Broken Dolls (1999) User Reviews

I'm the richest man in the world...in the world!

[lastliberal · 4/10 · 22 June 2009]

Oh, I wanted to like this. i really really wanted to enjoy another Lina Romay performance in a Jesus Franco film.

Sure, there would be sexploitation and weirdness, but it sill would be good. Or, so I thought.

The cinematography was excellent and the music really added to the atmosphere, but the present of the actors detracted from that.

Sure, there are plenty of breasts and a bushy vadge or two, along with sex and masturbation, but that is not why I watch a film. I also want some semblance of a story, and I just could not find one.

A crazy old man (Paul Lapidus) lives with a half dozen others on a remote island, where supplies are boated in. he supposedly has treasure hidden on the island, and others want to find it before he goes completely crazy.

Too late. he loses it and blood flows.

So...wow.

[BandSAboutMovies · 4/10 · 9 February 2022]

On an island near the coast of Maracaibo, ex-Shakesperean actor Don Martin (Paul Lapidus) has brought an entire family of followers with him to start a new society. The inhabitants of his kingdom include his wife Tona (Lina Romay), his lover Gina (Christie Levin, Snakewoman), his daughter Beatriz (Mavi Tienda, Helter Skelter) and Herbie (Exequiel Cohen).

Their days are all the same, mostly with Tona beating Beatriz while screaming at an ocean liner, Gina trying to pick up Herbie and Beatriz spying on her father having sex with Gina. Yet no one tries to leave and even follows the old actor when he buries a treasure on the island. And then, Mario (Guillermo Agranati) shows up and wants to marry Gina. The old man marries off his daughter instead, as he thinks that Mario can get him in with a composer.

And then Herbie finds the treasure, which reveals that maybe Don Martin wasn't all that great of an actor. He proves that with a long soliloquy that he closes by stabbing Mario and Beatriz as they have sex on his bed before drowning himself, dooming everyone to never leave the island.

Pretty much a shot on video version of House of Lost Women, it's a soap opera or maybe Franco working through his fascist father hating that he played jazz. But man, some days I do feel like LIina, standing on that island and screaming how badly I want to get out of here, so I get it.

If you make enough movies, eventually you remake your own movies. If you're Jess Franco, you remake your remakes and then make new versions of them.

Franco gets maudlin with happy results

[liudragon · 10/10 · 21 April 2003]

It would seem that director Jess Franco has flourished over the past few years since he began associating with the American production company One Shot Productions. They have attempted to tighten his film productions without taming his unusual flair for crackpot cinema. In "Broken Dolls" Franco has his characters populating a one-time island paradise that is being slowly decayed by encroaching civilization (personified rather simply as approaching oil tankers). The island's clan is headed by doddy old Don Martin (Paul Lapidus in a wonderful performance) who once was a vaudeville performer and who may or may not have buried a treasure somewhere on the island. With their days on the island obviously numbered, Martin's slapdash family tries to race against his onsetting insanity to find the treasure and perhaps escape from paradise to someplace that at least has TV reception.

Actress Lina Romay names "Broken Dolls" as her favorite film performance and credits One Shot and producer Kevin Collins for bringing this film to life. "Broken Dolls" is one of Jess Franco's very best films ever and certainly a film to be recommended to Franco's fans and to his detractors as well - it might change everybody's mind about him.

A character-based One Shot Production from Uncle Jess.

[parry_na · 7/10 · 21 November 2020]

By 1999, once prolific, legendary film-maker Jess Franco had been working with One Shot Productions for two years, a company relishing in its low-budgets, created primarily to facilitate and distribute Franco's films.

'Broken Dolls' ranks alongside the earlier 'Tender Flesh' as one of One Shot's most technically adept productions, not that that is saying a lot. Also like that earlier film, this is a reimagining of an earlier Franco project - here, 1982's 'The House of the Lost Women/ La Casa de las Mujeres Perdidas' gets a make-over, with much of that earlier venture's elements of graphic perversion removed. I'll try and review this on it's own terms rather than make tedious comparisons.

It's quite effective. Paul Lapidus plays the central role of faded actor Don Martin, increasingly unstable and delusional as the story goes on, believing he has unimaginable treasure buried somewhere on his island home. Lina Romay is Tona, his wife, who hates the paradise in which they live - Romay named this film as a favourite of hers. Alongside Romay, who is wistful and cruel by turn, my favourite performance is that of Mavi Tienda who plays daughter Beatriz. Appearing to be asexual and introverted initially, she blossoms into the story's most appealing character, alongside Herbie, played by Ezequiel Cohen. The sound design is often not good, at times virtually incomprehensible due to the heavily accented English being spoken, but nevertheless a step-up from many other One Shot Productions.

In JG Ballard style, here is a family that has degenerated into eccentricity and madness; but the location is the real winner here - sun-bleached and yet filed with subtle shades and colours. Jess's occasionally stuttering camera work captures it all beautifully, providing the contrast between the characters' private hell and the extraordinary scenery that surrounds, and possibly traps them. My score is 7 out of 10.

Certainly among Franco's best...!

[armando_mariani · 8/10 · 16 February 2005]

As a movie-lover, I carry with Jess Franco a kind of longtime and ongoing "love'n'hate" relationship, in the sense that I "love" to search for his movies; when I can put my hands on one I haven't seen yet, I watch it right away and, usually, I begin to "hate" him... immediately after-wards! For one thing however I have to give him credit. He understands "entertainment" and, in spite of having worked (almost) ever on "shoe-string budgets", he has (almost) always delivered what his audience was looking for: sexploitation, S&M, erotica, horror, porn, satanism, zombie, cannibals, vampires, nuns...you name it. He jumped enthusiastically on almost every "bandwagon" on the horizon, crafting low-budget movies in his original style. He is one of the few directors who has dared to challenge himself by transferring on screen Marquise De Sade's philosophy (quite a challenge), with more then respectable results in several cases. He delivers best creating dramatic situations, in which he injects generous doses of T&A. and a "bit more"...which is his special and personal trademark. "Broken Dolls" was for me actually a pleasant surprise. Yes, he still wanders endlessly with his zoom lens (quite dusty, perhaps on purpose to create a dreamlike atmosphere!?!) over tree-tops, beaches, ocean waves, birds and objects which, apparently, have no relation to the story or to the movie. The cinematography is at times shaky, the movie seems being shot with a hand-held 16 mm. camera and the sound has a lot of flaws. The copy I watched was English dubbed, apparently, by the very same actors. Unfortunately, they don't manage too well this language and carry a (very) heavy Spanish accent. Particularly Lina Romay lines were sometimes almost incomprehensible and made the viewing, to a certain extent, an involuntary hilarious and, sometimes, excruciating experience. In spite of all the above, he crafted an original little movie, which I could not stop watching till the end. He manages to bring across a couple of messages, the story, if not completely plausible, is at least interesting, the location is beautiful and so are the ladies bodies, which are generously revealed in highly erotic contexts. The acting is surprisingly good. Paul Lapidus is an amazingly colorful "Nut". Only problem is that he has such a sympathy charge emanating from all his (fat) pores, that it is kind of difficult to take him seriously, when he pokes holes and slices-up, with profusion of blood, the bodies of the two lowers "caught in the act". Lina Romay decides to be a serious actress, wisely leaving the "clothes dropping" to her much younger and fresher supporting actresses and delivers a compelling portrait of an angry, sad and disillusioned middle-age woman which, at the end, looses all hopes for salvation. A pleasant soundtrack underlines the action on screen. "Broken Dolls" is a "must see" for all Franco's fans. I give it an 8 out of 10.