It is a performances centric movie

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Famous journalist and carnally insatiable hedonist Emanuelle (the always delectable Laura Gemser at her most insanely desirable) goes to Bangkok for an assignment. Emanuelle not only embarks on her usual exploration of sensual pleasure, but also has her passport stolen and gets gang raped by a bunch of slimy creeps. Director Joe D'Amato, working from a blithely sensuous and eventful script by Maria Pia Fusco, relates the entertainingly ridiculous story at a steady pace, makes fine and evocative use of the exotic globe-trotting locations, and, naturally, crams this baby with loads of delicious bare distaff skin and scorching simulated soft-core couplings. The nice cast of dependable Italian sleaze cinema stalwarts keeps the movie bubbling along: Gabriele Tinti as handsome, but vulgar archaeologist Roberto, Ivan Rassimov as the suave Prince Sonit, Ely Galleani as ditsy and cheerful American tourist Frances, Giacomo Rossi-Stuart as Frances' amiable husband Jimmy, Venantino Venantini as helpful ambassador David, Koike Mahoco as enticing masseuse Gee, and Debra Berger as sweet and fragile teenager Debra, who understandably develops a heavy Sappho crush on Emanuelle. A nude massage set piece, a racy nightclub strip act involving ping-pong balls, and a soapy lesbian bathtub frolic rate as the definite arousing highlights. D'Amato's slick cinematography gives the picture a bright and sumptuous look. Nico Fidenco's funky throbbing score hits the right-on groovy spot (the giddy'n'goofy recurring theme song "Like a Sailing Ship" is an absolute dippy hoot!). Good sexy fun.

The first Black Emanuelle collaboration between Laura Gemser and her Svengali Joe D'Amato is merely a taste of the shocking things to come in the likes of Emanuelle in America and Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals. Emanuelle in Bangkok is a kind of dry run, with Gemser repeating her Black Emanuelle character from the first, non-D'amato film and D'amato finding his feet with this new character and genre he's lucked onto.Yet there are signs of things to come. The bulk of the film is sexual travelogue, with Emanuelle exploring Bangkok and then Casablanca, sightseeing and shagging – but some of the sights she sees are not quite what they recommend in the Visitor's Guide to Bangkok (a cockfight, a snake loosing a bloody battle with a mongoose, a dancer who has a speciality act with ping-pong balls , guess where) and the sex becomes dangerous, as Emanuelle is gang raped by a battalion of the king's bodyguards. This last scene is the film's most contentious, as Emanuelle lies back, thinks of previous exhortations to use her body for her own pleasure and ends up on friendly terms with her assailants. The scene could be seen as the first real throwing down of the gauntlet by D'amato in an Emanuelle film, with the heroine taken into places she and we never imagined by her post-60s free love philosophising, and also there's the curious effect of Gemser's performance, or rather lack of one. She walks through the entire film as if sleepwalking, greeting all things good or bad with the same blank affectless nonchalance, a kind of erotic robot either without emotions or with them so deeply suppressed as to suggest some past trauma. There's something about D'Amato's vision of Emanuelle which is both a lure and a fright, as we're compelled by her freedom as much as appalled by her lack of passionate engagement with, well, anything (including sex, where she invariably just goes through the motions).My suspicion is that D'Amato had very conflicted feelings about the sexual freedoms which arose in the post-60s consumer West, a fear and fascination that sex can lead not to ecstasy and freedom by dehumanisation and death. It is no mistake that he cuts from Prince Sanit's sexual philosophising about giving yourself over to pleasure to the death of the snake at the claws and teeth of the mongoose, the "petit mort" alluded to by the cutting.Emanuelle in Bangkok also works as a kind of satirical critique of consumer tourism, with exotic backdrops being used as a sex-filled break (as so many Westerners have used the real Bangkok); yet the real world of politics and human jealousy keeps interrupting, exposing Emanuelle's travels as the banal escapism they really are. The plot, like homeless and rootless modern man, lurches from one country to the next, one meaningless encounter to another, one short-lived and doomed relationship to its successor and it is in this much criticised plotlessness that the film makes its point. D'amato frames the story with two episodes from the relationship between Emanuelle and her erstwhile lover Roberto (played by Gemser's real-life husband Gabriele Tinti), the first setting out the plan to enjoy each other for the time being but not get bogged down in ideas of fidelity and love, the last showing their dream ruined by his foul-mouthed jealous homophobia about her love for a young female artist; the idea seems to be that Emanuelle cannot escape from the old ways of possessiveness, male chauvinism and all that messy stuff, but she'll wander on regardless. What we are meant to make of all this D'Amato, like a true democrat, leaves entirely up to us

