Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974)

Original Title: Los ojos azules de la muñeca rota 
In this Spanish giallo, Paul Naschy is an ex-con who comes to stay with three sisters in a remote homestead.  Upon his arrival, blonde villagers are murdered and their eyeballs stolen.  Who's doing these grisly murders?  Let's find out...

An ex-convict named Gilles (Paul Naschy) drifts into a remote, isolated town looking for work.  A woman, Claude (Diana Lorys) offers to hire him on as a handyman.

Claude has a prosthetic hand.  Very David Lynch-ian, if I may say so.

Claude lives with her two sisters, the nympho redhead, Nicole (Eva León) and the wheelchair bound Ivette (Maria Perschy).

Gilles is barely there an hour before Nicole is throwing herself at him.  I love how Paul Naschy always plays the stud with the same exact swagger as William Shatner.

Gilles and Nicole take it upstairs to his bedroom.

Eva León is the only providing nudity in this film; she delivers the boobs a few times.

Michelle (Inés Morales), a nurse, has been hired to care for the invalid, Ivette.

Michelle speaks with the family doctor, Doctor Phillipe (Eduardo Calvo).

 Eva León supplies plenty of gratuitous eye candy in this film.  Nicole hates that she's stuck here in this isolated mansion.  She also looks down upon her two sisters, who she views as repugnant and undesirables (Claude has a prosthetic hand and Ivette is an invalid).

Nicole pretends to have back problems so that Doctor Phillipe will take a look at her, and maybe some hanky panky will ensue.  The doctor is a profession and refuses the temptation.

While all of this pointless boring shit is going on at the mansion, a number of blonde women around the village are being murdered and having their eyes plucked out.

There is a scene where three female tourists arrive at a local pub.  One of them orders drinks and bends her ass over the bar. But then we never see these girls again!

Clearly there must be another version of this movie out there.  Why would they introduce three young provocatively dressed characters who appear out of nowhere only to never see them again?  I suspect there is a racier cut of this movie where these girls get naked and are killed in gory fashion.  Indeed, this movie was also called "House of Psychotic Women" and was directed by sleazemaster Carlos Aured - there's no way Eva León was the only female delivering nude scenes in this movie - and tame ones at that.  Trust me, there's a sleazier version of this out there somewhere.

Gilles reveals to Claude that he was convicted of rape and murder, but it was all a big misunderstanding.  Claude begins to fall in love with him.

As the doctor reads in the paper which reveals the "truth" about Gilles, we get an amazing shot of this magazine rack.

Claude asks Nicole to promise to no longer sleep with Gilles, as she is madly in love with him.

Nicole wanders into a downstairs room and is surprised by what she sees. She's murdered and we never get to see what she saw, or who the killer is.

Gilles learns that police have found him out and is on the run.  Claude tries to come with him, but Gilles coldcocks her (to knock her out so she won't follow him and be in danger).

The police finally catch up to Gilles and blow his ass away.  Of course, we know he's not the true killer.

Michelle returns to the mansion in the middle of the night.

She's attacked by the film's true killer - it's Ivette!

Ivette kills Michelle, but she stages it to look as though Michelle is actually the killer, placing a blade in her hand.

The police arrive, find an unconscious and stabbed Ivette alongside Michelle with blade in her hand.  They naturally assume it was Michelle that did the killing.

The twist!  Ivette has an appointment with Doctor Phillipe.  He hypnotizes her into being his personal killing machine, to pluck girls' eyes out.

Doctor Phillipe has a dead wife with no eyes; so, he's clearly a fucking madman, having Ivette killing the blonde girls in town and taking their eyeballs for his dead wife.  THE END

I liked the way this filmed - with bright colors and interesting angles. It clearly takes a lot from Dario Argento and Mario Bava in style and giallo tropes.  The ending is surprisingly sick and twisted; there's a fair amount of gore (even a real pig slaughtering), and we get to see Eva León's titties multiple times.

Unfortunately, it's mostly pretty boring... and not the "slow burn" kind of boring.  It's the "look at your watch and yawn" kind of boring.  There's just not much here we haven't seen before in a million other giallos. Paul Naschy fans and giallo buffs will like it, but on it's own, Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll is pretty "meh".  I'm confident the sleazier version (which I am sure existed) would have been much better.

★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