Il mondo porno di due sorelle (1979) Online

Ho-hum. Despite the English title this has nothing to do with the French "Emmanuelle" series with Sylvia Kristel or the Italian "Black Emanuelle" series with Laura Gemser. This is yet another low-rent knock-off of "Bell du Jour". You have an unhappily married bourgeois woman. Check. She goes to a brothel (which happens to be run by her sister). Check. All the clients there are perverts. Check. She starts working there as a prostitute. Check. Or does she? Check. This is basically your standard-issue 70's Europorn (mostly softcore but with a few ugly hardcore inserts in places). It's not as well-made as many of the sexploitation/softcore flicks of the era, but neither is it as perverted, disturbing and unintentionally fascinating as some of the others. The perversions of the clients are unpleasant and pretty anti-erotic (i.e. there's an "adult baby"), but much more in a a silly way than a disturbing (or remotely interesting) one. You don't even get a "name" Eurotica director like a Rollin, a Franco, a Borozyx, a Robbe-Grillet (or even a Pecas, Benzeraf, or Jaeckin) to add any interest to the proceedings.

The only, and I mean ONLY, thing of interest here is lead actress Sherry Buchanan. Sherry Buchanan was a rather mysterious actress. She may have been British or American (she kind of resembles American actress Camille Keaton)or she might have just been a continental actress with an anglicized name. She played abused schoolgirls in "What Have They Done to Your Daughters" and "Last House on the Beach" before graduating to playing a fetching bikini-clad babe who gets eaten by a giant calamari (and I don't blame him in a bit) in "Tentacles", which unfortunately was the closest she ever came to international stardom. She was usually relegated to supporting roles, but was a good enough actress to occasionally appear with her clothes on in movies like "The Secret of Seagull Island" and "Zombie Holocaust".

Buchanan gives a decent performance and has a plethora of nude sex scenes here, but she also suffers the indignity of hardcore inserts with a very skanky "body double" who outweighs her by about twenty pounds and needs a serious Brazilian wax job pronto. This is unfortunate because while Buchanon was not one of your classier Euro-babes perhaps, she was definitely one of your lovelier ones. This is her only lead role that I know of, and she certainly deserved better than boring dreck like this.

I must be less cynical than those who see this film as "dreck." The interplay between the sisters, Emanuela (Buchanan) and Giovanna (Montenero) is engaging - and both are physically stunning beauties. Thankfully, the edited "Emanuelle & Joanna" versions (IFC and EMI) both lack the post-production hardcore inserts, which added nothing to the story. I found the differences between the 85 minute English IFC release and the 83 minute EMI Italian release of interest. The former cut the scene showing Giovanna's use of cocaine and her ordered rape of Emanuela's husband. The latter apparently deemed this content suitable for Italian audiences, but drew the line on including Giovanna's lecture on Satanic worship. All in all an enjoyable film with an interesting story premise from the "golden age" of European soft-core.