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Drama Cult Classic

THE KILLER OF DOLLS

1975 · 1h 38m · NR · Drama / Horror / Mystery / Thriller · IMDB TMDB

A groundskeeper's son, who is mentally unstable due to childhood trauma, goes on a murdering spree where his perception of reality is distorted by imagining people as mannequins and vice versa.

Details & Specs

Release
1975
Runtime
1h 38m
Country
Spain
Language
Spanish
Also Known As
The Killer of Dolls, Killing of the Dolls, Original title: El asesino de muñecas

Synopsis

When his grounds keeper parents go on vacation, a troubled young man fends off the advances of a lascivious Countess while romancing her virginal daughter on a large rural estate…

Made in Spain during Franco’s regime, this lop-sided “Lady Chatterly’s Lover” may sound like soft-core soap opera but the gardener’s son, Paul, hates lovemaking and dons a porcelain doll’s mask to murder any woman he catches in the act.

The killer’s identity is revealed early on with reasons going back to childhood so what suspense there is comes from wondering how the romantic complications could possibly turn out well. Complicating matters is a mixed-message homo-eroticism with the slightly effeminate anti-hero constantly cavorting in either tight short-shorts or his underwear when he isn’t in a bed, bath, or shower and his only friend is a like-minded little boy who goes missing, of course.

It’s set almost entirely in and around a lonely landed manor house with lots of mannequins, doll mutilations and cheesy hallucinations for scenery and may not be very well made but some stabbing, throat-slashing, decapitation, at-home heart surgery, and handsome Helga Liné (a European Alison Hayes) as “The Countess” make this worth a peek.

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