Soft Porn Sunday: Pegg Landon & Paul Michael Robinson

The first in the Emmanuelle in Space sequence is a bit of an incongruous beast, when you consider what comes after it. For a start, although Emmanuelle is in the title, she doesn't actually have a lot of sex in this episode, and for two instances of such (it seems a lot, but consider the amount of sex scenes in these films... 9 in this one alone), she is in disguise, so Krista Allen only appears in two. And for another, it sets up the plot nicely, but doesn't appear to have much relevance to the remaining six storylines. It's not a total non-sequitur, because it's a set-up... but it does mostly consist of Haffron having sex. Not that I complain, of course.

Appearance: Emmanuelle: Queen of the Galaxy, aka First Contact (1994)
Characters: Louise & Haffron

First of all, I don't like the title First Contact. It's too cheesy even for soft porn, and when I first watched this (how old was I? 14ish?), it was introduced as Emmanuelle: Queen of the Galaxy. The DVD's even labelled as such. I don't know how First Contact came into being. Not that I care much, either.

This scene is the last of three sex scenes to happen on a riverboat presumably going down the Nile. There's a very limp explanation for this: Emmanuelle has been abducted by aliens at a very inconvenient point: she is about to take a totally unexplained cruise in Egypt. Haffron decides to come with her, although how he can do this without having any form of ticket is unexplained (the Doctor would have used some psychic paper), and during the boat ride - you can tell it's a boat ride because there are occasional shots, from afar, of a boat - he sleeps with three women, one of whom is Emmanuelle in disguise. This is not Emmanuelle.

Say hi to Louise. She introduces herself briefly and jumps into bed with Haffron after an incredibly quick conversation (causing the barman, played by John Huey, to throw his list of pick-up lines away in a wonderful piece of bit part acting), thus begins the scene.

Whoever Haffron's having sex with in these scenes, they are all quite formulaic. There are brief cuts to bits of a boat (you do expect to hear this song after a while), more brief cuts to shots of Haffron's crew on their motherfucking spaceship (with the inane computer voice saying things like, "intuitive reasoning down thirteen per cent... mathematical reasoning down twenty-five per cent..."), often looking confused, music that sounds vaguely Egyptian in places and entirely naked Haffron. But strangely enough, in spite of this (or maybe even because you know what's coming), these scenes are all pretty good. I'll say this last one with Louise is the best, though.

The reason I quite like this scene has to be the position. Haffron spends most of this time standing up, while Louise is lying on her back with her legs open. In real life, of course, this results in deep, intense sex. I know this is soft porn, so it's not happening, but as we all know by now, Paul Michael Robinson is very adept at making you think it is, and Pegg Landon, as well as being a very attractive lady, does quite a lot with her face (which quite compensates for her not having that much to do otherwise). Haffron's movement is quite mechanic - hip thrusts - but Louise is moving quite fluidly in response to him, which actually makes for a good motion that complements the scene well.

As I've mentioned before, the music really isn't great. It's not well-thought-out and it could be presented better. But if it's not an integral part of the scene, at the very least it's unobtrusive, which helps a lot. And the soft moans here (which mostly come from Louise, it seems) are nicely timed with the thrusts. So it all fits together nicely.

The problem I have with this scene is its second half. They switch to the reverse cowgirl position after a while and, although the switch is somewhat seamless, the scene is a lot less "involved" this way. The position was working fine initially; why change it, especially when some of the best scenes only use one position? Maybe it's an easier position to do the fall back which seems to have to happen during every damn scene in this film.

Still, that's a minor gripe. It's a good scene. Not the best in this series - not even the best in this film, perhaps - but definitely the best of the "Egypt Boat Collection", and worth watching if you happen to own or be seeing a copy of this film. It should just be longer, more intense, and have more of that great first position in it.

Oh, and Haffron... grow a love trail. I know you're an alien, but at least try to look a bit human, will you?