Rolls-Royce Baby (1975)

Rolls-Royce Baby is something of a rarity - a Lina Romay movie not directed by Jess Franco. So it has curiosity value if nothing else.
It was directed by Erwin Dietrich, the man who has been described as Switzerland’s answer to Roger Corman. Dietrich of course produced many of Franco’s 1970s movies. Rolls-Royce Baby has no pretensions to being anything other than a skin flick, albeit a classy skin flick.

Lina Romay plays a model/adult actress named Lisa Romay, known as the Rolls-Royce Baby. In between modelling assignments she likes to drive around the countryside in her chaffeur-driven vintage Rolls-Royce and have sex a lot. Usually in the Rolls-Royce. Having sex in the back of a car does have a certain amount of style if the car is a vintage Rolls.

The movie is a little thin on plot. Basically we just have a beautiful rich young woman who likes to drive around in her Rolls-Royce and have sex a lot. She has sex in her car, and out of it. In fact she has sex just about everywhere. Of course it wasn’t always this way for her. Before she could afford a Rolls-Royce she had to have sex in trucks. This no doubt motivated her to save her pennies so she could buy a nice car. There’s a lesson here for us all. If I could get to have sex as often as Miss Romay does in this film I’d certainly be saving for all I was worth.

As for characterisation, essentially what we have is a study of a beautiful rich young woman who likes to drive around in her Rolls-Royce and have sex a lot.

That’s not to say that the movie doesn’t address any serious issues. It certainly addresses the problems of rich young women who like to drive around in Rolls-Royces and have sex a lot. It appears that these women, contrary to what you might expect, actually don’t have too many problems apart from the perennial one of finding a sufficient number of people to have sex with. And if you look like Lina Romay then finding willing partners is not all that onerous a task.

Jean-Luc Godard once famously said that to make a movie all you need is a girl and a gun. In this movie Erwin Dietrich proves that a girl and a car will do just as well. They could afford a flash car for the movie since they were able to save a considerable amount of money on Miss Romay’s wardrobe (which consists of one very flimsy see-through negligee and a pair of high-heel shoes).

Rolls-Royce Baby doesn’t make too many demands on Romay as an actress. All she’s really required to do is take her clothes off. Although that’s not strictly accurate since as far as I can recall she never actually has her clothes on. Romay gives it her best shot however and she does manage to convey some sense that perhaps this woman isn’t quite as carefree as she appears to be, that perhaps there’s a certain emptiness in her life. Some movies contain gratuitous nudity; you could say that in this case Lina Romay contributes some gratuitous acting.

There have been erotic film-makers (Radley Metzger and Joe Sarno being the obvious examples) who have managed to make erotic movies that are more than just skin flicks. Erwin Dietrich is not of this company and Rolls-Royce Baby has no great claims to artistic merit (if such claims mean very much).

Visually the movie aims for that mid-70s classy softcore erotica feel that made Emmanuelle such a huge hit, and it achieves that aim reasonably well. It’s rarely sleazy but it’s definitely erotic. It’s difficult to dislike a movie that features such a prodigious amount of Lina Romay nakedness. Do you need to see this movie? That really depends on how you feel about Lina Romay nakedness, a question I leave for you to decide. It’s softcore although it’s perhaps (at times anyway) at the raunchier end of the softcore spectrum.

The German DVD from Ascot Elite Entertainment is an all-region PAL release and looks superb. It also includes the English dubbed version.