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Jesús Franco — news, coverage & facts — IJR

With Lina Romay

A year or two after Miranda died, a grieving Franco discovered a new leading lady in actress Lina Romay. At the time, the teenage Romay was married to a young actor/photographer named Ramon Ardid (aka "Raymond Hardy"), who co-starred with Lina in 19 Franco films in the 1970s. But as Romay and Franco became more involved in their film projects together over the years, her marriage to Ardid broke up in 1975 and ended in divorce in 1978 (Ardid continued working with Franco however until 1979).

In the adult film Sexorcismes (1975), Franco was involved in a non-simulated sex scene with Romay.

Franco was married at the time to Nicole Guettard (their marriage running approximately from 1962 to 1980), Ms. Guettard being gradually replaced in Franco's life by Romay. Guettard worked as a script consultant on some of Franco's films while they were married (sometimes credited as Nicole Franco), and even acted in a few of them. Her daughter from an earlier marriage, Caroline Riviere, also acted in a few Franco films in the early 1970s (including the risqué Exorcisme and The Perverse Countess). Guettard died in 1996.

Franco and Romay worked together for 40 years. While they had started living together in 1980, they officially married on 25 April 2008. Until her death in 2012 (from cancer, aged 57), Romay was his most regular actress, as well as his life companion and muse. Romay starred in approximately 109 Jesús Franco films, more than any other actor or actress. Although Romay was listed in the credits of several films as a co-director, actor Antonio Mayans stated in a 2015 interview that Franco used to credit her in that manner for business reasons, although she never actually co-directed any of their films together.

Although he produced a number of relatively successful horror films in the early 1970s (Dracula vs. Frankenstein, The Bare-Breasted Countess, A Virgin Among the Living Dead), many people in the industry considered him a porn director due to the huge number of X-rated adult films he began turning out (even his 1970s horror films featured abundant nudity). Franco returned to low-budget horror films in a brief comeback period from 1980 to 1983 (Mondo Cannibale, Bloody Moon, Oasis of the Zombies, Mansion of the Living Dead and Revenge in the House of Usher), but after 1983, his career took a second downturn as he returned to making mostly pornographic films, most of which left nothing to the imagination.

In his later years, he did, however, get the opportunity to turn out two rather big-budget horror films – Faceless (1988) and Killer Barbys (1996) – both of which showed what great work he could still do when his projects were adequately funded. The entirety of his work after 1996 (beginning with Tender Flesh) was shot-on-video films of very low quality, none of which were distributed theatrically. Romay died of cancer in 2012 at age 57, after which Franco died on April 2, 2013, from natural causes at age 82.

Filmmaking style and themes

Franco sometimes worked under various pseudonyms, including David Khune and Frank Hollmann. A fan of jazz music (and a musician himself), many of his pseudonyms were taken from jazz musicians such as Clifford Brown and James P. Johnson.

Franco's themes often revolved around lesbian vampires, women in prison, surgical horror, sadomasochism, zombies and sexploitation (including numerous films based on the writings of the Marquis de Sade). He worked in other exploitation film genres, such as cannibal films, spy films, giallo, crime films, science fiction, jungle adventure, Oriental menace, exorcist films, war movies, historical dramas and nunsploitation. His sex movies often contained long, uninterrupted shots of nude women writhing around on beds. Most of his hardcore films starred his lifelong companion Lina Romay (sometimes billed as "Candy Coster" or "Lulu Laverne"), who admitted in interviews to being an exhibitionist.

Franco was known for his use of a hand-held camera and zoom shots, which he felt lent realism to his films. He also was not averse to filming several movies at the same time, knocking together a second feature on the unsuspecting producer's dime. Many of his actors only found out years after the fact that Franco had actually starred them in films for which they had never even been paid.

His main claim to fame, however, is that he managed to direct approximately 173 motion pictures in his lifetime, encompassing a wide swathe of different genres with practically no financial backing available to him. (Note: Some sources which list as many as 200 titles in Franco's filmography are relisting the same films several times under their different variant titles.)

Sometimes referred to as the "European Ed Wood", Franco similarly attracted a circle of bizarre but loyal actors and technicians who moved with him over the years from project to project (while receiving very little, if any, money for their efforts). Many of his actors were over-the-hill performers in the twilight of their careers, many of his actresses brazen exhibitionists. He frequently worked with genre actors Lina Romay (who appeared in 109 Franco films), Antonio Mayans (who appeared in 50 Franco films), Howard Vernon (who appeared in 40 Franco films), Paul Müller (who appeared in 15 Franco films), Monica Swinn (who appeared in 15 Franco films), and Christopher Lee (who appeared in 7 Franco films). His frequent cast members also included Jack Taylor, Ewa Strömberg, Anne Libert, Soledad Miranda, Maria Rohm, William Berger, Dennis Price, Olivier Mathot, Muriel Montosse (a.k.a. Victoria Adams), Alice Arno, Montserrat Prous, Alberto Dalbés, Britt Nichols, Pamela Stanford, Mabel Escaño, Kali Hansa, Carmen Carrión and Klaus Kinski, all of whom are well known to Euro horror film historians.