Night of Open Sex

You wouldn't - would you - expect a Jess Franco film called 'Night of Open Sex' to be a chaste affair. Only fifteen minutes in and we've seen a dialogue-free striptease (featuring Lina Romay) and a protracted, graphic sexual torture scene involving hair tongs exposed to female genitalia. Rather than ease the viewer into his perverse world of sex and violence, Franco drops us in at the deep end, his camera's zoom-lens falling over itself to take in all the nakedness on display. In a typically tonal car-crash, Al Crosby (Antonio Mayans/Robert Foster) is a rapist and Moira (Romay) is the perpetrator of the torture, and yet both are the 'heroes' of the story.

Bizarrely, this then goes on to tell a tale full of humour - but luckily (for me, at least - I've never been persuaded by Franco's stabs at frivolity), this is never a comedy. Due to the exuberant dubbing of orgasmic sexual cries and moaning, it might be best to watch this with the sound down.

I am watching Severin Films' beautifully restored and cleaned version of 'Night of Open Sex' and as always, they have done a stunning job with it. That said - and this is probably Franco's artistic choice - the sexually charged scenes have a richness of colour to them, whereas the more sombre and violent moments have almost all colour bled out of them, giving these scenes a washed-out appearance.

The plot? Well, you wouldn't expect coherence or pace, and you'd be right. Beneath the relentless carnality, there is a caper concerning impersonating a spy in order to locate a vast stash of gold. Keeping in mind the intricacies of the thin plot is a thankless job when Crosby and Moira spend most of the time rutting. At least Crosby's character is consistent with his last appearance two years earlier (in 'Pick-Up Girls') as a kind of coarser version of Franco's recurring Al Pereira character (also played by Mayans, most of the time).

With a shooting schedule of about one week and only the bare bones of plot or script, it might be fair to say Franco let his understandable obsession with Lina Romay take over any pretensions of making a comprehensible film. Back then, much of his output was only reckoned to be seen in the shadier cinemas in Spain. The fact that this has been meticulously spruced up for worldwide release on DVD and Blu Ray almost forty years later would bring a huge smile to his face, I am sure. My score is 5 out of 10.

Typical Jess Franco from his declining (1980s) years: distastefully graphic, poorly paced, incoherent. Lina Romay does have a wonderful body, but there are better ways to see it than in this poor excuse for a porn movie. Worthless. 0.5 out of 4 stars.

Noche de los sexos abiertos, La (1983)

*** (out of 4)

Film noir from the Spanish director has a stripper (Lina Romay) getting involved in the murder of a woman. A P.I. (Robert Foster) soon tries using her to track down the killer and the plot behind it. Sadly I had to view this in Spanish without any subtitles but even though I couldn't follow the plot too well this turned out to be one of the best films I've seen from this period in the director's filmmography. For those who have never seen a "well made" Franco movie then you might want to check this one out because it's very well done and features a terrific score by Daniel White and some fine performances. The film noir qualities aren't the same as you'd expect from those classic RKO films because Franco's usual touches of nudity and sex are on full display. The woman who gets murdered is first tortured with a hot iron to the crotch so this will certainly let you know you're watching a Franco film. The style of the film is also very good as Franco doesn't do as many of his zoom shots. The film also features an incredibly surreal opening ten minutes, which are among the greatest thing I've seen from the director. This sequence includes one of the most erotic scenes I've seen from Franco as well. Romay does a strip tease on top of a classic American car and the way Franco shoots this and teasing us with the nudity is extremely well done and becomes highly erotic before it's over. Both Romay and Foster turn in good performances that help the film as well. I've never been a big fan of Foster's but he actually played the role of a cool, no nonsense P.I. very well. If this ever gets released with English subtitles I'll be the first in line to pick it up.