Directed by Jess Franco (Under his nom de plume Clifford Brown)

Starring Vicky Adams, Robert Foster, Carmen Carrion, Ida Ralin and Tony Skios

DVD provided by Severin Films

Review by Douglas A. Waltz

The Emmanuelle series of films are famous throughout the world as ground breaking erotica. Just knowing that, it was obvious that Jess Franco would have to throw his own two cents into the pot. And he would have to make sure that his film was like none of the others.
Emmanuelle and her newlywed husband, Andreas have decided to honeymoon in a quaint village on the coast of Spain. A gentleman by the name of Tony is the top dog of the village and likes to walk the winding streets with his faithful dog. One night, as he is watching over one of the nightclubs that he witnesses a slightly inebriated Emmanuelle perform a little lesbian sex with the club stripper. Needless to say, Andreas is disgusted and storms off. Emmanuelle enjoys her lesbian cavorting about and leaves Andreas to fall into the arms of a local prostitute. It doesn't take long before Tony puts his devices on Emmanuelle and decides to seduce her.
Is it too late for Andreas and Emmanuelle?
THE INCONFESSABLE ORGIES OF EMMANUELLE is quite unique in the Emmanuelle mythos in that it is narrated primarily by the lead character of Tony. Emmanuelle almost becomes a secondary character in her own film.
The cinematography is fantastic as well as the soundtrack that while credited to Pablo Villa is actually Franco mainstay Daniel White. This is Franco at his A game. There is a scene where a barely clothed Emmanuelle talks with Andreas on the phone and attempts reconciliation. She is sitting on an expanse couch; the window behind her is huge and shows the beautiful, mountainous skyline that surrounds the coastal village. Franco makes this woman who has just has a sexual awakening look like a tiny, lost little girl. And he does this with a regular establishing shot. No emotional close ups or any of that crap employed so often by Hollywood. Just a well composed shot that shows a woman in a really big world feeling very insignificant.
Pure Franco genius.
The transfer by Severin Films is amazing as usual. There is a 17 minute conversation with Franco cleverly entitled The Inconfessable Orgies of Jess. In it we discover his disdain for the whole Emmanuelle phenomena. He looks at the original film as just people standing around looking pretty and not very erotic. And if anyone knows erotic, it would be Jess Franco.
My only criticism of this release is a familiar one. We could use longer, more comprehensive conversations with Jess. These little snippets are maddening at best. Perhaps Severin could be convinced to give us some of these releases with a commentary track? This would be very cool. One of my favorite discs would have to be EXORCISM with a full commentary track by Jess. The true fans of Franco could care less about his accent. We've been listening to him so long that we understand every word he says.
Other than that THE INCONFESSABLE ORGIES OF EMMANUELLE is a perfect addition to the Franco library of erotic cinema.