Elisenda Ribas, active in the mid-1970s, is known for her roles in cult films that explore the fringes of genre cinema. In The Killer of Dolls (1975), she delivers a compelling performance that captures the eerie essence of the giallo genre, while in School of Death (1975), she navigates the dark corridors of exploitation horror. Ribas's contributions to these films reflect the daring spirit of the era, making her an essential figure in the conversation around cult and grindhouse cinema.
The Killer of Dolls
When his grounds keeper parents go on vacation, a troubled young man fends off the advances of a lascivious Countess while romancing her virginal daughter on a large rural estate… Made in Spain during Franco’s regime, this lop-sided “Lady Chatterly’s Lover” may sound like soft-core soap opera but the gardener’s son, Paul, hates lovemaking and dons a porcelain doll’s mask to murder any woman he catches in the act. The killer’s identity is revealed early on with reasons going back to childhood so what suspense there is comes from wondering how the romantic complications could possibly turn out well. Complicating matters is a mixed-message homo-eroticism with the slightly effeminate anti-hero constantly cavorting in either tight short-shorts or his underwear when he isn’t in a bed, bath, or shower and his only friend is a like-minded little boy who goes missing, of course. It’s set almost entirely in and around a lonely landed manor house with lots of mannequins, doll mutilations and cheesy hallucinations for scenery and may not be very well made but some stabbing, throat-slashing, decapitation, at-home heart surgery, and handsome Helga Liné (a European Alison Hayes) as “The Countess” make this worth a peek.
