Director Jess Franco has 206 film directing credits to his
name and yet many today are still unfamiliar with his name. Unless you’re a fan
of exploitation films that is. The majority of his films were done in that category,
everything from zombie pictures to women in prison to pornographic films. Hated
by some and hailed by others, the Spanish director was a standout among his
peers willing to apparently make any film possible.
In recent years a large number of the films directed by
Franco have made their way to disc, fulfilling the dreams of fans longing to
see everything there is from him. Now Severin has had the good fortune to
distribute two more of those films, one of which is NIGHT OF OPEN SEX.
Described by Severin as a “delirious hybrid of sexy caper
comedy, EuroSpy suspense thriller, hard-boiled erotic noir, and depraved fetish
shocker” the movie fulfills each of those adjectives. Lina Romay stars as
Moira, a performances artists prone to sexually explicit displays like laying
prone nude on a car while gyrating in the most explicitly sexual manner
possible for her audience.
Moira is hired by a pimp and the pair break into the home of
a woman to interrogate her for information, going so far as to use her curling
iron for something it was never intended to be used for. After killing her the
pimp explains he wants Moira to impersonate her to get information from a dying
General. She does so but before he can give her all the information needed, he
realizes she is an imposter and she has to kill him.
Job done and returning to her regular career Moira is
approached by privet investigator Al Crosby (Antonio Mayans). After seducing
her he recruits her to get back the information. It turns out during the way
the General and several cohorts absconded with a fortune in gold. Now Crosby
hopes that with her help he can retrieve it.
What sounds like a regular thriller actually pays out more
like a soft core porn flick. Much of the screen time is used for Romay to grind
suggestively with nearly everything imaginable made available for visual
consumption. Sex scenes are no more revealing than those seen on the cable soft
core flicks they once ran exclusively on late night which keeps the film from
achieving hard core status.
One thing that makes it stand out from those films is the
acing abilities of the leads here. While there is plenty of sexual scenes their
roles call for more than that and each one delivers. Even though shot in a
different language those abilities are obvious.
Is that enough to make this a great film? Not really. It’s
not a terrible film but know what it is before picking it up. My guess is that
Severin knew ahead of time the group to market the film to and exploitation and
Franco fans should be rushing to pick up copies of these films.
In addition to owning the film on blu-ray there are some
decent extras as well. Those include “In the Land of Franco Part 2” where
author Stephen Thrower tours multiple Franco locations in Portugal, “When
Donald Met Jess and Lina Part 2” where filmmaker Donald Farmer interviews the
couple in 1993 (Romay was Franco’s star and wife) and “The Night of Open Jess”
and interview with Stephen Thrower who wrote “Murderous Passions & Flowers
of Perversion-The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco”. The first parts of the
part 2s here can be found on the release CRISES OF PLEASURE from Severin.
While I’m not a huge fan of Franco I can understand the need
to save his films and to offer them to his fans. With few exceptions I’ve often
said that cinema good and bad needs to be retained for future generations, that
many films once thought terrible will stand the test of time and be
rediscovered. That’s not saying that this film is terrible but many view
exploitation films as such. The films of Franco have already been discovered by
adoring fans and those fans will want to make sure that these films are a part
of their collection.
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