Emanuelle in Bangkok is the second entry in the Black Emanuelle series begun by Bitto Albertini then continued on into infamy by Joe D'Amato.Laura Gemser returns as the intrepid globetrotting reporter Emanuelle who is sent on a mission to Bangkok to interview the King's nephew. She is accompanied to Bangkok by her on-again-off-again lover Roberto (Gemsers real-life husband Gabriele Tinti) who is on his way to begin an archaeology dig in Morocco.Emanuelle never quite gets her interview as she has her passport & photography equipment stolen then is brutally gang-raped by a group of thugs employed by the government, so she decides to join Roberto in Morocco. Not having a passport isn't a problem, she just f@cks an airport official for a free pass.Once in Morocco Emanuelle discovers Roberto is now engaged to an English woman, so they all decide to engage in some group sex, which seems to straighten everything out. Soon Emanuelle falls madly in love with the daughter of an American ambassador and spends the rest of her days either involved in some in lesbian bubble bath action or f@cking Roberto and/or any other man who crosses her path.Being still early in the series, there is less of the sleaze and nastiness that some of the other films are so well known for, basically it's a sexy travelogue piece. Emanuelle is inhibition-free and generous with her body so pretty much every dude she meets gets to have a go.A couple of notable scenes include: a sequence of 'natural' animal violence where a Shrew-like creature fights a cobra, and wins. The fully-clothed gang-rape where afterwards Emanuelle hangs out and chats cheerfully with her assailants, and a Bangkok stripper performing the notorious ping-pong ball trick.Ultimately this isn't D'Amato's best Emanuelle film but if you're looking for some mindless (and often dull) softcore fare then check this out, otherwise I'd suggest going for either Emanuelle in America, Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals or Emanuelle Around the World (XXX version).

Notorious film director D' Amato's first entry in the "Black Emanuelle" series is somewhat better than its predecessor but, the version I watched on Italian TV is so sloppily trimmed that several sexy scenes end abruptly, thus making them quite senseless! Here Emanuelle attracts the attentions of a Thai Prince (Ivan Rassimov, of all people), her on-off archaeologist boyfriend (real-life husband Gabriele Tinti), a world-renowned historian and a shy Thai bell-boy, as well as 4(!) females - an Oriental masseuse, a repressed American tourist (played by the lovely Ely Galleani from A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN [1971] and BABA YAGA [1973]), Tinti's "official" schoolmarmy girlfriend and, most intriguingly, an American Consul's (possibly manic-depressive) daughter! I say intriguingly because Emanuelle is shown really losing her head for the young, inexperienced girl (almost up to the point that she starts considering forsaking her hedonistic lifestyle) but, before you can say, "Copout!", she gets a call from her newspaper sending her off to Paris for another assignment!! By the way, towards the middle of the film, Emanuelle's Bangkok apartment gets broken into and she loses her passport and all her valuable rolls of film (apparently because she was getting too close to Prince Rassimov who has a coup d'etat on his mind) and, for good measure, there's some local color (opium smoking and sensuous dancing) and even animal cruelty (in the form of a bloody mongoose vs. cobra duel). What the f***!