Within the first few minutes of Shining Sex, we find Jess Franco’s muse Lina Romay (Revenge in the House of Usher) plumping up her breasts and vagina to a tune that sounds like Procol Harum’s Matthew Fisher jamming on the Hammond. As her bare pubis humps the heck out of some shag carpeting, an emotionless couple admires her with dead eyes, inviting her over for the night.

Once there, Lina and the couple spend long periods of time mostly tongue kissing and rubbing nipples, all shown in extremely long and lugubrious detail. As she shakily orgasms after being penetrated by a small porcelain hand, Franco himself shows up miles away as a handicapped scientist babbling on about “hearing things.”

Between travelogues of Spanish castles and other beautiful scenes of the European countryside, after getting mystical lotion rubbed on her nude body, Lina is apparently possessed by some sort of “superior force” from another dimension which, of course, leads to even more loose and languid sex, the only true excitement coming from a constantly moaning Franco.

It’s a somewhat intriguing screenplay that probably could have been fleshed out — no pun intended — a bit more, but then I remembered this was Franco and we’re lucky we got this much of a story. Essentially a vehicle to show off Lina’s constantly spread genitalia, it’s films like this that make it hard — so to speak — to truly dislike a filmmaker like Franco. —Louis Fowler

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As much as it sounds like a ribald musical notation, Pervertissima instead takes us into the world of sleazy French journalism as a comely young girl with a possible herpes sore on her upper lip and absolutely no reporting skills is sent into Gay Paree for a piece on “Love in Paris.”

Admitting she’s a virgin to the overt sexaholics on the paper’s staff, she is sent to brothels, dance clubs and an avant garde sex ritual, none of which has anything to do with love, but I guess I see the point. What I don’t see the point of is how she ends up in the clinic of a mad scientist who dreams of ruling the world like a god — his words — through ineffectual mating experiments.

And as jarring as the switch from a low-rent skin flick to a no-scares horror movie is, even that is nothing compared to the horrendous sexual harassment the females of the film go through, from the boss randomly kissing secretaries quite passionately to a rapist reporter who, in the middle of a meeting, tries to get off on our lead actress. Maybe Mad Men was right?

Regardless, this bizarre mélange of fragrant trash is best credited to director Jean-Louis van Belle, known for equally de-rousing flicks like Forbidden Paris, The Lady Kills and Made in Sex, all of which sounds like great names for terrible New Romantic bands. —Louis Fowler

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Whereas most directors would typically fill a mid-’80s teen sex comedy about a quartet of slobs working the summer at a hotel south of the border with near-constant Mexican stereotypes, not every director is Galaxina’s William Sachs, who inexplicably fills the flick with so many sexed-up European characters that you almost want to give him some sort of award for his wokefulness.

The movie is the extra-spicy Hot Chili and its big star is Allan Kayser, who you might remember as Bubba from TV’s Mama’s Family … well, that’s where I remember him from. He’s the leader of this motley crew of horny high schoolers, including those oft-repeated tropes of the cool guy, the fat guy and the nerdy guy. As much as these guys talk about “fucking,” they all seem to be totally afraid of sex.

Which isn’t to say there’s not a good reason for their erectile frights, especially given the oversexed ladies who are remarkably booked at the same time; this includes the accomplished-but-horny musician, the muscular-but-horny workout queen and the German-but-horny dominatrix who wants to do Mapplethorpe-esque things with bullwhips to the fat guy’s ass.

A set of parents — the cool guy’s parents — show up and they’re erotically horned-up as well; even his little sister is sexually vapid, taking a video camera and making homemade revenge porn to show on the television screens at a modest dinner in the hotel’s restaurant where everyone is eating the titular magical fruit.

As you’d hope, Kayser is basically Bubba on vacation, while the chubby Joe Rubbo spends most of the movie in ill-fitting boxers. Add to the pot a trio of stacked blondes — Bea Fiedler, Victoria Barrett and Taaffe O’Connell — and, well, you still have a very dumb movie, but the type of movie that only Sachs could have ever made. ¡Olé! —Louis Fowler

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Straight from the Liberal Household Arts Building and into your lap come the four girls of Hollywood High. Their names are unimportant, because the girls are interchangeable, save for the only one (Rae Sperling, Game Show Models) who would earn a second glance from Russ Meyer.

This toke-and-poke sex comedy is lewd, crude and best left unviewed. The only directorial effort from beefy, prolific character actor Patrick Wright (Cannonball!, Graduation Day, Savage Harbor, et al.) carries no credited writer, which makes sense because it also carries no story. The movie is simply a string of interminable, music-backed scenes of the quasi-foxy foursome driving in a jalopy, jumping in the surf, making out, getting defiled, incorrectly chugging beers and having a food fight at that drive-in spaghetti joint.

Wandering into the picture are a screamingly gay teacher (Hack-O-Lantern’s Hy Pyke) who teaches Greek (get it?), a greaser named Fenzie (get it?), a little person named Big Dick (get it?) and a Mae West caricature named June East (get it?). For the record, the other three girls are played by Susanne Severeid, whose credits include Don’t Answer the Phone!; Sherry Hardin, whose only other credit is Ted V. Mikels’ 10 Violent Women; and Marcy Albrecht, who has no other credits, which is the way it should be.

In the final shot, each girl looks at the camera and takes a turn pronouncing one word apiece from the line “This is the end.” Enough, we get it. —Rod Lott

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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

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