Blue Eyes Of A Broken Doll (1973) + Human
Beasts (1972/Paul Naschy/BCI Eclipse DVD-Video Releases)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C- Films: D/C-
BCI has
been issuing various films in the Horror genre starring Paul Naschy and they
have at least been interesting, but my least favorite yet are Human Beasts (1972) and Blue Eyes Of A Broken Doll (1973) which
both offer attempts to do giallo-type films with more slaughter than
story. I was expecting more story as was
the case even with the Italian equivalent, but these films are too
self-impressed, tired, predictable, not even as stylish as past Naschy projects
and really go nowhere.
Of
course, they also have a strange obsession with hitting, stabbing, killing
eating or being eaten by pigs, which does nothing for me and made me wish
Ridley Scott’s Hannibal would be announced for Blu-ray soon. Beasts
is barely the better of the two where Naschy plays a mercenary who gets in the
crossfire of sex, betrayal and double-crossing, but none of the characters
(especially his) are developed well and it is all so boring that you hope they
shoot each other up so we can move on or meet more interesting characters. Eyes
is worse, as ex-con Naschy is hired by three odd sisters to be caretaker of
their estate, but a serial killer who lives to rip eyeballs out of the victims
is on the loose. It happens every time!
If you
just want t see some slaughter, this is not as bad as sadistic torture porn,
though Eyes has lame sadism of its own.
For diehard fans only, if that.
The 1.33
X 1 image on Eyes and anamorphically
enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on Human are
surprisingly about equal, with good, if not great color and some detail
limits. Like the preceding DVDs that
were later issued on Blu-ray, since these are from original camera materials,
we expect some of this is about limits on this format, but it is clear enough
for the graphic moments. The Dolby
Digital 2.0 Mono on both (in either English dub or Castilian) show their age,
but are pretty good considering the dubbing and low budget.
Extras on
both include Naschy introductions, original trailers, a bunch of stills and
liner notes by Mirek Lipinski. Eyes adds
an audio commentary by Naschy & director Carlos Aured moderated by Angle
Gomez Rivero and Spanish credits sequence, while Beasts adds a Naschy Short
called The Vampyre, co-directed by Alejandro Ballesteros and Antonio
Curado. They are a little more
interesting than the actual films in this case.
- Nicholas Sheffo