This movie starts off very promisingly with the lovely Melissa prancing around mostly naked on a Dominican beach. The sex scene that follows is awfully hot and involves this dusky maiden and a fellow whose penis appears well on its way to excitement. She takes a slice of the title fruit and rubs it up and down his body, then licks it off of him. This is going good! In fact, you can actually see her brushing up against his member. And then—oh crud. I think she just bit off his penis.
Okay. Maybe I dreamed it. Oh good, here comes Sirpa Lane! Blessed Sirpa Lane with the blonde hair, the perky tits and the can-do attitude. Sirpa Lane, who’s been rutted by all sorts of crazy man-beasts in her previous movies, now she’s here for a nice Caribbean vacation with some nice cozy sex and—oh no. She’s at a cock fight, putting her money on a cock named Pedro who pretty much rips the other cock to shreds. Damn it. Why must there be all this cock violence in my softcore film!?
Actually, get past this and you’ve got one of Joe D’Amato’s better sex ‘n’ gore movies (but not the best—that award has to go to Erotic Nights of the Living Dead). The plot involves a nuclear scientist Vincent (Maurice Poli) who comes to the Dominican to work on a reactor. He meets Sirpa’s character, Sara, a reporter, and they hit it off. Melissa’s character, Papaya (although I swear they call her Emanuelle at one point – oh brother!), first appears as maid at their hotel.
Sarah and Vincent are about to make love when suddenly Sara stumbles upon the rotting body of the dickless fellow from the first scene hidden in the laundry. Sarah and Vincent suspect the shadowy Papaya and follow her into the ghost town of the local village. Pretty soon they stumble upon a deranged ceremony involving cannibalism, blood drinking, nudity, a pig disemboweling, and disco music. Get funky, cannibals!
I once saw an interview with D’Amato where he claimed—he made a lot of interesting claims—that he could only make so many porno films in Italy before he’d be arrested; so in order to avoid the law he would leave the country every so often, not to return until the coast was clear. In the late 1970s, he decamped to the Dominican Republic, and made a good 6-7 films of varying quality, each involving some sort of cannibalism, thrown in with whatever hardcore or softcore sex scenes his producers desired.
This may make it sound like D’Amato was on holiday, but these movies actually are a bit deeper than they appear on the surface. D’Amato makes good use of the locale, not only as an alternately scenic and slummy backdrop, but also as part of the plot, which deals with issues of foreigners who don’t understand native customs and want to impose their own ways upon them. Sara is kidnapped by Papaya and her co-conspirators and comes to side with them—their violence is justified as a way of stopping an even greater violence, the nuclear reactor that will destroy their town. So that leaves poor Vincent as a sitting duck, and Papaya soon has her goons do their work on him.
The sex scenes are nice and sweaty and carnal, but it never ventures into the realm of hardcore. There’s lots of penis on display here. I’m partial to girlybits myself, but it’s kinda cool when the nudity is even-steven. It seems fair. D’Amato also seems to love pairing up Sirpa’s white, northern-European body with the more dusky skin tones of the Dominican locals, including of course Melissa herself, in a long scene near the end that’s a sexy standout.
Severin of course offers the best print of this movie you’re going to find on DVD. According to the liner notes, it was culled from the “private collection of a jailed magistrate.” Wow, what kind of folks are they hanging around with at Severin? Other than a theatrical trailer, there are no extras on this disc.
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