As the enigmatic title suggests, Blue Eyes Of The Broken Doll sees Spanish horror star Paul Naschy putting away his fangs and fur for a stab at the giallo genre. Directed by Carlos Aured (who had previously worked with Naschy on Return of the Werewolf and Horror Rises From The Tomb), the film has its stout star playing drifter Gilles, who finds work as a caretaker for three sisters, wheelchair bound Ivette (Maria Perschy), nympho Nicole (Eva León) and Claude (Diana Lorys), who has a disfigured arm; when women start to turn up dead, their eyes gouged out, suspicion falls on Gilles.
For almost everything that Blue Eyes gets right, it also gets something wrong, making it a frustratingly mediocre murder mystery overall. The killer wears regulation black gloves and mask (tick), but their identity isn't too hard to guess (being the seemingly most unlikely suspect, as is often the case in these kind of films). The murders are accompanied by a creepy rendition of nursery rhyme Frère Jacques (tick), but the rest of the score is unsuitably jaunty. There are several nasty murders (tick), but the gore is cheap and unconvincing. And of the numerous sexy ladies (tick), only one of them gets her clothes off (sexy redhead León).
Aured conducts matters with little sense of style (Argento, he is not!), and even throws in some unnecessary animal cruelty with the slaughter of a pig (a knife inserted into its jugular so that it can be bled to death). A silly ending sees the previously inept police chief (who happily gunned down Gilles despite no concrete evidence against him) suddenly acquiring Miss Marple levels of deduction and revealing the secret behind the murderer's psychosis.
5/10.
For almost everything that Blue Eyes gets right, it also gets something wrong, making it a frustratingly mediocre murder mystery overall. The killer wears regulation black gloves and mask (tick), but their identity isn't too hard to guess (being the seemingly most unlikely suspect, as is often the case in these kind of films). The murders are accompanied by a creepy rendition of nursery rhyme Frère Jacques (tick), but the rest of the score is unsuitably jaunty. There are several nasty murders (tick), but the gore is cheap and unconvincing. And of the numerous sexy ladies (tick), only one of them gets her clothes off (sexy redhead León).
Aured conducts matters with little sense of style (Argento, he is not!), and even throws in some unnecessary animal cruelty with the slaughter of a pig (a knife inserted into its jugular so that it can be bled to death). A silly ending sees the previously inept police chief (who happily gunned down Gilles despite no concrete evidence against him) suddenly acquiring Miss Marple levels of deduction and revealing the secret behind the murderer's psychosis.
5/10.