[1] In a career spanning from 1954 to 2013, he wrote, directed, produced, acted in, and scored approximately 173 feature films,[1][a] working both in his native Spain and (during the rule of Francisco Franco) in France, West Germany, Switzerland and Portugal.

[1][2] Despite mixed critical reception during his lifetime, Franco's work has gained a dedicated cult following, and he is regarded as a significant figure in the history of exploitation cinema.

A lifelong jazz enthusiast and pianist, Franco studied music at the Madrid Royal Conservatory and the Instituto Ramiro de Maeztu, before embarking on a film career.

[1] During this time, he supported himself by working as a pianist in nightclubs and writing pulp novels under the pen name 'David Khune', which he later adopted as one of his directing aliases.

Miranda starred in a series of six erotic thrillers for Franco, all made within a one-year period (one of which Sex Charade was never released), after which she was killed in a tragic automobile accident in Portugal in 1970 just as her career was taking off.

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.

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).

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.

[5] Franco simultaneously shot a variant Spanish-language version of Oasis of the Zombies at the producers' expense, starring Lina Romay and his "regulars", which was apparently released only in Spain in 1982 as La Tumba de los Muertos Vivientes.

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).

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.

His main claim to fame, however, is that he managed to direct approximately 173 motion pictures in his lifetime,[5] encompassing a wide swathe of different genres with practically no financial backing available to him.

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.