One of Lina Romay's best features takes the spotlight in Jess Franco's erotic sci-fi film SHINING SEX, on Blu-ray from Severin Films.

Cynthia (Romay) is a Las Vegas nightclub performer who has taken her act "Shining Sex" to the continent where she is spotted in a resort hotel floorshow by the mysterious Alpha (Evelyne Scott, THE DEVIL'S KISS) and her lover/slave Andros (Ramon Ardid, DORIANA GRAY). Cynthia agrees to go to their suite for a threesome, but instead she is treated to a brainwashing orgasm by Alpha, a being from another dimension known as "The Shades of the Night", who turns Cynthia's genitals into a death trap to seduce and kill those human beings who have knowledge of their existence. Cynthia's transformation, however, has a wearing effect on the tissue of her body, and her internal torments are psychically sensed by wheelchair-bound Dr. Seward (director Franco) who attempts to prevent with the help of his assistant Boris (Pierre Taylou, EXORCISM) a takeover of the Earth from the beyond.

Like Franco's FEMALE VAMPIRE, SHINING SEX has a rather indulgent running time for such a slight storyline, but the languorous pacing is very much a part of the film's spell, with Cynthia's seduction and induction take up pretty much the entire first half-hour and her wanderings and stalking around an empty Southern French resort town in the off-season – explored in Techniscope by Franco himself even though the photography is credited to Eurocine regular Gérard Brisseau – revealing a clash between the modern hotels and the medieval castle architecture mirroring the contrasts between the austere aliens and their human prey. The notion of a takeover by aliens or interdimensional beings is merely hinted at, with the greater suggestion being that the human victims have rendered themselves through the acquisition of forbidden knowledge – through psychic vibrations in the case of occultist Madame Pécame (Monica Swinn, THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY) and research in the case of biologist Kallman (Olivier Mathot, REVENGE IN THE HOUSE OF USHER) – vulnerable to beings who want to be left alone. The film does possess an emotional core, with Cynthia at first pragmatic about her condition – she tells Pécame her mission to seduce and kill her and that she neither loves or hates her – but both guilt and the physical nature of her transformation eat away at her, and the only person with which she can have sex without killing and also confide in is Andros who seems to pity her fate but offers no consolation. The sex scenes are graphic but not hardcore, and one wonders if this made the film too explicit to be picked up in some territories but not enough for the porno circuits. Daniel White (THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF) provides a score that includes some cocktail music for Cynthia's act but mainly consists of meandering organ cues and a drum solo during Cynthia's boat ride with future victim Kallman which as much references Miss Death's stalking of Howard Vernon in DIABOLICAL DR. Z as it does the meeting of the protagonist and his Eternal Female in Alain Robbe-Grillet's L'IMORTELLE. The film would be remade by Franco as AIDS: THE PLAGUE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, a film which is apparently lost.

Not widely distributed, SHINING SEX has been available in two versions: a French version running only eighty-five minutes, trimming much of Romay's wanderings and even some sex; and an English version running one-hundred-and-five minutes that was first available on Japanese VHS with heavy fogging of frontal nudity, and later as a fully-uncensored TV broadcast in English with Spanish subtitles. The English version positioned the opening credits during the pre-credits sequence while the French version positioned the credits over Cynthia's stage act. Neither version was ideal in that the French version was cut and only framed at 1.85:1 while the English version was uncut but panned-and-scanned from its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Eurociné was apparently unable to find elements of the longer version for some time when other companies inquired about the film, with the original 35mm camera negative only recently turning up in Spain (presumably there was plans to dub and release the film in the post-Franco era that did not come to fruition since the only Spanish version available is the English dubbed track with subtitles).

