Review by Gary Tooze

Production:

Disc:

Video:

Audio:

Bitrate:

***

Felix Manderville (Vincent Price) is a traveling magician who manages to make young women disappear in this exploitation thriller. The trouble is, Felix drugs the femmes and sells them to white slave traders with the help of his mind-reading assistant Rebecca (Martha Hyer). Marie Armstrong (Anne Smyrner) and her husband Stephen (George Nader) are American tourists who fall into the trap of the felonious flesh pedlars. Price plays the part with his usual suave and sinister manner in this routine production

 

 

Excerpt from FulVueDrve-in located HERE

Image :    NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

The single-layered Kino Lorber Blu-ray of House of a Thousand Dolls comes from a new Master print and is the 96-minute cut (the theatrical was 17 minutes shorter which affected the film's flow). Unfortunately, I see a few issues - in a few sequences colors appear to misalign and things like skin tones alter mid-scene. Actually, there are some inconsistencies with the 1080P visuals. Most of the presentation looks fine with some reasonably crisp detail. I wouldn't say it overly affected by viewing but it was very noticeable. Looking the screen captures below they seem to do the film image quality some favors. My notes from, a few days ago - seem like I must have been kind of cranky. I guess we can say the digital film appearance is imperfect but I'll guess it was the source not the transfer. This Blu-ray is watchable, but finicky purchasers should be aware of the anomalies.

CLICK EACH BLU-RAY CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kino Lorber use a DTS-HD Master 2.0 channel track at 1570 kbps in the original English language. There are some modest effects in the film and some healthy screaming etc. and they come through flat but with a smidgeon of depth. The score is by Charles Camilleri and although seems to work for the film, I didn't find it especially memorable.  It all sounds acceptable, if not particularly strong, with some infrequent scattering of dialogue. There are no subtitles offered and my Oppo has identified it as being a region 'A'-locked.

Extras :

 

 

BOTTOM LINE:
House of 1000 Dolls is a real also-ran. I liked the pretty gals and the concept but it's not a film I would recommend to many. I was turned off my the violence and the mud-wrestling was decidedly un-erotic (if its inclusion was meant to be.) Vincent Price seemed, out of place or somehow miscast. I think House of 1000 Dolls had potential but most of my appreciation was inspired by the commentary. I applaud Kino Lorber for bringing it to Blu-ray in the full-length cut and adding the commentary supplement. I admit to being modestly entertained by the film, but it's not something I would revisit. 

Gary Tooze

July 7th, 2015