Severin Films

[Peacock]

I’m a pretty big fan of the Black Emanuelle films.

They often do follow a similar pattern of Gemser playing a horny New York reporter going undercover to expose various sex cults and swinger organisations only to sometimes be exposed and have to escape with her life. At some point along the way she usually meets a key character played by her real-life husband Gabriele Tinti (usually the best actor in these films!). Cut in some hilarious softcore sequences of Gemser and the various people she meets rubbing their lips against each others necks while stroking each others thighs.

Emanuelle in America is the most infamous for the Videodrome/snuff connection among other reasons but they all have their intriguing elements. Violence in a Woman’s Prison is an utterly bleak Bruno Mattei Women in Prison theme that in my eyes is far more uncomfortable a watch than Emanuelle in America!

Do be pre-warned that many of these films contain real animal killings ala the cannibal movies being made at the same time (and of which Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals is a key and interesting entry of)

Black Velvet, set in Egypt, parodies the D’Amato films by having Gemser play a fashion model forced to seductively pose naked next to a dead stray dog by her abusive photographer boyfriend (played by Tinti), he later makes her pose nude on a pile of dead bodies! So yeah, these definitely aren’t for everyone!

I’m so excited about this set as many of these movies have been hard to find and are brand new to HD. Well done Severin.

Finally - I disagree with Colin’s assessment of Erotic Nights of the Living Dead! While it contains one unpleasant (and genital warty) hardcore scene it’s one of the best Gemser pictures, she plays a voodoo goddess that can transform into a cat and leads sailors to their death by overwhelming numbers of very creepy zombies.

[Peacock]

The limited edition bundle has already sold out!

[Professor Wagstaff]

Are there any titles that did not make the cut? I've only seen a few of these and oftentimes under different names, so it's a bit hard to tell.

[Peacock]

From what I can tell just some unofficial ones:

Emanuelle on Taboo Island (1976) - nothing to do with Black Emanuelle other than the cash-in title

Emanuelle Noir/Woman from the Torrid Land (1978) - nothing to do with Black Emanuelle other than the cash-in title - CORRECTION this one is probably Emanuelle : A Woman From a Hot Country listed as part of the boxset

Emanuelle’s Daughter/Emanuelle Queen of Sados (1980) - a bit of a cash-in but her character is sort of related to the Black Emanuelle one

Emanuelle in the Country (1982) - nothing to do with Black Emanuelle other than the cash-in title


I’ve made a Letterboxd list of all the films included in the set to make things easier considering the varying titles of these.

[Mr Sausage]

I like this letterboxd review of Emanuelle in America:

"It's preposterous how little Joe D'Amato understands how human beings act around each other."

[colinr0380]

The other vaguely connected film worth mentioning is Emanuelle & Francoise which was Joe D'Amato's first film featuring that character (the year before Emanuelle In Bangkok), although it isn't a 'black' Emanuelle entry and doesn't star Laura Gemser so would not fit for this set. Severin already put that out on Blu-ray a few years back.

(Peacock, I like Erotic Nights of the Living Dead as well, although I do not think I could possibly recommend it to anyone!)

[EddieLarkin]

Looking at the specs, whilst nearly all of these will come with their Italian tracks, only one will come with subtitles (Last Cannibals, presumably because they already had subtitles on hand from their earlier stand alone release). The rest will just have HoH for the English tracks. Really disappointing as Severin had been getting better at including proper subtitles (older discs would often only have HoH or dubtitles).

As was usually the case even with these lower end Euro exploitation films, efforts were still clearly made to make them "Anglo friendly" (first and foremost by having the leads speak in English), but it's far more often the case in my experience that the Italian tracks are superior.

[Peacock]

Agreed re the Italian tracks being superior. Emanuelle in America works best in English because most of the cast were speaking English on set, ditto Black Mamba with Jack Palance. Otherwise usually everyone seems to be speaking Italian so that dub often works best. And while these films were intended for an international market - France and Germany were probably bigger markets for some of these films than the US.

Black Velvet also has English subtitles for the (far superior) Italian track. And Emanuelle’s Perverse Outburst for the French track.

If people want English subtitles rather than just dubtitles we each need to contact Severin to let them know.

It feels a shame to make such an exhaustive collection and skimp on the subtitles.


Colin - Yes I know what you mean! From a zombie point-of-view though it is an interesting one, they are genuinely eerie here.

