THE HOT NIGHTS OF LINDA

(A.k.a. LA NUITS BRULANTES DE LINDA; BUT WHO RAPED LINDA?; QUI A VIOLE LINDA?)

The onscreen title here is BUT WHO RAPED LINDA? The directorial credit goes to 'J P Johnson' - another classic incidence of Jess Franco working under a pseudonym.

Marie-France (Alice Arno) visits her agent one afternoon looking for work. After reminding him that she is a skilled nurse, he offers her the gig of tending to a French family: the wealthy Mr Radek (Paul Muller), along with his daughters Olivia (Lina Romay) and Linda (Catherine Lafferiere).

Desperate for work, Marie-France accepts the contracts and makes her way across France to Radek's plush coastal beach house. As is being greeted by grunting servant Abdul (Pierre Taylou) isn't enough, she is immediately struck by Radek's oddly distant demeanour. Her anxiety isn't settled any by his revelations that Olivia is a paranoid sex addict and Linda suffers from a mysterious condition which has rendered her crippled and terrified of her own shadow.

Settling in to her room, Marie-France then takes it upon herself to meet the two girls. She shares champagne with the sultry Olivia who clearly has designs on her new acquaintance; Linda is less forthcoming, shrinking into her pillow as the nurse attempts to coax conversation from her.

Intrigued by both of the girls' conditions and in particular wanting to fathom what made Linda this way, Marie-France decides to stay on at the beach house.

When Olivia later walks in on Marie-France while she showers, she reveals that she is actually Linda's cousin - Radek adopted her when her own parents mysteriously died. She also discloses that, despite her nymphomaniac persona, she's a virgin.

She's certainly an odd fish. But then, her entire family seem deranged. For example, why is Linda bedridden for no apparent physical reason? Why does Radek cry out for his late wife Lorna in the night, ridden with guilt of some dark secret from his family's past? Come to think of it, who's the detective - looking remarkably like Marie-France's agent - desperate to get into Radek's house for a snoop around? And what significance do Olivia's own recurring dreams have, in which her shagging is curtailed when someone walks in to her bedroom and the slashes the throat of her lover?

All will become clear, Olivia believes, if only she can obtain the key to a room in the house that Radek keeps permanently locked...

Though leisurely paced and quite tame when measured against a fair amount of Franco's output from the mid-70s (in this softcore version, anyhow; a hardcore version was also filmed for certain territories), LINDA is quietly absorbing thanks to interesting characters, a keen sense of mood and a gradually emerging mystery at its heart. That it is punctuated by regular bouts of female nudity doesn't harm its prospects either.

Arno, Muller and Romay make for fascinating leads and all of them carry enough charisma to keep each scene engaging. Franco largely manages to avoid his soft-focus zoom lens tricks here, and there are some unexpectedly stylishly composed scenes that evoke Mario Bava at his best.

In fact, the film builds well in terms of pace and style, rising to a credible crescendo of final act delirium which convincingly evinces the madness of this flawed family unit. LINDA is, believe it or not, a genuinely 'good' Jess Franco film.

Yes, we get bad dubbing and a silly "peculiar feeling" ending. Fine, the throat slashings are suspiciously bloodless, and Muller is underused. But when weighed against the agreeable manner in which the story is unfurled, the almost casual way the sleaze is incorporated into these otherwise stylish proceedings and Daniel White's gorgeously light score, LINDA still stands as one of Franco's more apparent artistic triumphs.

Severin Films bring Jess Franco's infamous 1975 film to the home video market in a nicely packaged blu-ray and DVD combo set. If you buy early, you'll also find a third disc in the custom keepcase - a second DVD - more of which I'll get to later...

Starting with the blu-ray disc, LINDA looks good in 1080p HD.

The film is presented in its uncut softcore version (80 minutes), correctly framed at 2.35:1 and enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Colours are brighter and bolder than ever before, lending a fresh style to sequences that previously seemed drab on bootleg releases. Blacks are strong without compression issues, and detail is increased considerably when measured against previously seen black market DVD versions of the film.

