House of 1000 Dolls

source: House of 1,000 Dolls

La casa de las mil muñecas

House of 1000 Dolls does NOT live up to what I would expect from a Vincent Price movie. It is NOT particularly scary and NOT a horror movie. It is more like a slow moving detective/police movie. I don't know what the budget was but it appears to be a low budget film. Synopsis: This movie is about 'White Slavery'. Though made in the '60's white slavery is still very much alive and real today so this is definitely a based on reality movie. In this movie Vincent and his beautiful accomplice travel around the world as magicians and use this as a front to kidnap beautiful young white women. A four way cat and mouse game ensues between the boyfriend of one of the kidnapped women, a doctor & his wife who know the boyfriend, the police, and Price and his accomplice. Some action and intrigue but slow... You may want to view this flick in order to check this off of the list of Price movies but I don't believe that it is worth watching twice...

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.

i think vincent price was one of the greatest actors to ever live, but i have to admit that i don't understand why he degraded himself by starring in this boring, dull, and ultimately pointless bore. the only reason i can think of that they made it at all is that the idea of a whorehouse or female slaves must have been hot stuff on the screen in 1967. was it supposed to be scandalous or something? because otherwise this one is about as exciting and involving as reading a periodical on the cause of varicose veins. it doesn't even work as a goofy camp movie, because it's too solemn and dull. as always price gives an above average performance, but it does nothing for this clunker because the movie as a whole is so fundamentally bad and uninteresting. even if you're a price completist like myself, don't bother watching it, just buy it to fill the whole in your collection.

This drab thriller would be far worse without star Vincent Price, who admittedly still seems to have phoned in his performance as Manderville the Magician. (He also seems to have brushed off the top hat and cape he wore in 1954's The Mad Magician.) Shot on location in Tangiers, the film accomplishes the near impossible and makes this exotic location seem about as exciting as Bakersfield. Blame ultra cheap producer Harry Alan Towers, who wrote the screenplay using his Peter Welbeck nom de plume, and director Jeremy Summers, whose previous suspenser--the shot in Hong Kong Five Golden Dragons--is even worse. Perhaps the film would improve if seen in widescreen, but the only way you can see this baby is via an out of print HBO tape, which at least letterboxes the opening credits. Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers provide the groovy song that briefly plays out over the closing credits. A year later, their career in tatters, the Rebel Rousers split up.