"Laure"(1975)d/Ovidio G. Assonitis, Emmanuelle Arsan

When it comes to favorite Euro sex kittens of the seventies, French-born Annie (Brilland)Belle forever tops my list.Drinking in her faultless face, the aerodynamic curves of her body down to the familiar chestnut-hued pubic shrubbery of her mound, even momentarily, causes my Longinal spear to jut northwards like a natural compass pointing towards hot tantric sexcapades.After working with the late Jean Rollin in Bacchanales Sexuelles(1974) and Lips of Blood(1975) to commence her acting career, the platinum cropped Belle found herself to be one of the most sought after actresses in the exploitation genre once she relocated to Italy, scoring three roles in 1976 alone, with tonight's review, a late night softcore staple on cable during the eighties, released internationally as 'Forever Emmanuelle' to cash in on the carnal craze pioneered by French-Asian author Marayat Rollet-Andriane, being one of them.Rollet-Andriane wrote and appeared in tonight's feature under her nom de plume of Emmanuelle Arsan, and though she's also credited as director on the picture, her husband, Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane, a French diplomat who producer Assonitis claimed to be the true author of all books under the legendarily infamous pen name, handled the task himself, later asking to have his name removed from the credits when the producers toned down his script.Also aboard for this sexploitative little ditty are Al Cliver, Belle's beau for a number of years, whose storied work under Fulci and D'Amato remains among genre fans' fondest movie memories, and the gruff-voiced Orso Maria Guerrini, perhaps best known for his work in Castellari's Keoma(1976).

Annie, Annie, Annie per sempre!Sono pazzo per te, gattina.
Laure(Annie Belle) is a free-spirited minister's daughter, sans panties, in the Phillipines.Her old man, also a christian missionary and the director of L.I.P.S.(Lance Institute of Pacific Studies, seriously), gives an anthropological lecture about the hermetic Mara tribe that exist on a remote archipelago, and how they're spiritually reborn, Phoenix-style, through some fabled secret ritual he'd like to get the skinny on, while Laure handles the A/V aspect of the presentation, and some sapphic young minx performs cunnilingus on her under the table.At her beseeching, the resident philanthropist, a weatherbeaten old hippie, sanctions an expedition to shed more light on the mysterious Mara, because the idea "really turns him on".Not on my personal list, but hey, to each his own.Heading the expedition will be the leading authority on the lost tribe, Professor Morgan(Orso Maria Guerrini) and his Thai-babe assistant Myrte(Emmanuelle Arsan), who will also be providing emergency quim, since his wife finds herself pregnant and thus, unable to tag along.Representing L.I.P.S.(and how!)on the historic journey are Laure, and her latest flame, a filmmaker named Nicola(Al Cliver), that she even exchanges "matrimonial vows"(open to interpretation in this case, as the silver-cropped nymph is free to swap juices with whomever she pleases along the way, as we're reminded by gems of pseudo-intellectual hot air like, "Jealousy is an obscenity.") with, her father overseeing, before the group pulls a bedroom mazurka(Laure on Morgan, Nicola on Myrte in the shower) and finally departs, some fifty minutes into the movie.

"Unlike Matool, my tool is a cool place to hit", remarks Nicola(Al Cliver).
In between more hokey sexual philosophising comprised of dialogue nobody would ever say(“I still see love everywhere, but it’s you who shows it to me because you love everything.”) Laure dry-frigs a Filipino ride-thumber in the backseat of their car, and gives up the goodies to an impoverished Filipino bumpkin in his house while other peons drag the modest residence and set it afloat on a raft, while Nicola seems very content to peep-tom all the action on his telephoto lens-mounted 16mm camera, when he isn't skinny-dipping with her in a grotto swimming pool complete with picturesque waterfall.If the film has a "Holy fuuuuuck!" moment, it's this:Nicola and Laure are picked up in a helicopter as piloted by a drag queen named Dolly(Pierre Haudebourg) who hovers over the city in auto-pilot as a mid-air orgy between he/she, Laure, and his girlfriend(!) ensues in front of Nicola's camera lens, the footage from the adventure later serving as an aphrodisiac for the couple as it's being edited on a moviola.My, oh my.After what seems like a brief, long-winded eternity, the copulatative quartet finally finds itself in the picturesque jungle where Laure gets ample opportunity to skinny-dip, fuck by the campfire, and sunbathe in the buff in between hacking through dense underbrush until they finally stumble upon the mountain-dwelling, Moe Howard-haircut sporting Mara tribe who abruptly paint the young nympho silver and tag team her on the ground.That's the kind of rebirth I can get behind, folks.

Yeah, baby, just like that, but only in alpine white chocolate with a wicked Peyronie's hook to the right...
Tragically, Belle hasn't appeared in front of a camera since 1989.She followed up her star turn here with Annie(1976), Velluto nero(1976), and Un giorno alla fine di ottobre(1977), before later appearing in Deodato's La casa sperduto nel parco(1980), Rosso sangue(1981) and L'alcova(1985) for Joe D'Amato.Always a favorite of mine, for sure.Cliver's filmography includes Deodato's Ondata di piacere(1975), Velluto nero(1976), Mondo cannibale/White Cannibal Queen(1980) for Franco, L'alcova(1985) for D'Amato, and then there's his Fulci work:Zombi 2(1980), Il gatto nero(1981), L'aldila(1981), I guerrieri dell'anno 2072(1984), Murder Rock(1984), Touch of Death(1988), Il fantasma di Sodoma(1988), The House of Clocks(1989), and Demonia(1990).Safe to say he was one of Lucio's favorites, too, eh?If you buy what Linda Lovelace's autobiography, 'Ordeal', tells you, she was the original actress hired to play Laure, but refused to partake in the hardcore goodness found in the script rewrites, so she was given a lesser role instead, and dropped out of the production altogether soon after that.Assonitis claims it was her drug problem that sealed her fate, and that you can still catch a glimpse of her in the movie if you're sharp of eyeball.Face it, if this movie consisted of ninety-three minutes or so of Annie Belle sitting in a chair in various states of undress and cracking her knuckles, I'd still be enthralled enough to not only watch all the way through, but to think very favorably of both the performance and also the production itself.Luckily, tonight's movie, though somewhat flawed and slow to pay off, is a pretty artistic, well-photographed stab at sexuality which helps it achieve some of the top rankings of its genre class.On the scale, three sexy, sexy wops.Hunt down the definitive Severin dvd release, sharpish.

I'd totally throw on a Beatle wig and some Indio-in-a-can for some of this action.