The Jess Franco film Night of Open Sex is purported to be an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Gold-Bug.” While I’ve always found that short story to be quite boring, the nonstop parade of black rugs in this movie does enliven the tale, even if it’s a bit much after the third or fourth erotic dance scene.
As you could probably imagine, performing said nude numbers is Franco’s longtime gal pal, Lina Romay (Cries of Pleasure), as stripper Moira; she and her sleazy boyfriend manage to get mixed up with a criminal syndicate looking for some badly foil-wrapped Nazi gold, presumably from a fake mustached general who uses nudie pics as generalized maps to said fortune.
To get this information, by the way, she shockingly uses a curling iron as a red-hot tool of vaginal extraction. And as psychotically titillating as that is, let’s be honest, cult fans: You’re really here for the continual sex and skin, the only thing the film’s really got going for it.
With many explicit scenes of depraved fornication out the hairy hoo-ha, the sex truly is open on this night, from fetish-based frenching to fruit-based rape; softcore fans will have to watch the film in five-minute increments, skipping through very little plot to get to elongated scenes of Romay rolling around on the floor, licking a porno mag and masturbating.
Still, director Franco manages to cameo as a rich dude offering up some social commentary, far more than I honestly expected from a film where I just watched a man straight up punch a woman in the gut. —Louis Fowler