Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1973)
Review by: Erin Page
WHAT IT’S ABOUT: A mysterious drifter finds work at the country home of three sisters. While he tends to their farm, a sudden increase in local murders raises suspicion…
REVIEW: This Euro-cult thriller is one of Paul Naschy’s best efforts. A surprisingly unpredictable film, Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll is rife with all the in-your-face eroticism and unintentional-lulz that one expects in an early ’70s slasher. It’s almost too good to make fun of! …Almost. Thankfully, Castilian beefcake Paul Naschy is here to do what he does best — be extreme and take his shirt off!
Stopping hearts and clogging drains!
If you look up MACHISMO in the dictionary, it’s just this screen cap.
Our beloved Mr. Naschy is once again a misunderstood loner, this time a rebel by the name of Gilles. Hitchhiking his way to a rural French village with nothing but the leather jacket on his (as we will soon find out, very fuzzy) back, he struts right onto the radar of the most important characters in town. Gilles is looking for immediate employment without any follow-up questions, and he finds a job as a handyman in the secluded home of three very sexy sisters.
Alas, the days of the instant background check are still decades away, so the sisters are forced to do a little investigative digging to find out just what dark secrets lie beneath the surface of Gilles’ beefy exterior. Nicole — the youngest and by far the boldest of the trio — takes it upon herself to unlock Gilles’ mysteries.
Nympho Nicole isn’t the first… and she won’t be the last!
Wheelchair-bound Yvette is so preoccupied with her doctor’s comings and goings that she can hardly be bothered to take notice of the large, hammy stranger living under her roof. The same cannot be said for sister Claude, who — though vocal about her extreme disgust for Gilles’ lusty ways — is a pretty fucking bad liar. She seethes with jealousy, hiding behind a a stone mask of crippling insecurity stemming from one awesomely deformed hand. Claude’s frightening prosthesis keeps suitors at bay but seems to arouse curiosity in Gilles. Lucky for her — and us! (er… not so much Nicole) — Gilles refuses to be tied down by just ONE bothersome sister.
So what’s going on? You ever get freaky with that thing?
The movie would have all the makings of a wonderfully sleazy drama if it weren’t for two things — Gilles’ TERRIBLE SECRET and a string of murders in the nearby village. It seems that someone has been stalking and butchering all of the blonde, blue-eyed girls in town, bleeding them dry and stealing their eyeballs!
What kind of depraved madman would do such a thing? Could it be our depraved manimal Gilles? Or is it all a horrible coincidence? What dark past is he hiding? Will Claude recoil in horror when she discovers the truth? Will we recoil in horror when we see what lies beneath her robo-hand?
So many questions! I can’t take the suspense!
The movie starts off on shaky ground with what can only be described as a laughably inappropriate score. I don’t know what business lighthearted, borderline zany muzak has to do with laying the groundwork for a grisly suspense thriller, but that didn’t stop them from using it in EVERY GODDAMN SCENE. Just when you think you’re not going to have to hear that interminable, zippy tune again — they spring it on you. And just because the movie is over, don’t be lulled into a false sense of security! It WILL get stuck in your head.
Though I’m relatively immune to movie gore, I’d be remiss if I didn’t warn you about the one bit of ULTRA-VIOLENCE in this film — violence so outrageous that up until recently, it had to be cut out of the print entirely. Though a psycho-killer butchers blondes right and left, gouging out their pretty eyes one by one, it’s the slaughter of a single pig that gets the biggest audience reaction. In a very short scene, a farmhand kills a pig — this is not movie magic, this is a real live animal actually being slaughtered. Armed with the knowledge that had the pig NOT been pork-chopped on-camera he would be long dead by now regardless — I’d still keep your finger hovering over that fast-forward button.
ON A SCALE OF 1-10: Scandalous! A very meaty 7.