Passion Plantation (1976)

This film is a perfect blend of **sexploitation** and **slavesploitation** genres, very balanced. Here we see how **Emmanuelle** (Malisa Longo), the daughter of a plantation owner in the pre-civil war American south, loves to torture her slaves as she pleases. But at the same time she also desires one of her slaves and often plays the victim as if it were his slave who desires him. Of course, that is enough to make us feel angry as people with human feelings.

The film is a rip-off of the Italian film Black Emanuelle (1975) and the American film Mandigo (1975), one is mostly torture and the other is mostly sex. The narrative is quite exciting and tends to be more action-oriented than dialogue. The emotions the audience gets are certainly more from the actions. But even so, this film could have been much sleazier or hotter. For the cinematography, it is enough to make the audience, or at least me, feel tense and suspenseful.

As a slave exploitation film, of course there must be a slave protagonist and in this film it is **Judith** (Rita Manna), a slave maid in Emmanuelle's house who has the same middle name as her. That's why the original title in Italian is "Emmanuelle bianca e nera". As the story progresses, Emmanuelle's fiance, **Lawrence** (Antonio Gismondo), becomes more interested and falls in love with Judith because of her kindness especially after she saves his life. Of course Emmanuelle doesn't accept that.

There is a bit of a religious narrative but I think it is necessary which will change the plot of the film. For me, it is touching and certainly makes us want to empathise more, that slavery is essentially bad and violates humanity. Even though I didn't expect that narrative to come I found it satisfying, certainly not a plot twist but enjoyable.

Even though this is a B-film which we know is low-budget, this is already very good. I like the opening of this film and the soundtrack is also so subtle. This film should have received a little more attention as an exploitation film.

Quote from the film:
"I belong to the human race don't ever forget it"