Rolls-Royce Baby (1975) is essentially a film documenting Lina Romay (playing Lisa) tooling around in her fancy car looking for sex. Which, despite how it sounds, is pretty incredible. When one looks at the breadth of European sexploitation films of the seventies there is an overwhelming number of films that don’t empower women sexually. Women are commodities in these films, not the driving forces of pleasure and sexual exploration.
All of that aside, Rolls-Royce Baby really has very little to offer. Erwin C. Dietrich shot the majority of the film on sets in Zürich on the Elite Film lot. Costumes and props are ported over from uncredited co-director Jesús Franco’s Shining Sex (1975). Both Franco and Dietrich are titans in the sexploitation genre and are, surprisingly to some, capable of a decent film. Yet Rolls-Royce Baby has no narrative momentum and offers little to discuss besides Lina Romay.
At this point Lina Romay was Jesús Franco’s muse and collaborator. She possesses a tremendous amount of charisma on camera in addition to her natural beauty. Night Has A Thousand Desires (1984) is proof positive that Lina Romay is capable of more than shaving her bush or having simulated sex with a duo of truckers in the back of their cabin.
Rolls-Royce Baby is for the completists in the world of cinephilia. Franco, Dietrich and Romay each enjoy their own avid cult following and Rolls-Royce Baby is really best enjoyed by that demographic. From a historical perspective Rolls-Royce Baby is interesting for its sex positive depiction of female sexuality, but not to the degree that I would recommend this film to that demographic. Simply see it if you feel that you must.
