Black Emanuelle, the Viewing Choices
As stated in a previous post, the first Gemser-Emanuelle film, BLACK EMANUELLE, is not available in an authorized version as a NTSC DVD in the United States. While a DVD of BLACK EMANUELLE is available from Televista (at a high-price of about $25), this edition is unauthorized and taken from an earlier video element released in 1997 by Maxima Entertainment. The entity behind Televista may even be the same entity that was behind Maxima. The Maxima video, as well as the Televista DVD, are in widescreen, surprisingly, but the presentation is of the non-hardcore version. This version is the one that probably played in most, if not all, theaters in the United States. Obviously the audio is in English.
Gemser and Emanuelle fans had cause to rejoice, with limitations, when an authorized DVD of BLACK EMANUELLE was released in 2006. Presented in its proper 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and anamorphic, the hardcore version of the film was able to be properly appreciated and appraised for the first time in the video era. Two problems for the fan in the United States, however: The DVD was of Polish origin, which meant that it could only be seen on a PAL/NTSC player and it offered no English language option. You could, if you ordered the DVD through the mail, choose to watch the film in its original Italian language (with Polish subtitles, if you wanted) or in the "lektor" Polish audio, which in this case was an overdub of a single male reading all the lines in Polish. As non-Italian or Polish speaking Americans wait for the film to be officially released here, licensed through the rights owner Studio Canal, this Polish DVD will have to do, with assistance from whatever bootlegs are available of the English language version.
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