Erotic Symphony (1980)

If you’re a fan of the late Spanish horror/porn director Jesus Franco, you could certainly do worse than this 1980 outing, which is–like much of the director’s more interesting sex films–based on a story by the Marquis De Sade. A young noblewoman (Lina Romay) is released from an asylum and returns to her isolated castle where she finds her sexually depraved husband has taken up with both a pretty-boy male gigolo and a libertine, runaway novice nun (Susan Hemingway). What follows is a slowly developing murder plot interrupted by no small amount of sex.I enjoy Franco most when he’s indulging in polymorphous perversion like he does here–you have bondage, nunsploitation, gay sex, a “Devil’s three-way” (two guys and a girl), and a couple impaled while having sex. This is truly an “erotic symphony” as Franco plays the bodies of his assorted cast like instruments (and scores the whole thing with classical music) making the actual plot more of secondary consideration.Of course, Franco can’t keep his camera off the vaginas of his two actresses, but at least he doesn’t try to zoom his way back into the womb like he tends to in some movies. He gets a lot of mileage out of his wife/leading lady’s bounteous breasts, but he tragically neglects the beautiful post-adolescent posterior of Susan Hemingway, which COULD have finally been enjoyed without guilt here as she had reached the age of majority by this time. (Pervert that he was though, Franco would trade her for the even younger Katja Beinert in his subsequent early 80’s films). The gay sex scene is not particularly graphic, but unusual for Franco. Whether you like it or not, you have to admire the sheer variety of sex on display, particularly given how complete compartmentalized and commodified sex films are TODAY. There will never be another one like Jess Franco. . .