American-European Films presents LADY PORNO aka La Coccolona (Italian release), Porno Pop, Sexy Blues, La Partouze de Minuit, Sylvia la Baiseuse, Heisse Beruhrungen (German version) LADY PORNO (Spanish version) Directed by Tawer Nero (Julio Perez Tabernero) for Titanic Films, Spanish version. James Gardner (Jess Franco), English language version. Based on a story by David Khunne. 75 min, Spanish version. 90 min, English language version. MIDNIGHT PARTY version produced by Eurocine/Paris, Brux Interfilms/Brussels. Production Mgr. Daniel Lesoeur.
2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the production of Jess Franco's ultra-minimalist Eurospy-sex comedy. Filmed in what Pamela Stanford once wrote to me was "the celestial city" i.e. the futurist/geometric Southern France resort Le Grande Motte in what appears to be just a few days in a hotel rooms also seen in several other Franco films made back-to-back (SHINING SEX, DE SADE'S JULIETTE),\. Franco himself appears in the central role as Agent #008. Lina Romay is Syvia, a frisky stripper working at the hotel. This is an interactive sexy spy film filmed without excuses and possibly scripted on hotel napkins. It was a typical Franco strategy that he shot two other films at Le Grande Motte using the exact same rooms, casts and crews. The version under consideration here has the onscreen title LADY PORNO, a Spanish variant of Franco's original, MIDNIGHT PARTY. Credited to Tawer Nero aka Julio Perez Tabernero, an actor turned producer-director (he can be seen in Franco's own SADISTEROTICA/Two Undercover Angels) acquired it for his Titanic Films (Julio, your company needs a new handle!) and reconstructed it as an "American-Belgian" co-production. It's very amusingly redubbed and rescored with lewd comments, bawdy music and direct-to-the-viewer takes.
--Sylvia is a very hot stripper who carries on an affair with a cheap detective, Al Pereira (Franco regular Olivier Mathot) behind the back of her longtime lover, jazz musician Red Nicholas (longtime Jess Franco friend, actor, film historian, Alain Petit). This is not really another of Franco's Al Pereira episodes, as he is mainly a player in Sylvia's story. This is kind of like a live action cartoon (cf LUCKY, THE INSCRUTABLE) with Lina Romay giving it all she has as the resourceful Sylvia. This might actually be my personal favorite of her performances, she mercilessly teases the viewer directly as the interactive approach allows her to pose, stick her tongue out, and make alluring remarks to the audience before turning back to the scene and players at hand, resuming in the traditional fourth wall mode. It's all a lot of good natured fun. Except that the subject is torture. Torture that really hurts! Sylvia is taken by Radeck/Agent 008, a spymaster and professional torture mogul who takes his business very seriously indeed. Look at the way he abuses poor Sylvia: after being stripped and sexually abused by henchpersons Monica Swinn and Ramon, she's poked, punched and cigarette burned by the ingrates under the very close supervision of Radeck. They take her to the "torture clinic" which, this being a Jess Franco shoot, merely means another hotel room (or the same hotel room slightly redressed and shot from a different angle). Choosing a metal tool they try pulling out her toenails, as Radeck is beginning to lose his patience.
At this point one of my favorite moments in Franco's monumental filmography occurs, and it only lasts a few seconds--Radeck simply puts a cigarette in his mouth and lights it. That's it! The exact way which actor Jess Franco jabs the smoke into his mouth and fires it up has to be experienced first hand. It's a grand bit a business, something small made into something very special by a seasoned professional. Radeck drops the pose at the end, as Sylvia and Al are escaping he faces the camera and admits to us that it was all an illusion. We have been spectators. But what are we doing at this venue? Of course, that question is implied rather than asked. Alain Petit is very droll as the Marxist jazz singer. Billed as "Charlie Christian" (cf JUSTINE, the 1979-80 Joe D'Amato composite where he is likewise billed as his footage here is rolled over with scenes from SHINING SEX into a unique reedit) he performs his infamous "La Vie est un Merde", also heard in a blues rendition during Franco's 1982 EMMANUELLE EXPOSED and in Petit's documentary THE MAKING OF TENDER FLESH (1997).
The Spanish language version which was screened for this review (subtitled in English) is very much in keeping with the joker/trickster impulses which frequently bubble to the surface of Franco's work. The finale, a shootout with the cops (a minimalist debacle) followed by shots of birds flying in the distance as our couple floats away on a pleasure craft, is post-ironic in the sense that it delivers on expectations which Franco obviously considers bogus while gleefully curving past the generic demands of representational, grade B sexploitation production methodology. In other words: don't worry, be happy, it's only a Jess Franco movie.
(C) Robert Monell, 2025
