LINDA (DVD)

Filmed in Madeira. "I am indeed a scorpion, with my poison sting to play with men's mortality." With Raquel Evans.

There are now several NTSC DVD's, but no Blu-ray versions, of this 1980 Jess Franco Women-in-Peril crime film which are available on Amazon and EBay. The version pictured above is not the one which will be under review. The one we are discussing is a 2007 release, and a very dodgy one, from SUBSTANCE DVD. This film also exists on VHS versions from Spain (as ORGIA DE NINFOMANAS, complete version), CAPTIVE WOMEN (U.S. VHS circa 1990, as part of the numbered CAPTIVE WOMEN series). There's also a cut Dutch DVD, titled LINDA, of which this appears to be a bootlegged rip.

The SUBSTANCE DVD (pictured above) is as unsharp and VHS-like in terms of video quality, as its cover, which lists Jess Franco as director (he's listed as Jack Griffin in the end credits). This version is missing the opening pre-credit sequence in which Andrea Guzon is hunted down on a beach by Otto W. Retzer and a thug who drive her down in a land rover. She is then brought to the Rio Amore brothel, where she is whipped and raped. Also missing are scenes of German starlet Ursula Buchfeller being tortured while chained and a graphic S&M sequence between two prostitutes employed in the brotheL. It runs a total of 78 m, 12 minutes shorter than its reported 90 m full length run-time. It's also in poorly dubbed English, although some of the dialogue, especially some delivered by "The Champagne Girl" (Bea Fiedler) is quite amusing in a crude way. 

Juan Cozar Soler, the film's cinematographer (at least of the Spanish version, Hannes Furbringer is credited DoP on the English and German versions) plays a goofy John who visits the Madeira club. Some brief footage of him is also eliminated in the LINDA versions on this DVD and the Dutch release. Both of these English language releases are to be avoided, although the vintage CAPTIVE WOMEN VHS has much better video quality and is uncut. This would make a good HD double bill with Franco's 1980 EUGENIE, HISTORIA DE UNA PERVERSION, which also features Katia Bienert as the title character. The most interesting performance in LINDA, though, is from Spanish sex star "Raquel Evans" as Shiela, the brothel's hard hearted owner, who also compares herself to the scorpions she keeps as pets in glass cages. A.K.A. NAKED SUPERWITCHES OF THE RIO AMORE/THE STORY OF LINDA.  

Unlike the 1980 EUGENIE... this is much more of a thematically tame moral immoral tale of Sacred and Profane love in the Franco verse. The catchy Gerhard Heinz Disco score saturates the action in a pop equivalent of the nostalgic netherworld of Douglas Sirk style melodramatics in the midst of a cesspool of sex and sadism finally allowed in 1980s Spanish cinema. The CD of the Heinz score is available on Amazon as The Erotic and painful obsessions of Jess Franco,GEMA, along with the German score for EUGENIE.... and the Heinz score for DIE SAGE DES TODES (BLOODY MOON), 23 cuts from 3 films. I'll be reviewing that CD in a future blog post. 

 

The solution to this problem is for some company to release an HD restoration of the uncut ORGIA DE NINFOMANS.


(C) Robert Monell 2019