House of 1,000 Dolls (1967)

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.

To begin with, this was yet another "Movies 4 Men" screening hampered by the usual garbled sound problems! It is also an example of a maligned Vincent Price film (Leonard Maltin says he "walks through it in a daze"!) which is actually not too bad. That said, the actor was not well served by "Euro-Cult" (this is a Spanish-German production, despite the British involvement of the writer-producer and director), as can also be gleaned from his sole Mario Bava collaboration DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRL BOMBS (1966)! Price and co-star Martha Hyer are a couple engaged in a magic act (called Manderville, so that he is later mockingly dubbed "Mandrake"!) who are involved in the trafficking of women for the purposes of prostitution (they purposefully choose lonely girls to make them disappear both on stage and in real life but, of course, they are bound to slip sometime...because otherwise there would be no film!). Considering the subject matter and Towers' resume', this is remarkably chaste; in any case, the very first victim we see here (being transported in a coffin!) is none other than Maria Rohm aka Mrs. Towers. Her boyfriend sets on her trail, which leads him to Tangier, where he seeks the help of criminal pathologist George Nader (the hero inevitably played by an ageing Hollywood presence). Hindering their progress is local photographer Herbert Fux, while the proper Police investigation is carried out by Wolfgang Kieling (who had just been a villain, served with a memorable death scene, in Alfred Hitchcock's TORN CURTAIN {1966}).Typically, the identity of the organization's head is a mystery to all; hence, the ultimate revelation proves quite a surprise...and, though it then transpires that Price was not as villainous as had been inferred, he still gets a melodramatic demise. By the way, I was surprised to notice the Maltese name of Charles Camilleri as the film's composer; actually, I had already heard his (only other film) work on Jess Franco's THE CASTLE OF FU MANCHU (1968) and, interestingly enough, he died a couple of years back right in my home-town!

What an incredible lackluster movie!You're constantly waiting for the movie to finally start off. When is the suspense and mystery going to kick in? The movie feels like one big constant introduction to events that just never occur.This movie would had had absolutely no watch-ability value if Vincent Price wasn't in this. He played in lots of movies like this and he often didn't even played the lead role. In some cases he was on the screen for no more than 10 minutes but still was always being presented as THE evil main villain of the movie. This movie is one of those examples. But as always his presence uplifts the movie and gives it more class and sense of professionalism. It's always amazing to see how he absolutely has no difficulties delivering the most awful lines in an almost Shakespearean way. But still, a movie like this makes you wonder what Vincent Price is doing in it. The only reason I could think of was that this movie was based on an Edgar Allen Poe story but this wasn't even the case.I wish I could call the movie sleazy. In that case the movie would still had some camp value but the movie just never goes in that direction.The story is very silly and simple. At times it seems it's heading in the horror direction, at times it seems it's heading in the thriller direction, but it's just never fully heading anywhere in any direction in the end. I also wouldn't know under which genre to qualify this movie.There is a good reason this movie gets very rarely shown anywhere.3/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

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.