Previously issued in a limited edition with a slipcover and soundtrack CD compilation of Daniel White tracks, Severin Film's standard edition single-disc 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray comes from a 4K scan of the negative and is a revelation in terms of framing, lighting, and appreciation of Franco's minimalist visual design. Blacks are deep but there are some inconsistencies in grading that may stem from the archiving of the original elements with a sometimes faint green or yellow tinge diluting the whites of clothing and highlights which also seems to affect the sun-drenched exteriors with a faint haze apart from the issues and intentional effects of focus and flare. It is definitely the best the film has looked, and may be the best it will look. The only audio track is the English dub in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono, and the track is serviceable in the absence of a French track which would probably be incomplete or a non-existent Spanish dub. The English opening credits have been digitally recreated for the Blu-ray.

The film is accompanied by an audio commentary by NaschyCast's Rod Barnett and Franco expert Robert Monell in which they note the rarity of science fiction in Franco's filmography, Franco's minimalist visual design in the film, and how tonally different it is from Franco's MIDNIGHT PARTY which was produced back-to-back with the film, and the possibility that SHINING SEX might have been a secret film Franco directed on the side with the same cast and locations. "In the Land of Franco, Part 3" (12:42) is a 2020 locations visit by Stephen Thrower and actor Antonio Mayans in which they tour Malaga where Franco shot some of his later films and lived with Romay in their last years. They visit the Arabesque locations used in THE NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND DESIRES and DIRTY GAME IN CASABLANCA in which Franco's selective use of locations and camera angles turned the city into Casablanca; indeed, Mayans notes that Franco – who usually liked to direct his own stories – shot the screenplay by Santiago Moncada (A HATCHET FOR A HONEYMOON) for the opportunity to create Tunisia in Torremolinos. Mayans also suggests that Franco did some of the odder projects in his filmography for reasons as simple as playing with a new set of filters as seen in LOS BLUES DE LA CALLE POP. They also pay a visit to Andale Audiovisuel where some of Franco's later interviews for various disc releases were shot where we see some Franco memorabilia and dishearteningly learn that Franco's neighbors looted his apartment when he was in the hospital (thankfully, Mayans was able to save Franco's Goya award).

In "Shining Jess" (19:14), Thrower frame the film as the ultimate exploration of the two-way street that his the male gaze by voyeur Franco and its return by exhibitionist Romay who he describes as "carnality incarnate." Thrower does indeed note how the distillation of themes from DIABOLICAL DR. Z and NIGHTMARES COME AT NIGHT here along with Franco himself appearing as a metaphysician probing the dangers of desire gives the slight story an additional layer of reflexive complexity. In "Silent Running: Soundtracks and Tricks from the Films of Jess Franco" (6:26), filmmaker Gérard Kikoïne (EDGE OF SANITY) recalls his days as a sound mixer and dubber and working on Franco films brought to him by producer Robert de Nesle starting with LES DEMONS, and how the subsequent films were increasingly difficult since there were no guide tracks or screenplays, just short outlines, and how Franco's cutting copies gave little indication of whether scenes were flashbacks or not, as well as how Kikoïne and his team tried to fashion the story and the dialogue by lip-reading the French actors in the films.

In "Franco at Eurociné" (17:39), company head Daniel Lesoeur recalls how his father Marius Lesouer first met Franco in Spain through Sergio Newman when Franco was making LA REINA DEL TABARÍN, and how Franco proposing a vampire film lead to THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF. When Franco arrived in France, teenager Lesoeur was his typist when he came up with the screenplay for THE SADISTIC BARON VON KLAUS, and they bonded over their shared love of jazz. Of SHINING SEX, he shed some light on the behind the scenes aspects as well as the nature of Franco's breakup with wife Nicole Guettard – who has a cameo during the pre-credits sequence – and his relationship with Romay. He also notes the importance of unsung Eurociné production manager Madeleine Quiquandon (THE HOT NIGHTS OF LINDA) as well as Franco's involvement in the company's cannibal and zombie films. Lesouer gets emotional discussing Franco's relationship to his family, noting that his son Thomas visited Franco and Romay in Malaga and also bonded with Franco over music, and that he was with Franco when he received his Goya award.