Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures

George Michel Serkeis / Jose Mojica Marins
1975

This is the latest of the Coffin Joe films I've seen and definitely the weakest despite it's amazing title. Lacking nearly all the oomph, vision, and execution of earlier pictures like "At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul" (1964), and "This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse" (1967), and not going far-out enough with it's psychedelic freakout a la "Awakening of the Beast" (1970). The ghost story told is one of the oldest and most transparent premises around with it's disparate group of folks "checking in" to the eponymous strange hotel managed by Coffin Joe on a dark and stormy night. This obvious one-note plot gets dressed up with plenty of Joe's abstract philosophizing and stock footage (a beating heart, forces of nature) edited around, and laid over the drama. The picture does deliver on it's "naked pleasures" with tons of grainy toplessness, and a soft-core biker orgy lending the picture some solid exploitation cred. The only really interesting part of the picture is it's experimental use of sound - heavy on hiss, fuzz, and overlaid tracks to create an expressionistic and otherworldly horrorscape.