La coccolona

Midnight Party (1976)

** (out of 4)

Strange tale of a dancer (Lina Romay) who leaves her husband and rock star boyfriend at home when two playboys invite her to a midnight party. Once at the party she has a threesome with a couple and then wakes up the next morning to find both of them dead in bed with a knife in their back. Soon Romay finds herself kidnapped and on a strange voyage where she keeps showing up at various locations. This is a rather strange film because a lot of the time it has Romay looking at the camera and talking to the viewer as well as telling them jokes. There's no doubt this was meant as a comedy or even a spoof of sex films because there are a lot of jokes running throughout. Some of these jokes work but the majority of them don't. The film starts off pretty fast and loose but quickly wears out its welcome and in the end it really starts to drag going on for 90-minutes. Romay is charming as ever and the fact that she runs around naked for the entire movie is only a good thing. Monica Swinn is good in her role and Franco himself appears with a wooden leg. The best joke in the movie deals with Romay being a working woman while her husband sits out home and does housework. This leads to some pretty funny scenes where the husband plays what would normally be played by a woman. In the end this film certainly isn't among Franco's best but it's not nearly one of his worst.