Some of the photography is naturally soft, and there is undeniably some print damage evident - most notably some rather harsh horizontal lines around the 47-minute mark - but, all in all, LINDA looks very healthy here. If the opening pre-credits scene doesn't impress too much, stick with it: things improve as the film progresses.

English mono audio gets the Master HD treatment and sounds very clean for its duration.

The disc opens to an animated main menu which plays on the sultriness of the banana scene. From there, pop-up menus include a scene-selection menu allowing access to LINDA by way of 12 chapters.

Some interesting bonus features have been gathered for this obvious labour of love.

They start with the 16-minute featurette "Hot Nights", in which a chain-smoking Franco speaks about how the film was written specifically as a starring vehicle for Romay, discusses the burden of having to film additional post-production scenes in France, the importance of that iconic score. Franco speaks in English but Severin have chosen to accommodate for his accent with the inclusion of easily readable yellow English subtitles.

Next up is an informal 11-minute interview, again in English for the most part, with Franco and Romay. It's a bittersweet treat watching these two recently departed icons bounce off each other with genuine affection, as they reminisce over the making of the film. There's no love for Arno and neither of them has a desire to revisit the film, but other than that they remain upbeat about LINDA and the rest of their formidable legacy. English subtitles are provided for the occasional forays into Spanish.

Author Stephen Thrower is also on hand to offer an educated 12-minute appraisal on the film, which he refers to as a "psychological chamber piece". If you're a fan of the film, his insight into its making makes for an invaluable accompaniment to the main feature. We learn more about the hardcore footage for different markets, the confusion over the film's various titles over the years and lots more. Especially interesting is Thrower's reveal that many of Franco's film didn't care much for dialogue, and so sound recorders would be left to script dubbers' lines in post-production. In hindsight, this explains A LOT.

There's also a 95-second video account of Franco receiving the Fantasia Film Festival's first ever Lifetime Achievement Award. Touchingly, Romay is also there to support the clearly unwell director.

The film's 4-minute English language theatrical trailer serves as a good comparison against Severin's restoration of the main feature: suddenly the strength of the colours, blacks and detail in the restored picture become even more apparent.

Finally, we get 5 minutes of rough-looking outtakes. These include more softcore rutting for the most part, including a scene that was specifically shot for Italian audiences.

Disc two in this set is a DVD housing all of the same content as above, albeit in standard definition.

As mentioned earlier, the first 2,500 copies of this release include a third disc. This is a DVD which contains the 'hard banana' version of the film.

This is presented uncut on the DVD. Although it's clearly taken from an old worn VHS with burned-in English subtitles, it's perfectly watchable and demonstrates how the film plays out in the French language.

At 79 minutes in length, it's ever so slightly shorter than the more commercial version on the other discs. The story is the same, but quite a few scenes differ. For instance, when Marie-France first meets Olivia, there's quite a bit of Romay's bush thrown into the mix for no good reason. When Olivia subsequently walks in on Marie-France in the shower, the camera leers longer over both women's bodies, and so on.

Of course, the main difference is the inclusion of a couple of scenes of unsimulated sex. The first features Romay masturbating in bed, and even extends to her sucking her fingers dry after climax; some cousin-on-cousin cunnilingus which culminates with banana fucking; a blowjob that leads into vaginal penetration; more muff-diving and masturbation; a belly cumshot which Romay scrapes up and gobbles down ...

The film plays quite well in this alternate edit too. Romay is blatantly involved in the sex scenes, though all other performers are filmed in close-up - I suspect body doubles were employed. This being a Franco film, most of these sequences are shot badly, but they're still worth seeing.

Severin Films must be commended on what is, overall, a fantastic and comprehensive release for one of late director Jess Franco's most talked-about films. All discs in this set are region-free.

THE HOT NIGHTS OF LINDA is stylish, provocative and beguiling. In its hardcore version, on the limited third disc, it's also smutty as Hell too! Recommended.

Review by Stuart Willis