Filmed in a year when Spanish cult director Jess Franco made 12 (!) films, Cries of Pleasure tends to get lost in the pubic bushes, until now never released outside of his native country and, honestly, with good reason.
While Franco does have his strong points — usually in his far more outré sexual outings — when you’re making a dozen low-budget features, most of them can’t be winners. Pleasure floats somewhere in the crusty bottom; even though it’s another dip into de Sade’s bloody pool, it’s not strange enough to be all that interesting.
That being said, if you’re looking for plenty of simulated sex, included exaggerated acts of oral and very exaggerated squeals of arousal, this might elicit your own cries of pleasure as Franco favorite Lina Romay (Night of Open Sex) goes on a clitoral rampage with sensually mustachioed dynamo Robert Foster and his bevy of whip-smart beauties in a gorgeous villa overlooking someplace in Europe.
With loads of extended tongue-kissing and recoiled morality, there’s also a mentally handicapped Spanish guitar player who muses over what he sees as cinematic bookends; it’s easy, because as this unshaven team of deviants goes at it, he’s usually forced to sit there and strum his instrument — and I do mean his guitar, sadly.
For Franco completists and chronic masturbators — and those of you who tend to combine the two — Cries of Pleasure is a pleasurable outing that doesn’t really say anything, but shows a whole lot and, when it comes to most of Franco’s considerable output, I guess that’ll do, pig-boy. —Louis Fowler