The Legendary Spanish director Jess Franco is known for some fantastic cinema, alas this certainly isn't among them and will be a blotch on his record.It follows a female fronted rock band as they break down on route to their next gig and get invited into a foreboding looking castle for the night.Essentially our antagonist is a blatant ripoff of the Countess Elizabeth Báthory with a couple of human minions who help her acquire the blood of the young (Virgins not required in this instance) Though advertised as a horror this is a very camp attempt and more like a comedy. One character in particular played by Santiago Segura (Blade 1998) is so over the top and so zany any hope of the film being taken seriously went out the window.The movie has a decent lead and memorable soundtrack though they really should have considered writing more songs and not playing the same one on a loop.The Good: Great leading lady The Bad: Looks very dated Not exactly a horror Soundtrack gets repetitive Dumbest ending in cinema history? Definite contender Things I Learnt From This Movie: Before throwing a naked woman out a window to her death it's only polite to put a nightie on her first

Killer Barbys (1996) was a vanity piece disguised as an old creepy horror film used to promote the Spanish punk-pop band THE KILLER BARBIES. The band is fronted by the hot Silvia Superstar. A lot of the band's music is played during the movie. Two of the actually band members appear in the film (Silvia Superstar and her boyfriend co-founder/Drummer Billy King). Jesus Franco creates a creepy old school horror film around the band. The band is cruising the back roads of Spain heading towards another gig. But the band never makes it to the other town before nightfall. Their van has broken down and they need to find a place that has a telephone. Three of the band members leave the broken down vehicle to look for help. What luck the band has. They come across an old castle. Inside they find an elderly gentleman who offers them a place for the night will he calls a tow truck. Silvia has her suspicions about the place and the people that dwell within it. The countess (the owner of the castle) wants them to stay for dinner. Will Silvia and her band mates take the middle aged woman's offer. How will the two band members who stayed behind fare? Why was the elderly host acting peculiar? To find out you' ll just have to watch KILLER BARBYS!!A fun film that doesn't try to be something it's not. If you're into vanity projects or some old school horror then you'll want to watch KILLER BARBYS. Silvia Superstar is hot and I hope you'll agree with me fellas! En espanol with English sub-titles.Highly recommended.

What we have here is a story that looks promising on paper (an isolated castle, a 100-year-old woman who wants to regain her youth and beauty but needs to drink fresh blood to do so, five lost punk-rockers who are destined to be her next victims), turned into a stupid horror movie "thanks" to Jess Franco's customary ineptitude. From the overworked fog machines to sheet-covered mannequins portraying naked women (I'm trying to be vague here, to avoid a spoiler), "Killer Barbys" is typical Franco hackwork. The only thing he does well is the creation of a powerful link between sex and violence (the most erotic sequence is followed by a brutal stabbing), but he's probably done that already in most of the 200 or so movies he has directed. The dubbing is terrible; much of the dialogue is very bad; the only member of the cast who seems to know what she's doing is Mariangela Giordano. Her "dacaying" makeup in the early parts is pretty good, and when she gets "young" and naked later on, she looks damn good for her age (59 at the time!), even when she is covered in blood. (**)

Perhaps the worst dubbing in history, this movie features many scenes with characters' lips still moving long after the dubbed track had already spoken. It was very frustrating. On top of that, the entire movie made little sense. It was completely disjointed. The filmmakers tried to weird it up by having a couple of psychotic midgets thrown into the mix, but the result was just pathetic. There are countless scenes where bandmembers (Killer Barbys are a real band) are having sex in a van, and the baddies are hovering around, opening doors, stealing things, placing objects, yet are never even so much as noticed by the lovemakers. There are equally moronic scenes of the baddies chasing after a naked woman in the woods. She looks like she is running in slowmotion and has to keep waiting for her pursuers to catch up. Then there is some subplot involving some ancient vampiress who must drink young blood to regain her youth, yet when she does, she becomes some 65-year old had been! She is supposed to be this beauty who seduces the lead singer, yet she is easily old enough to be his grandmother!They tried to throw in a few corpses to add to the horror, yet they were so obviously rubber it was ridiculous. One of the henchmen carries one through the castle, and you can repeatedly see him bang it against walls only to have it snap back into shape.There are A-movie, B-movies, and then there are Killer Barby movies. This one is so bad, it doesn't even deserve a letter from the alphabet. Call it a double-Z.