Truly Dreadful Film

Better Late Then Never

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

In Morocco, a magician couple make young women disappear in their stage act, where they are drugged and passed onto criminals who operate in the sex trade.Despite the title and the fact that this one stars Vincent Price, it comes as a bit of a surprise to discover that The House of 1000 Dolls is not actually a horror movie. There are some good things about it but overall it's a bit sluggish and unexciting. One good aspect is the house of the title. It's filled with a harem of beautiful women and the dolls themselves are an interesting detail, while the North African setting does lend proceedings some welcome exotic detail. But nice as these aspects are, overall it's a bit of a lethargic production. Price himself provides some class but even he can't do very much in what is not an especially great role for him. In fairness, it's a reasonable enough time-waster and it is a bit of an obscurity, so for Eurocult fans it is worth at least catching. But you'd be advised to not expect too much from it though.

I'm actually not sure what to make of House of a Thousand Dolls. I didn't hate it, but I wasn't crazy about it either. The best thing about it is easily Vincent Price, he is not in the film much but when he is on screen he completely commands it with a durable elegance and a touch of menace. Martha Hyer and George Nader do give reasonable performances as well, but not on Price's level. There is a good score and opening credits song and some of the photography does give some effective atmosphere. On the other hand, there are a number of failings, such as the sluggish fist-fights, mind-numbing dialogue and the fact that the characters just seem to be there but with nothing to make them particularly interesting. The story never really engaged me either, the basic thrust of the story, the more mystery/thriller-like stuff, is very dull, while the deaths and floggings are bloody and nasty but with little subtlety and taste. They like the characters seem to be there but again other than for shock value little is interesting about them. The twist is irrelevant and adds nothing to the film, so overall while I have seen far worse House of A Thousand Dolls for me was a very odd film. 5/10 Bethany Cox

At the beginning of "La casa de las mil munecas" (called "The House of 1,000 Dolls" in English), we get told that this is a tale of white slavery. I must ask: aren't people concerned when non-whites get enslaved? It just seems to me that they should have concentrated on black slavery, or shown white people and other races getting enslaved. And although I really like Vincent Price, it's sort of distracting to have him as the man running the brothel; you keep expecting to quote Edgar Allan Poe or something.So, this movie isn't awful, it just takes a weird approach to everything. There are much better movies out there, and if they wanted to show a bunch of hot young women, they could have done it differently.

White slavery is not a topic that gets much play nowadays, but it gets a full writeup in this film. And I don't know if that's necessarily a good thing.The film has a very strange setup. Garcia plays a man looking for his wife, who has been abducted in Tangiers. He finds that she has been forced to work in a brothel, The House of Dolls. He's discovered and killed. His friend Nader then takes it upon himself to figure out what happened to Garcia. What he uncovers is a white slavery ring run by magician Price, who uses the female volunteers from his magic act to stock The House.The odd thing about this movie is that everything is presented rather matter-of-factly. There's no surprise to anything. We find out in the first five minutes what Price is doing. We already know what happened to Garcia and his wife. It's a suspense movie with no suspense. They throw in a twist at the end, but who cares? It has so little to do with the movie that it's completely irrelevant. There's other problems. Price is billed first, but has only about 20 mins of screen time (in the second half mostly), and he doesn't appear to be having any fun. All of the actors in the movie appear to be speaking English, yet it sounds as though the whole soundtrack (which is in English) has been looped. It's never boring, but there's no action, no excitement, no nothing. Price fans may not even enjoy this one.