And Emanuelle and Francoise is a decent remake of a Greek revenge sexploitation film with George Eastman at his sleazy best. But yeah, other than the director and the name slightly it has nothing in common with the Black Emanuelle films.

[dwk]

Dawn of the Discs shared a photo of a Severin magazine ad and these appear to be the titles in their Brucesploitation set:
Enter the Game of Death (1978)
Ninja Strikes Back (1982)
Bruce’s Fingers (1976)
Challenge of the Tiger (1980)
The Dragon Lives Again (1977)
The Real Bruce Lee (1977)
The Black Dragon's Revenge (1975)

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The Dragon Lives Again (1977)

Very surprised to see this one. AGFA did a scan and partial restoration years ago from what was supposedly the only known 35mm print, but had no intention of releasing it commercially due to uncertainty over who actually owns the film now. So now I'm wondering if Severin is using the AGFA copy or if they've found materials elsewhere.

[Orlac]

Dawn of the Discs shared a photo of a Severin magazine ad and these appear to be the titles in their Brucesploitation set:
Enter the Game of Death (1978)
Ninja Strikes Back (1982)
Bruce’s Fingers (1976)
Challenge of the Tiger (1980)
The Dragon Lives Again (1977)
The Real Bruce Lee (1977)
The Black Dragon's Revenge (1975)

Every soruce online says Challenge of the Tiger is 1980, but it is definelty 1982 as there is a sequence where they gatecrashed a 1982 ceremony...meeting Jack Klugman and Jane Seymour in the process!

[therewillbeblus]

The Peanut Butter Solution is my new favorite 'WTF-were-they-thinking' movie. What distinguishes it from the 'so-bad-its-good' crowd is that it's not some kind of condescending hate-watch. Sure, lots of choices are dumbfounding, and there's plenty of unintentionally-awful yet hilarious bits in there (i.e. the awkwardly false visual of the parents jumping in excitement at the soccer match; the familial assumption that he’s gonna drink the solution cuts away immediately after he negates their concern, which takes you a moment to realize the film-grammatical subtext infers a nonchalant botched suicide intervention swept under the rug!) but it's mostly a hilariously imaginative premise taken way too far with generous degrees of self-consciousness (i.e. the pubes coming out the pant sleeves!) What's more, the narrative seems born from the fears of adults rather than children, yet placed into the fantasy of a children's film - perhaps designed to work through these anxieties in a safe and innocent space, irreversible in real life but possible through the medium-as-time-machine. Though instead, things just get super dark and weird and the writers cannot escape the inappropriate hijinks manifested from their seasoned developmental traumas. I loved every single thing about this film, but its greatest asset is that you never know what's going to happen next. There are so many jarring, absurdist narrative pivots that someone could sell this as a series of eight-minute episodes strung together and it'd play just as well.

I'm not going to give away the premise (partially because there are several), but you probably know if this is your jam by calling it a dark children's fantasy movie gone off the rails. A hearty thanks to Grand Wazoo for discovering and plugging this one for me, and so I feel obligated to do my part and publicly encourage everyone who's interested in any part of this description to blind-buy it ASAP

For those in-the-know of the Canadian Tales for All series that this is a part of, are any of the other entries nearly as outlandish as this? I know The Dog Who Stopped the War is well-regarded but I don't believe it's 'bizarre', and I've read that Michael Rubbo's other entires aren't supposed to be so nuts. I have Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller out from the lib, so I'll report back if it's anywhere close to this wavelength

[criterionsnob]

I do love The Dog Who Stopped the War, which was a favourite film that I saw many times as a child. As a kid I only ever saw the English dub, so it was a treat to finally see it recently in the original French. The Canadian Blu-ray (Titled as La guerre des tuques) has a nice transfer. Definitely not as weird as the PB Solution.

[Feego]

I have Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller out from the lib, so I'll report back if it's anywhere close to this wavelength

Good lord, I remember watching that movie multiple times as a kid (it used to air on the Disney Channel in the early 90s). I found a clip on YouTube a few years back, and the child performances were so shrill that I dared not watch any more for fear of tarnishing my fond memories.

[therewillbeblus]

I have Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller out from the lib, so I'll report back if it's anywhere close to this wavelength

Good lord, I remember watching that movie multiple times as a kid (it used to air on the Disney Channel in the early 90s). I found a clip on YouTube a few years back, and the child performances were so shrill that I dared not watch any more for fear of tarnishing my fond memories.

