The late Bitto Albertini had some interesting credits to his name. In addition to directing The Return Of Shanghai Joe and Black Emanuelle to cash in on the success of a similarly titled French cinematic adventure into eroticism, he worked as a cinematographer on such varied works as the mondo film Slave Trade In The World Today as well as a few sword and sandal epics and Italian spy films.

Yellow Emanuelle (also known as Emanuelle In Hong Kong) was a follow up of sorts to his successful Black Emanuelle film made a year earlier, though this time out we've got Asian sexpot Chai Lee (of Queen Kong!) in the lead, rather than the chiseled visage of Laura Gemser who went off to make a lot of similarly sleazy films with Joe D'Amato.

The soap opera-esque premise of the film isn't an overly complicated one – George Taylor (Giuseppe Pambieri) is an English airman who, after a night of debauchery out on the town enjoying the brisk evening air of Hong Kong, gets his ass handed to him by a gang of punks. His lady friend for the evening, an escort no less, goes missing and is never heard from again, and Taylor finds himself in a hospital when he wakes up. Now you might think that this would suck, but lucky for George he's been entrusted to the care of the sultry Dr. Emmy Wong (Lee), who does a fine job of nursing him back to health.

Soon George finds himself falling for the drop dead doctor but there is the slight problem of her impending engagement to another man standing in the way of their love. To complicate matters more, George's secretary (Ilona Staller, better known in XXX film circles as Cicciolina), when she finds out he's been injured, hops on the first plane to Hong Kong to be with him as she can no longer hold in her feelings of love for her boss. George has to decide which woman he loves and Emmy has to decide which man she loves, and while all of this is going on, lots of people are makin' it.

While the politically incorrectly titled film benefits from some great scenery and a pair of lovely female leads, it doesn't have a whole lot more to offer than that. The story isn't all that interesting nor is it all the imaginative or original for that matter. You can kind of see where it's all heading once the secretary comes on the scene and while there is an ample amount of female flesh on display here to keep perverts like myself interested in the proceedings, the plot is quite vapid. Performances are quite standard – no one is particularly great, and no one stands out as turning in anything remarkably awful either. The acting suits the storyline just fine in that regard in that it isn't complete crap, but neither is it very good – it's simply mediocrity all the way across the board.

On a visual level though, the film is quite successful. The movie does make great use of its oriental locations and sets as well as the lovely local ladies who inhabit the picture. The camera work is languid and fluid and very pleasant to the eye and in fact if you're creative enough to turn off the sound and make up your own storyline in your head, it can be a whole lot more exciting! As it stands though, the film is simply mediocre. It's not fantastic but it's not terrible though it is quite slow. Eurocult fans might dig it based on the cast and the director, sexploitation buffs might be put off by the fact that the sleaze is neither overpowering of all that inventive.

Video:

Yellow Emanuelle starts off a little rough with the opening scenes looking a little battered and covered in some heavy grain but after the first few minutes stroll by, the 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer starts to look a little better and by about the seven minute mark, things look quite good indeed. While there is some mild edge enhancement there aren't any mpeg compression issues and the color scheme makes it through quite nicely. The black levels aren't as strong as one might like but neither are they really that weak either. Flesh tones look lifelike and natural and for the most part, this is a pretty good effort of Media Blasters' part as far as the visuals are concerned.