Customer Reviews

Broken Dolls & Helter Skelter

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I have a great admiration for Jess Franco. For the last three or four decades he's probably been one of the hardest working movie directors in the world. Far from all his movies are good, but he's made some truly great ones, like "She Killed in Ecstasy" and "Vampyros Lesbos".

In the end of the 1990s he started making movies for One Shot Productions, and all of his One Shot movies that I've seen were very amateurish and badly made. "Broken Dolls" has very bad sound, sometimes making it difficult to hear what people are saying (besides that, it's also difficult to comprehend what Lina Romay says due to her heavy accent). It's presented in Full Screen format instead of Widescreen. It has almost no plot and - as usual - far too long and boring sex scenes.

But if you think the sex scenes in "Broken Dolls" are too long, you haven't seen nothing yet, until you check out "Helter Skelter", a "movie" that was obviously too bad to get an own release so they put it on this disc among the special features. I don't know if you can call "Helter Skelter" a movie. It's not much more than an eighty minute long sex scene with the completely unattractive Lina Romay, some other girl, and about halfway into the movie they're joined by some guy. Sometimes there's a voice over reading the same lines (Marquis de Sade, I suppose) over and over again. If you thought "Lust for Frankenstein" was bad, this is almost worse.

As a fan of Jess Franco who's seen over 35 of his movies, I'm sad to say that I can't recommend this DVD to anyone, except the most die-hard Jess Franco completists.

I hope Jess Franco will find himself some good producers to work for, who know how to make movies and care about quality.

These new films of Jess Franco were unknown to me until I saw Mr. Franco and his wife, actress Lina Romay, at a convention in Chicago. Lina Romay said during an interview there that "Broken Dolls" was one of her own favorite films. So I bought it and watched it. You can't compare it to "Vampyros Lesbos" and other classic Jess Franco horror films because it is very definitely a modern film shot on digital video. It is modern in its subject matter too. It's a family drama of sorts about a very weird family that lives on its own island and sometimes doesn't wear any clothee. Lina Romay plays the mother figure and she frequently visits a beach on the island where she dreams about her lost past. Her pudgy husband is Don Martin,(played by Paul Lapidus), who was an old Vaudeville actor that moved his family to this island to escape from the modern world. The family thinks he saved all his earnings from the past and he must now be rich because he could afford his own island. At times the family seems content in their little private world and they scream and curse at passing tanker ships that come closer and closer threatening to encroach upon their paradise. In reality the family is sick of life in this dirty little backwards world and they want to find Don Martin's hidden treasure and escape back to the real world. But Don is not cooperating because he is slowly going mad with syphillis of the brain. "Broken Dolls" refers to Lina Romay's character's dreams of her youth, all now no more than broken dolls or toys that wash up on their beach. Don't buy this if you want a Jess Franco sex and horror film. You will be disappointed. But take a look at this if you want to see how mature Franco can be sometimes when he handles sex and traditions stood on their heads. I now understand why Lina Romay likes this film because she finally got an opportunity to act in a real dramatic role as a fully functioning person. I also read in an interview that Jess Franco said that his producers at One Shot Productions had insisted on a dramatic film from him and that's why he made "Broken Dolls." I, for one, am glad he did it.

I am so sorry I did not read the two reviews here at Amazon before I spent my cash on this complete loser of a film!
By far, its the worst Jess Franco film he's EVER made. Not one thing is interesting....not one women is beautiful or even decent to look at. I wanted to turn it off about 20% into the film! This is quite simply the biggest rip off erotic DVD I have ever purchased....and I am going to try to get my money back...
There is no point at all detailing anything to you Capt. Freaky fans out there. Because there is nothing for you to see worth watching.
How about this summary of both films on this one DVD...
Poorly shot, horrible sound, worse acting, no sex you'd want to watch, ugly nude bodies, did I mention bad sound?
This is a product that should have never been released on a DVD ever!

"A complete cinematic turd!"

The Capt. has spoken!!!