Mon 28 Mar 2016
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: HOUSE OF 1,000 DOLLS (1967).
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Reviews[6] Comments
HOUSE OF 1,000 DOLLS American International Pictures, 1968. Originally released in Spain as La casa de las mil muñecas, 1967. Vincent Price, Martha Hyer and George Nader. Written and produced by Harry Alan Towers. Directed by Jeremy Summers.
You know a movie’s in trouble when the hero of the piece gets third billing. You know it’s really desperate trouble when that billing reads “George Nader,†an interesting man perhaps, but never the most electrifying of actors.
Actually, House of 1,000 Dolls has a few stylistic flourishes that make it just about worthwhile. It’ll never make anyone’s “10 Best†list, but it’s an okay time-killer if you’re in the mood.
Vincent Price and Martha Hyer play traveling magicians in the employ of a shadowy figure known only as “The King of Hearts†using their act to lure beautiful women into sexual slavery in a Tangiers Brothel. This not only gives Price a chance to strut about in cape and top hat, looking regally sinister, but also gives writer/producer Towers ample opportunity to show lotsa young ladies running around in their undies, a win-win situation if ever there was one.
I have to confess that I’ve only come across one real-life “white slavery†operation and it was a pretty tatty affair involving a few rather unattractive and not-very-bright young ladies (not all of them white, for that matter) held in the thrall (and ratty apartment) of a rather unpleasant and not-very-bright old guy. So maybe I don’t have a sound basis for comparison, but it seems to me that House not only sanitizes the concept but positively glamorizes it.
In this film the women are all beautiful, the brothel lavish and well-staffed, and the operations positively baroque; one slave is actually delivered to the villains in an ornate coffin transported by a hearse, which strikes me as a lot of overhead for an enterprise like this.
In keeping with the spirit, Price and Hyer do their act in the finest nightclubs, travel in style and employ a seemingly limitless army of black-clad nasty guys who travel in pairs and prove completely unequal to the task of eliminating George Nader.
Ah yes: George Nader. It seems he’s a forensic examiner for the NYPD and this makes him an expert in all sorts of crime-fighting, following clues, trailing suspects, wise-cracking at the expense of local cops and bashing about a bit when the occasion calls for it. Yes, of course it does.
Well you don’t go to a movie like this for stark realism, and I’m happy to say that House of 1,000 Dolls doesn’t bother with any. There’s a fairly rudimentary plot about George’s wife getting enlisted in the brothel’s Ladies Auxiliary, some mystery about who The King of Hearts will turn out to be, a few fights, chases, murders and a slave-girl revolt (are there echoes of Spartacus here?) all handled passably, sometimes stylishly… but somehow never memorably. This is a film you will soon forget, but it’s painless and sporadically fun to watch.
March 28th, 2016 at 12:25 pm
Poor Martha Hyer positively seemed to attract projects like this.
White slavery or sex trafficking is most active in the Middle East, Israel, South America, and Japan and the Far East with mostly East European girls lead into brothels where they are virtually slaves. Israel is one of the chief offenders of looking the other way to allow this to go on, with mostly East European women, primarily Russian, led there with promises of marriage and work. In the 90’s quite a few women from the Balkans were victims of this. The Russian mob is pretty deeply involved there and here.
Here in the states the victims are usually the same, East European, Arab, and South American women illegally imported for small shabby rings like the one you ran into. Underage American girls and even boys are often victims too. Like most crime it tends to exploit women from poorer and less educated segments of society.
Back when I was with Pinkertons we did run into a few cases of American and Western European middle class women being lured to Japan, usually with promises of jobs in show business or as high end secretaries, and then finding themselves in virtual sex slavery. Martha Hyer did a film on the Japanese thing ironically where she is in Japan looking for her sister. The Yakuza was involved in that, but I think it eventually cost more in bad publicity than it was bringing in financially. We stepped in a few times with State to let the Japanese know they needed to crack down before we did.
I don’t know if wealthy Arab sheikhs still lure young women into their harems with promises of jobs, marry them, and then eventually send them home with a lot of money to keep their mouths shut. It used to happen once in a while. It’s about as close to the kind of white slavery this film discusses as reality allowed.
Here in this country the women are as likely to be sold as housekeepers as sex slaves, undocumented workers virtually owned by their employers.
The most sordid part of sex trafficking is the underground involved in children and underage prostitution. Thailand was until recently at the center of that. Here in the states young runaways are the most likely victims, but its still shabby little operations.
