Film: Blue Eyes Of The Broken Doll
Running time: 90 mins
Director: Carlos Aured
Starring: Paul Naschy, Diana Lorys, Eduardo Calvo, Eva León, Inés Morales
Genre: Horror/Mystery/Thriller
Country: Spain
Region 1 release.
The elements that become conventions that become clichés that comprise a genre – we often reduce a film to these fundaments, and file. Guns and horses = western. Reptilian titans gnawing on Tokyo = kaiju. Arnold Schwarzenegger mowing down hordes of haplessly moustached baddies in Commando = comedy. Well... In the case of the giallo, iconography, narrative and formal verve are distilled into a potent, frequently befuddling murder maze. An Italian thoroughbred, the form typically unfolds in a domestic, urban milieu; grubby Milanese alleyways, moonlit palazzos, glinting cathedrals of modernism. Here, then, is a kitsch anomaly that bucks this norm. Whilst aesthetically it seems to be talkin’ Italian, Blue Eyes Of The Broken Doll is an entirely Spanish production. Can the stalk-and-slash mythos survive retranslation? Or has director Carlos Aured committed the most heinous crime of all – genre murder: with intent to bore?
Our tale begins as drifter Gilles (horror polymath Paul Naschy – also co-author of the screenplay) fails to thumb a ride out of barren, purgatorial Spanish plains. One despairing montage later, and his luck changes - for the worse.
Dropped in a minor town, the itinerant stranger is rebuffed by glacially indifferent locals and decides to move on. But fate intervenes in the form of an enigmatic benefactor, Claude, who delivers him to her ancestral mansion, and promptly contracts him as its caretaker.
Beneath this grand façade bubbles a cocktail of neuroses; for this is the unhappiest of families: a warped trinity of three sisters. Claude, maimed in a vague ‘accident’, wields a prosthetic hand; a deformity she considers abhorrent. Sex-kitten sibling Nicole is isolated and stifled, and hits on men with perverse abandon. Eldest sister Yvette is wheelchair bound, paralysed by psycho-somatic trauma. Into this dysfunctional haven swaggers our hero apparent – a man, it transpires, with his own soul-gnawing burden. And when a black-gloved assassin begins to slay beautiful blondes – before ritualistically extracting their eyeballs – he’s quickly dropped into the frame as prime suspect. Of course, in patented giallo style, all is not quite as it seems.
So whodunnit? And why? The clue’s in the title; but it’ll take you ninety-odd minutes of chills and sanguine spills to unravel the psychotic conundrum. Thankfully, it’s an entertaining jaunt…
Initially, the film plays like a campy re-imagining of Don Siegel’s The Beguiled. Muscular Gilles (often stripped to the waist) is the singular male at the house, and quickly becomes embroiled in a tug of lust between Nicole and Claude. Reaching the twenty-minute mark, a kinky couplet of sex scenes begins to evaporate the aura of intrigue. You’ll likely reach for the DVD case at this instant, to verify that this isn’t actually “Confessions Of A Spanish Caretaker”. But persevere. This sizzling sub-plot only occupies the first third of the movie and, amidst covert trysts and cow-milking interludes, introduces us to the malaise of the cast.
Aured underscores the fleshy melodrama with a subtle undercurrent of menace, incorporating haunted house clichés to sustain the eerie ambiance. As night falls, ominous smudges of cloud envelop the house in gloom, and deafening thunder-cracks voice the muted loathing of its occupants. In accordance with murder mystery convention, each character is exposed as damaged or duplicitous, and harbours an esoteric mystery - is suspiciously evasive about their past/uses a double identity/experiences shoestring expressionist nightmares.
Added to this cauldron of despair is an unhealthy dollop of classic Freudian angst, expounded by a bearded shrink who diagnoses the girls as mentally “sick.” The miasma of decay is palpable. Thus, when the corpses begin to stack up, we’re acutely aware of the underlying corruption that rots away at the habitants of the house; each appears a feasible suspect. It’s the task of the (characteristically ineffectual) town cop to hunt him down – but not before a succession of set-piece slayings have satiated the audience.
Impeccably stylish executions are an integral part of the genre, and these are realised with some skill here. Scenic locations are atmospherically lit on night-time shoots; transformed into angular vistas of light choked and dissected by vectors of shadow. Skittish victims are nimbly trailed by the prowling camera, as an ominous soundtrack primes us for an imminent coup de main.
Composer Juan Carlos Calderón’s mischievous score is a splendid accompaniment to this exploito-aesthetic - efficiently careering twixt muzak (seductively undulating bass, teasing flute) and sombre discord. Like a sick mash-up of Herb Alpert and Goblin, his themes commence as jaunty lounge ditties, only to morph into malign, mellotron accented dirges that echo the progressive rock so vital to Italian film hits like Suspiria. Another unsettling trick – perhaps borrowed from Argento’s Profondo Rosso – is the subversion of a nursery-time melody, which becomes synonymous with the killer. French standard Frère Jaques provides this deathly lullaby, unsettlingly juxtaposing childhood innocence with murderous degeneration.
Colour is dexterously woven into these sadistic tableaux. Red is subtly employed as a foreboding motif; wine, pig’s blood and a scarlet mac are all associated with victims before their demise. Gore is sparingly rationed, but brutally served - lacing the fromage with effective shocks. A grisly throat slitting and flamboyant rake murder (blood spurting across the frame) are grand guignol intervals which thrillingly punctuate the procedural bumbling of the authorities, proving Aured a canny orchestrator of horror theatrics.
Pioneered by gore auteurs Mario Bava and Dario Argento, the giallo is often considered a uniquely Italian confection, but this able Spanish effort proves that the genre is sufficiently robust to withstand relocation. Pulpy, crowd pleasing fare, the film offers a cornucopia of trashy pleasures. Failing to supersede the malign artistry of its antecedents, Blue Eyes Of The Broken Doll is nonetheless too well constructed to callously dismiss. Best served with a generous garnish of irony, this accomplished pastiche should prove a treat for giallo fans, and those keen to explore the seamier side of Spanish genre cinema. DJO
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