A Harry Alan Towers production from 1967, House of 1000 Dolls (or House of a Thousand Dolls as the credits say) manages to be seedy without being sleazy – certainly, it lacks the grubbiness of later Towers films, and Jeremy Summers is, sadly, no Jess Franco, much as he sometimes seems to be trying to be.

With Vincent Price (in the sort of role Christopher Lee would routinely play for Towers) as a stage magician and white slaver, you really expect this film to be more lurid, but as the tale of kidnapped girls and the investigations of perpetually angry doctor George Nader unfolds, the film seems to be lacking that certain something. It's not a lack of incident – as Nader travels around Tangiers looking for the killers of his best friend, who's girlfriend had been kidnapped and forced into prostitution at the tiular luxury brothel, there are plenty of fights and a fair amount of intrigue, and the scenes of women being punished for attempting to escape are perhaps as salacious as 1967 would allow – a girl stripped to her underwear and whipped in a scene that would not be out of place in Towers' Fu Manchu series.

Indeed, this does feel a bit like a retooled Fu Manchu story, playing like a mix of Sixties spy thriller and vaguely sordid melodrama, and while Towers' screenplay is not exactly sparkling, it certainly keeps things moving along. Price, while clearly slumming it, gives a decent performance, though avoids the camp elements that the story is crying out for and that you would normally expect him to deliver – maybe he just wasn't interested. Nader is one-dimensionally rugged as the rather unlikeable hero, and Martha Hyer provides a nicely cynical villainess. With Mrs Towers, Maria Rohm, along to provide the glamour, all the elements are here for a hugely entertaining Sixties exploitation romp.

That it doesn't quite work is odd then, and I'll be damned if I can quite figure out why. It might be that the film is lacking that certain something that a Franco or other Euro Sleaze experts bring to the table – the indefinable magic and sense of the outrageous that a film like this needs. Summers is entirely efficient in his direction, but I fear that isn't enough. Whatever the reason, this is not as entertaining as you think it should be.

That said, for fans of Sixties Eurotrash, this should tick all the right boxes, even if it's not one of the stellar examples of the art form. It's still a lot of fun, and certainly worth checking out. Just don't expect too much...

DAVID FLINT

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