A rich asshole (Paul Muller) hires a sexy nurse (Alice Arno) to take care of his paralyzed daughter Linda (Veronica Llimera) and his nympho niece Olivia (Lina Romay). Before long, she begins to realize the house harbors a boatload of dark secrets. Olivia’s sexy nightmares could be the key to unlocking the family’s mysterious past.
Jess Franco’s But Who Raped Linda? seems like a dry run for his 1983 flick, The House of Lost Women. Both films feature a house brimming with nasty secrets and a family with a lot of kinky hang-ups. In both movies, the sudden appearance of a visitor changes the family dynamic and ultimately causes their downfall. I have to say, nearly everything Franco set out to accomplish here was done much better in The House of Lost Women.
The set-up is promising, but things get bogged down in a hurry soon after Arno arrives at the house. Dreams, flashbacks, and dreams that contain flashbacks disrupt the flow of the family drama. Many of these dream sequences are repeated, mostly to pad out the running time. After about the third time you see the same dream, you start to tune out eventually. The appearance of a pair of comic relief cops is annoying as well. (At least one of them is a hot babe who does a striptease.)
The ending is downright infuriating too. It’s one thing to be jerked around for eighty minutes if you can stick the landing. However, it’s just one big cop-out. Heck, I don’t even think Franco bothered to answer the titular query, which makes things even more frustrating.
The good news is Lina Romay. She is the sole reason to watch this mess. I don’t think she’s ever looked hotter than she does here, and that’s really saying something. She is incredible during the scenes where she seductively sips champagne, sunbathes in the nude, and in the film’s most famous scene, eats a banana. I’m telling you, I never wanted to be a banana more in my life than when I was watching this movie. I could justify watching But Who Raped Linda? solely for the presence of Romay. Too bad there’s nothing else here that’s nearly as memorable.
As far as Franco’s signatures go, this is another movie in which he delivers lots of lazy camera zooms and pans. As previously mentioned, it’s another film like The House of Lost Women where Franco depicts the family unit as a nest of crazed sexual loonies. And like many a Franco picture, it seemingly solely exists to show Romay in the nude. Among the performers from Franco’s usual stock company, we have: Romay, Arno (from Countess Perverse), Llimera (Tender and Perverse Emanuelle), and Muller (Eugenie de Sade).
AKA: The Hot Nights of Linda. AKA: Come Close, Blond Emmanuelle. AKA: Erotic Dreams.
Well folks, that’s a wrap on Franco February. I looked through the Video Vacuum archives and exhaustively went through all the Jess Franco movies I’ve seen and ranked them. Here’s how they stack up for me:
RANK-O de FRANCO:
1. Female Vampire ****
2. Sadomania ****
3. Ilsa, the Wicked Warden ****
4. Falo Crest ****
5. The House of Lost Women *** ½
6. The Demons *** ½
7. Sinfonia Erotica *** ½
8. Faceless ***
9. Killer Barbys ***
10. Succubus ***
11. Vampyros Lesbos ***
12. Dracula’s Daughter ***
13. Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun ***
14. Macumba Sexual ***
15. Commando Mengele: “Angel of Death” ***
16. Justine ***
17. Eugenie… The Story of Her Journey into Perversion ***
18. Jack the Ripper ***
19. Diary of a Nymphomaniac ***
20. Rififi in the City ***
21. The Sadist of Notre Dame ** ½
22. Barbed Wire Dolls ** ½
23. Bloody Moon ** ½
24. Cannibals ** ½
25. Exorcism ** ½
26. Cecilia ** ½
27. She Killed in Ecstasy ** ½
28. The Awful Dr. Orloff ** ½
29. Black Boots Leather Whip ** ½
30. 99 Women **
31. Venus in Furs **
32. Lulu’s Talking Ass **
33. Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties **
34. Dr. Orloff’s Monster **
35. Women Behind Bars **
36. But Who Raped Linda? **
37. A Virgin Among the Living Dead **
38. Nightmares Come at Night **
39. Count Dracula **
40. The Diabolical Dr. Z **
41. Diamonds of Kilimanjaro **
42. Death Whistles the Blues **
43. Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein **
44. Shining Sex **
45. The Sexual Story of O **
46. Sex is Crazy **
47. The Bloody Judge **
48. Oasis of the Zombies * ½
49. Golden Temple Amazons * ½
50. Kiss Me Monster * ½
51. Night of the Skull * ½
52. Downtown Heat * ½
53. Rites of Frankenstein *
54. Future Women *
55. Two Undercover Angels *
56. The Inconfessable Orgies of Emanuelle *
57. Devil Hunter *
58. The Blood of Fu Manchu *
59. Lust for Frankenstein *
60. The Sadistic Baron von Klaus *
61. Esmerelda Bay *
62. Blind Target *
63. Night of the Eagles *
64. The Castle of Fu Manchu *
65. Revenge in the House of Usher ½ *
It seems that out of his over 200 directorial credits, I’ve only seen about 65 of Jess Franco’s movies. Which ones are your favorites? Let me know in the comments below. And don’t forget to join me in the month of March when we will explore the wild, weird world of Andy Milligan for a column I call Milligan March. See you then, Vacuumers.
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