This narcotic-paced S&M fuckshow from roughie king Joe Davian stars fellow Avon Films director Carter Stevens (who’s no one you want to see naked) as a newspaper editor investigating a voodoo sex cult in New York City. He dispatches reporter C.J. Laing to check out the cult’s wood-paneled headquarters (located beneath a claustrophobic fern bar) and photograph their secret rituals; C.J. captures the bar owner/high priest (nervous black performer Red Baron) initiating a virgin with a lengthy whipping and beating, followed by vigorous dildo probing, and capped with a lengthy seven-person orgy thick with twitching fingers and cocks probing damp, gaping pussies while a Latin garage-funk version of Santana’s “Jingo” flutters on the soundtrack. Laing’s photos turn out blank after being developed, so Carter gains entry into the rituals courtesy waitress Vanessa Del Rio, who learns the price one pays for betraying the voodoo when Baron subsequently ravages her ass with his Cuban superman cock. Stevens is quickly caught up in the cult’s hellfire revelry, and even offers up his shrewish wife to the cultists, who work her over with a blank-eyed single-mindedness. Later, at the apartment of his girlfriend (a sweetly naive and doughy Annie Sprinkle), he bangs out his expose on the cult – only to discover upon completion that the pages have turned blank…

For vanilla porn fans, Night of Submission will seem like a bit of a mess in its execution – Davian’s erratic lurching between past, present and future almost demands a timeline graph to figure out exactly where one is in the story -- but for others, the confusion it creates, combined with the occasional on-camera gaffe (at one point, an exasperated Laing screams at the camera, “Jesus Christ, Joseph! Take more pictures?!”), only enhances the hallucinogenic mood of the orgy and S&M scenes. These are clearly Davian’s meat and drink, and he invests them with a slow-boiling intensity that climaxes in the head-swirling flesh frenzy of the final orgy, with its dazed and greased participants submitting to whippings, nipple torture, and even a fire-ringed crucifixion. That these scenes come across as erotic and not repellant or terrifying (clearly Davian’s intent, as underscored by how easily Stevens’ kvetching mensch of a reporter caves in to the cult) is a testament to Davian’s skill as a kink director, and should prove an attractive lure to viewers whose sexual viewing habits run off the beaten path.

Alpha Blue Archives’ DVD presents the film in full frame and includes the original trailer (with a deeply stoned Annie fingering herself while intoning that audience members can participate in the rituals “if you want to… but of course you want to”), as well as previews for Zebedy Colt’s Satanic sex shocker The Devil Inside Her, and Gerard (Deep Throat) Damiano’s The Story of Joanna, with Terri Hall and Jamie Gillis. Both are also available on DVD from ABA’s massive catalog, which is worth a perusal for those in need of some vintage vice.