Borgarkeri
A bit overrated, but still an amazing film
TrueHello
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
Brendon Jones
It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.
Ella-May O'Brien
Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
unbrokenmetal
The rock band Killer Barbies is on tour across Spain when their van breaks down. They are invited by a dark stranger into a dark castle with a dark secret: the countess reached the age of Methusalem by drinking blood of young people. Such as... yes, rock band members. "Killer Barbys" suffers from the problems you could easily predict for a movie that is basically a mere promotion support for a band: poor acting (Aldo Sanbrell is the only exception), low budget, same old story. But it is clearly better than its sequel "Killer Barbies vs Dracula" in the whole atmosphere. The foggy castle is full of strange props like dolls without eyes, clocks, bones, barred windows... spooky! So, if you don't mind the silliness, gore and nudity, it's a "good bad flick". I dare say it even was the beginning of Jess Franco's return in the 90s when he seemed to fade away into oblivion.
Joseph P. Ulibas
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.
ThrownMuse
A rock band (The Killer Barbies, the title of the film was changed as not to upset Barbie) gets stranded when driving to their next show. They find a castle to stay at until their van gets fixed, but the blood-craving Countess has other plans for them. This is a terrible movie. I have never heard music by Killer Barbies, and I was annoyed to find that it was an all male band with two female singer/strippers. I was expecting a bad-ass girl band, not a Lords of Acid lite playing mall punk. Fortunately the music is sort of catchy, but it gets tiring after hearing it for an hour and a half. I'm not sure how successful Killer Barbies is in their home country or what their motives were in making this movie. An interview clip before the movie shows the lead singer saying they wanted to make the goriest movie ever (which it doesn't come close to being), but she doesn't say anything about why the band wanted to make sex scene after sex scene after sex scene. Sometimes the movie goes Scooby Doo and it is sort of amusing, but overall, this is a big waste of time. The scariest thing about "Killer Barbys," besides the godawful dubbing, is that a sequel was made! My Rating: 2/10
KuRt-33
Jess Franco's "Killer Barbys" is to the band The Killer Barbies what Aki Kaurismäki's "Leningrad Cowboys go to America" was to the Leningrad Cowboys. Both are movies starring an existing band and both are typical products of the directors. Kaurismäki is known for his deadpan black humor presented in films totally weirding you out and "Leningrad Cowboys go to America" is a weird and funny tale of the Leningrad Cowboys going to America. Franco is known for erotic horror movies and "Killer Barbys" is a mix of horny rockers and cannibalists.But there's more. Kaurismäki made a sequel, "Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses", an attempt to make the worst movie ever. To a certain degree he succeeds in doing so. Franco's "Killer Barbys" doesn't try to do so, but it's difficult not to see how many horror cliches you can see in this film: at night you hear the sound of wearwolves, it's often twelve o'clock, there's cannibalism, there are some dwarves, most of the rockers constantly want sex, a semi-naked girl is being chased in the woods, there's lot of blood and someone even ends up being crushed. How much gore can you get into one movie?But movies like "Killer Barbys" and "Leningrad Cowboys" never meant to be original. They are mainly there to let you know the band exists. And if anything they are much more enjoyable than your average rockumentary. And even though Franco made lots of no-budget movies where anyone can see through the special effects, I suspect him here of making the effects as bad as possible (if you can't see that the dead bodies are dummies, you desperately need to get your eyes checked.)It is true that Franco could have tried harder and that the movie could have been better, but it's common knowledge that Franco's best movies can't be found in the nineties. Most of those movies are even badly acted, so it's very ironic to realise that two rockers act better than Franco's cast of regulars (Lina Romay, Linnea Quigley, ...). "Killer Barbys" is the only decent movie Franco recently made, so if you want to see some of his later work, this is the best choice you can make. As long as you remember it's a Frankenstein experiment of combining gore and rockumentaries.By the way "Love Killer" is a nice song.