Linda is a 1981 Jess Franco Spanish-German co-production that has a few surprises in store. It seems like it’s going to be a full-on orgy of sleaze but that’s not how it plays out.

Sheila (Raquel Evans) owns and operates a major hotel on a small Mediterranean island. Her boyfriend Ron (Antonio Mayans) manages the hotel for her. Ron is two-timing Sheila with one of the employees, Betsy (Ursula Buchfellner). Sheila knows how to take her revenge. Sheila has another business on the island, Rio Amore. This is a very high-class brothel. The girls cater for all tastes. Sheila forces Betsy to work as one of the girls in the brothel, where she is subjected to various indignities and tortures. Sheila does not want to kill Betsy. Humiliating her is much more satisfying, and serves the double purpose of teaching Ron to be a good boy in future.

Betsy’s kid sister Linda (Katja Bienert) attends a convent school in Switzerland. She’s about to arrive on the island for a holiday. The nuns warn her that she will have to try hard to retain her virtue in the outside world. Linda however has no intention of retaining her virtue. In fact she has a steamy bedroom frolic with one of the other girls before packing her bags for her holiday. She’s tried women and now she’s keen to try men.

Ron would like to rescue Betsy but he’s scared of Sheila and he wants to keep his job. Sheila is a very possessive vengeful woman.

Ron doesn’t know what has happened to Betsy but he knows Linda is about to arrive so he goes to the airport to pick her up.

You know what’s going to happen. Poor innocent Linda is going to be drawn into the decadent debauched world of Rio Amore. But that’s not what happens at all. Linda meets a really nice boy. They fall in love. The movie has two totally separate plot strands and the Linda plot strand is a tender sensitive love story. Yes really.

The Betsy plot strand doesn’t play out quite as expected either.

This is a movie that constantly seems to be on the verge of tipping over the edge into real nastiness but it doesn’t really happen.

That’s not to say that this is not a sleazy movie. There’s an astounding amount of nudity and a lot of sex. There’s kinkiness. There’s torture. There’s sex slavery. But weirdly it somehow manages to avoid that real nastiness. The torture scenes turn out to be very tame. The sex is strictly softcore. The violence is quite restrained and it doesn’t escalate to anything like the levels you might anticipate.

You could almost say this is a lighthearted feelgood movie about sex slavery and torture. That sounds weird, but that’s how it turns out.

And the main focus is on the love story. In fact two love stories. And they’re both genuinely romantic love stories involving nice people. It’s a “lovers walking hand-in-hand on the beach” movie and it’s a “true love will triumph” movie.

This is definitely Franco Lite. Which is not a bad thing. It’s an erotic movie that celebrates eroticism as a good thing. Even the kinkiness is mostly hinted at, or it’s done in a lyrical rather than grimy way.

There are orgy scenes but they don’t get overly explicit. There’s certainly an atmosphere of decadence and that’s Franco’s focus, rather than graphic sex. And he achieves the decadent feel very effectively.

It’s obviously a very low-budget production but Franco manages to make it visually quite impressive. The glass cage in which Betsy is imprisoned is a nice touch and would have cost almost nothing.

Franco loved erotically charged nightclub scenes with a hint of kink and the floor shows Sheila provides for her clients serve much the same purpose in this film.

The highlight of the movie is the very arch performance by Raquel Evans as Sheila. She spends a lot of time naked and while her sex scenes are not overly graphic she manages to generate plenty of sexual heat. She totally and effortlessly dominates the movie.

Linda isn’t top-tier Franco but its mix of romance and low-key sleaze is rather engaging. Recommended for Franco fans.

Linda had a DVD release which is still available.