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Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1973)
By lngway2go | April 3, 2008
(aka Los Ojos Azules De La Muneca Rota, House of Psychotic Women)
Director: Carlos Aured
Starring: Paul Naschy, Eiko Nagashima, Silvia Aguilar, Azucena Hernandez, Julia Saly, Lautaro Murua, Luis Ciges, Ricardo Palacios, Rafael Hernande
In the last few years, the DVD market has suddenly been flooded with Spanish horror films. It was only a matter of time considering that Italy’s output of genre classics has been almost completely exhausted (several times over in some cases). However, there is a lot to be excited about. We were recently graced with Amando De Ossorio’s horrendously entertaining Blind Dead series, and now finally, one of the true classics of Spanish cinema, Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll.
Gilles (Paul Nasch) is hitch hiking in France trying to escape his past. However, when he winds up in the small town of Perrouze looking for work, his past quickly catches up with him. He accepts a position as the caretaker to the home of three strange sisters who live in a large house on the outskirt of Perrouze and are unable to maintain the property themselves.
Two of the sisters, Claude (Diana Lorys) and Yvette (Maria Perschy), suffer from physical handicaps which they received after some mysterious accident; an accident that seems to have turned the villagers against them. Claude’s arm is scarred severely from burns, and Yvette is wheelchair bound. Yvette’s doctor believes her condition to be all in her head, and decides to try psychotherapy in an effort to get to the root cause of her problem. A nurse the doctor recommends is brought in to care for the wheelchair bound Yvette, but when the nurse arrives it’s not the nurse the doctor was expecting. Michelle has been sent in place of the expected nurse, due to some unexplained circumstances.
Nicole (Eva León), the third sister, has problems of her own, although not physical. She has been caged by her overbearing sister Claude and is desperate to roam free, having needs that can only be satisfied by a man. So, needless to say, it’s lucky that Gilles has shown up, and she is quick in trying to seduce him.
A movie starring Paul Naschy this would not be, if Mr. Naschy did not remove a shirt or two in order to show off his bulky manliness. And so, when Nicole sees Gilles chopping wood bare-chested she just has to touch, but she is interrupted by her sister who is seeing the doctor out after one of his visits. This however, does not stop Nicole. She waits until evening and then casually enters Gilles’s room in her lingerie and has her wicked way with him. Like Captain Kirk in Star Trek, Paul Naschy always gets the girl, and in Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll, Naschy has his eyes on more than one!
He quickly starts to make the moves on Claude when she first brought him into the house, and when she gets jealous after seeing him with Nicole through the window, he comforts her in an effort to get a little closer. However, Gilles has, like the sisters, problems of his own. He has reoccurring visions of strangling a woman. His thoughts are especially plagued by these sights whenever he starts to get intimate. This does not stop him until he tries to have his way with Michelle. After taking her into the barn to ‘offer’ his services, the visions become too much for him and he has to let Michelle run off to the safety of the house.
While working in the garden, Gilles is attacked by the sisters’ previous employee, which they only just recently fired. He manages to fend off the attacker by stabbing him, but he is hurt in the struggle. This gives Gilles a good chance to survey the surrounding women as they attentively tend to his wounds.
When the police arrive to investigate the incident, they reveal that a woman has been killed, and it turns out that the victim is the nurse that was originally meant to take care of Yvette. And so begins a series of vicious crimes in which women with blonde hair and blue eyes are killed as they wonder the village alone at night, their eyes gouged from their skulls and placed in small dishes of water.
Of course, suspicion falls on the newcomers to the village while the bodies begin to pile up. When it is discovered that Gilles has a violent past, there is obviously no other conclusion to draw upon, and the police, along with a few of the local villagers go after him and put and end to the horrific murders plaguing the village. But things are not quite as they seem…Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll is actually one of the best Spanish horror films from the 70’s, and is definitely a good starting place for a foray into Spanish horror cinema. You really do get the best of both worlds; a strong mix of the gothic, which Spanish directors seem to be drawn too, along with the modern (at that time) giallo coming from Italy. This kind of blending of the two genres seems to give the film a strange ambiance, which seems to work in its favor. However, it’s still a fairly dull affair. The murders are committed very fast, or off screen, something an Italian giallo would never do!
Therefore, the film does drag in places, and it suffers from what could be called an old school approach. By this, I mean that the film could take place at any time; throw on some period costumes and it would still work. The film’s link to the period horror films a decade earlier is very apparent. That said, it’s not until the finale that you see the true power of the film and just how effectively plotted it really is. The black gloved killer gives the film some Italian flavor, but it’s at the finale that it throws aside all its trappings and aligns itself firmly with the giallo genre. Just because you think you are safe to give yourself a gold star for guessing the identity of the killer, don’t be surprised if your gold star gets replaced with silver when all is said and done. I know mine was.
Paul Naschy does what he usually does, and that can only really be a good thing. He takes his shirt off, flexes his muscles, gets into a fight, has a shoot out, and gets some girls. There is a certain comforting quality to this. He is something akin to Peter Cushing, or say, Vincent Price. He might, well, he definitely isn’t on their level, but he is their lesser Spanish equivalent, and like the previously mentioned actors, seeing Paul Naschy in a film makes the film worth watching - even if the film is pretty bad. Luckily though, Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll is not a bad film. It’s actually a pretty great one.
Deimos Entertainment has done yet another great job on this release. They have managed to secure another nice print, and although it’s full screen, the image is crisp and the colors are strikingly rich. Even the dull mono soundtrack sounds good.
Specifications: Full screen; English or Castilian mono 2.0; English subtitles.
Special features: Commentary track by Paul Naschy and Carlos Aured; Still gallery; Spanish Credits; US Trailer; Introduction by Paul Naschy.
Topics: Giallo, Spanish Horror |