George Nader was on the way to a half decent career when he was thrown under the bus to the tabloids to protect his pal Rock Hudson. He never did really act much but he was personable, and at least he kept busy once his Hollywood career ended, doing pretty well in the popular West German Jerry Cotton films and showing up in things like this, THE MILLION EYES OF SUMURU, and other Harry Alan Towers productions. All things considered he probably did better in Europe than his lackluster Hollywood career would ever have allowed for. Like Guy Madison and Lex Barker he was popular and in demand in pictures in Europe. My understanding was that the Jerry Cotton films left him fairly well off and a pretty big star in Europe and Japan.
He even had a short lived television series where he played a scientist testing himself and the limits of human endurance, and of course he was Anne Francis lawyer, boyfriend, in the pilot for HONEY WEST, but long gone by the time the series rolled out.
Harry Alan Towers is himself almost as shabby as white slavery, a man always on the periphery of success and with just a hint of, if not the criminal,the sordid about him. He made some good films (THE FACE OF FU MANCHU, BRIDES and VENGEANCE OF FU MANCHU, COAST OF SKELETONS) and awful dreck with directors like Jesus Franco, and sailed a bit close to the wind with investors and the like. He seemed always one step ahead of bill collectors and unhappy investors.
His best films are ones like this, exploitation, but with a few names, and a patina of professionalism about them. I always thought of him as the protagonist of an Eric Ambler novel, not quite a criminal, not quite respectable.
And Vincent Price, like Michael Caine and Christopher Lee, seemed to take pictures just because it was a job and maybe he got to go someplace nice to film it. Caine claimed he took roles so he got to go to places he and his wife had never been as well as the money, and Lee admitted he was do a film anywhere there was a nearby golf course he wanted to play. I don’t know what the draw was for Price, art, scenery, cuisine, or some mix of the three, but evidently he hated not working.
To be perfectly honest I miss films like this. The best of them had a few names, they weren’t awful, they looked good and were filmed often in interesting places, and for all their problems they were usually worth catching. There doesn’t seem to be any equivalent today. Today’s bad films are just bad with bad CGI and bad actors.
March 28th, 2016 at 5:49 pm
Two short thoughts:
First, I don’t feel like checking, but I think Vincent Price and the films he was in have been covered on this blog more than any other actor.
Secondly, is it safe to assume that Martha Hyer’s career was on its downhill slope for a while before she was in this one? She’s one of those actresses whose name I know, but whose face I can’t picture until I see her again. And she was extremely attractive.
March 29th, 2016 at 11:25 am
From looking it up:
Martha Hyer made this one just after she married Hal Wallis, one of the more powerful producers in Hollywood.
A check of her career shows that she did most of her work from that point on television; her movie work tended to be mainly in support (meaning not a lot of working days, but a fair-sized paycheck for her name).
So look through the credits, and try to figure out who she was doing a favor for, by appearing here (my vote would be for Vinnie Price, who knew and was liked by everybody; your guess would be as good as mine).
March 29th, 2016 at 1:54 pm
Martha Hyer did at least one other film for Towers with a cast that included French star Lino Ventura, so she may have been doing the film for him. He got quite a few actors, including Chris Lee, Richard Todd, Dale Robertson, Frankie Avalon, and Shirley Eaton aside from those in this film, in his projects over the years.
And some actors literally took roles just so they could film someplace exotic and get paid. Tangiers at the time had quite the large celebrity community that at various times included Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Noel Coward and others and a literary community that included Paul and Jane Bowles, William Burroughs, and many of the Beat generation stars. It’s also possible Towers was producing this for a company Wallis had money in.
As far as I know the actors usually got paid in Towers ventures, it was the investors who sometimes came up wanting.
March 30th, 2016 at 2:38 pm
I always felt that there was something so absolutely right about Towers producing the radio series THE MANY LIVES OF HARRY LIME. After all, if Towers couldn’t create a series about a globe-hoppinng con-man, then who could? His wikipedia page includes an extraordinary story about him being arrested in the USA in 1961. It seems that he was accused of running a vice ring, although the story manages to reference Stephen Ward, JFK, Peter Lawford, and the Soviet Intelligence network, which suggest that at some point Towers started to live inside one his own movies. Mind you, rather like Welles you could say that Towers greatest creation was himself.
Favourite Towers story: When he was making those return of Harry Palmer movies in the ’90s, he tried to get Herbert Lom on board. Lom was told by Towers that the film would be filmed in Russia, in an exciting location that few film companies had visited. When Lom pressed him for the exact location, Towers grudgingly told him “Errr….Chernobyl”.
August 24th, 2017 at 11:19 pm
Martha Hyer had a sex appeal that was similar to Tippi Hedren’s, Kim Novak’s and Janet Leigh’s appeal. Beautiful, well-groomed, well-dressed, intelligent, sexy but not overtly sexual, classy and articulate. Considering that she was married to a wealthy Hollywood producer, why make a film like this. She was very good in everything she did.