; the original European version, an American edit and an alternate hardcore version. I watched the American edit, which features some newly shot scenes as well as outtakes from the Euro version. I've never been a huge fan of the director but I might go as far to say this is the most entertaining film I've seen from him. If you've seen any of the Emmenuelle movies, whether the original series or the Black Emanuelle movies, then you know what to expect. Gabrille isn't much of an actress but she does have a great body and shows it off enough to keep the film moving. The supporting cast includes Crofton Hardester and Dana Bruns Westburg but they don't add a whole lot to the film. The biggest problem is the studio subplot dealing with the evil ruler who won't let women be free but of course we all know this movie was made to show women naked so the political message just comes off silly and rather stupid. Apparently fans have called Borowczyk a sell out for doing this film but there's still plenty of "art" here to where he can call it his own. I doubt his die-hard fans are going to give this film too much credit so I'd say those seeking cheap nudity will be the ones to enjoy this the most.

Could have been better.

[MaRX-4 · 27 January 1999]

Well, as a small budget film, this one is SATISFACTORY.

In Deutschland, this would be referred to as "Einschlawtizen", meaning "Understandably bad due to budget restrictions".

Although not a full hearted effort, this film may please the 'duller" viewer.

Again, compared to Terminator 2, this doesn't stand 2 feet tall.

MaRX.