You weren't exaggerating - these are some of the most grueling child perfs I've ever seen, made all the worse by how the film milks the melodrama of their situations and lets encounters of conflict breathe for the first half of the narrative before the 'adventure' part kicks in. Adults can't even handle that much windup, what makes anyone think kids can or want to hold space for so much aimless meandering around the fallout of a stamp con? The bad acting is hampered by an atrocious script, which is occasionally funny in how wrong it gets the emotional lability of kids (not that emotional lability is itself incorrect, but the way it's written is) yet otherwise it just makes everything more annoying.

Anyone who has fond memories of this as a kid would do best to keep them by never going near it again

[M Sanderson]

How does the Mario/Lamberto Bava TV movie Venere d'ille look, on the Devil's Game blu ray?

It's one I've wanted to see for a long time. Does the PQ have serious limitations, due to available source materials etc?

[colinr0380]

Mondo Digital on The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle
On Divine Emanuelle (aka Love Camp):

The Severin Blu-ray proves to be the real dark horse in this set, featuring a radically improved transfer of the film framed at 1.66:1 (adding more info on the sides, trimming down the excess headroom, and fixing some obvious vertical squeezing). The English and French audio tracks are included with English SDH subtitles, and the quality here is gorgeous thanks to a 4K scan of the original negative. But that's far from all... Anyone familiar with Anders' prior (and only other) directorial effort, the completely lunatic West German martial arts extravaganza Roots of Evil, had to wonder how he ended up doing a more straightforward sexploitation film. Well, as it turns out, what we've been watching (even the extended German VHS version) wasn't his cut at all; extensive reshoots and cuts at the producers' behest added several secondary sex scenes with German smut film vets (most recognizably Vampire Ecstasy's Nico Wolferstetter). The very different, much longer 104-minute version has been reconstructed here under the title Fanatico... When the Goddess Calls, listed as a work print but looking pretty completed here in equally immaculate quality. Watching Anders' martial arts-disco music-sex cult epic this way is a truly dizzying experience, and if enough folks make it this far into the set, this one should pick up a far more substantial cult following in the future. This astounding feat of restoration is seriously worth picking up this set all by itself. An extra 2m30s of one deleted scene and a sex scene from the German version are also included, plus the trailer.

[dwk]

Cushing Curiosities Box Set:
Disc 1: CONE OF SILENCE (1960)
Disc 2: SUSPECT (1960) / THE MAN WHO FINALLY DIED (1962)
Discs 3 & 4: SHERLOCK HOLMES (1968)
Disc 5: BLOODSUCKERS (1971)
Disc 6: TENDER DRACULA (1974)

[dwk]

Word from Severin's Super-Shock Pop-up event is that they announced they will be releasing Dellamorte Dellamore on UHD.

[M Sanderson]

Also Buddy Giovinazzo's The Unscarred and - THE lost Italian horror of the '80s - the freakish and stylish Spider Labyrinth. Assuming blu ray.

Will it be some kind of limited licence stuff that's only available during a couple of days?

[yoloswegmaster]

Looks like Severin will be releasing Argento's Opera.

[Maltic]

Word from Severin's Super-Shock Pop-up event is that they announced they will be releasing Dellamorte Dellamore on UHD.

I was surprised the cult labels hadn't done this before, it being Fulci/Argento-adjacent.

Presumably there'll be an upgraded BD as well in the package (or a separate release)?

[dwk]

Dellamorte Dellamore was rumored to have rights issues, which could explain its abscense.

And, so far, Severin's UHDs have included Blu-rays of the film.

[dwk]

Severin has done a new 4K transfer of Soavi's The Church.

[colinr0380]

I wonder if Severin might do The Sect too, in time.

Cushing Curiosities Box Set:
Disc 1: CONE OF SILENCE (1960)
Disc 2: SUSPECT (1960) / THE MAN WHO FINALLY DIED (1962)
Discs 3 & 4: SHERLOCK HOLMES (1968)
Disc 5: BLOODSUCKERS (1971)
Disc 6: TENDER DRACULA (1974)

Blooodsuckers is that fascinating UK/Greek co-production better known in the UK by its "Incense For The Damned" title. Johnny Seka is really the lead character of this one, but this has an impressive supporting cast including Cushing (just after starring in Robert Hartford-Davis' previous film Corruption), Patrick Macnee (who I seem to recall playing an anti-John Steed character who appears to be going to be the main character until he is perfunctorily killed off in the first third of the film!) and Edward Woodward. So its worth checking out for that aspect.