House of Cruel Dolls

Director - Pierre Chevalier (The Panther Squad, Human Cargo)

Starring - Sandra Julien (Dany the Ravager, Nada), Silvia Solar (Danger! Death Ray, Cannibal Terror), and Magda Mundari (The Infamous House of Madame X, The Randy Widow)

Release Date - 1974

Genre - Thriller/Crime

Format - Bluray (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

     Full Moon is one of the companies that I cut my teeth to when I was first found a love for horror.  The Puppet Master, Subspecies, Doctor Mordrid, and so on were some of my favorite film to rent from the local ma and pop video store.  Their in house productions were always my favorites but some of their distributed flicks were a bit of a miss for me.  Regardless, my love for this persists to this day and I'm always grateful when I get in a new movie to review from the company that brought me so much joy when I was younger.  A few weeks ago I saw that Full Moon was releasing the 1974 sexploitation flick House of Cruel Dolls on blu.  I had never seen this one so I reached out to Full Moon and they were kind enough to send a review copy my way.  Thanks guys!

     The film follows a group of underground flesh merchants that kidnap beautiful women and force them to work in their bordellos.  It follows one woman who is rescued from her sleazy life while an underground investigation is underway to stop them from abducting more women.

     I was pretty excited to check this one out.  I love a good sexploitation flick and it's rare that I get them in for review outside of Vinegar Syndrome.  Sadly, this was one messy film that I'm almost certain that I reviewed several years back under a different title.  I was unable to track the review down but the film was so similar to another film I didn't care for.  The acting in this one is split up into two parts.  The physical acting which was solid.  Their mannerisms fit the sexploitation section and the inserted spy clips (yep, you read that right).  It works but the dubbing is where it lost me.  The dubbing is so bad.  Their voices are like anime characters which doesn't fit the actually cast members at all.  I was fucking laughing my ass off in some of the scenes listening to these characters sound like 80s wrestlers.  The story for this one is several movies spliced together.  The film has the sexploitation story spliced with a spy film.  It makes for a confusing watch which is a bit of a let down.  Both films separated could have been fun but Frankensteining pieces together results in an incoherent story that just isn't fun to watch. Finally, the film has plenty of skin but if it's blood and gore you are after then you will be very disapointed.    Overall, House of Cruel Dolls aka House of Lost Dolls is a big let down.  This hybrid of two films is a diluted watch.  The blu looks good but that's a hard sell when the movie is this bad.  Collectors will want this but I don't recommend watching it.