Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971)

blah blah blah.....

wow i've seen a lot of giallo but this one pretty much sucks. couldnt even finish it actually. i kept asking myself, is this really a giallo??? the beginning has a guy narrating the film internally due to having a dead body but live mind....right. so we have to pretend the brain can still function without blood flow. so ya, imagination has to terminate logic completely on this one. the style is lacking, scene compsition dull and overall just bland scenery for the most part. visualy this is not the fifth cord!! not even close.
the dialogue is killed by bad dubs. the conversations sound potentially funny but never really are and i ended up not even caring what they were talking about. what is this a soap opera??? anyway, it was literally straight talking for what must have been half the film! where's the sex??? tension?? psychadelia?? stylish wardrobes?? ummm maybe a killer????? oh, n ya the title seems to have nothing to do with the movie, which is the case with some of these films. but it would've been at least interesting to involve glass dolls somehow. at least bloody iris threw the iris flower into the plot for about 2 minutes!
i gave it two stars due to the ennio soundtrack and the fact that there's always a possibility that maybe i didnt give it a chance....honestly i have no ambition to give it another any time soon however. who saw her die is up next. February 27, 2008

enjoyable curiosity

This film has gone by several names, including MALASTRANA (the director's original choice) and PARALYZED. It's one of Barbara Bach's several pre-007 Italian thrillers. I'm undecided whether the American-born Bach, fluent in Italian, dubbed her own voice. As she is the best known in the cast to contemporary American audiences, Bach gets major billing, although she mainly appears in only a few early scenes.

The film opens with a man believed dead who, we soon learn, is alive but paralyzed, his condition unknown to all. Will they bury him alive? Will they perform an autopsy? It's an old conceit invigorated by flashbacks as the man tries to remember how he arrived at his predicament. Intercut with scenes of his paralyzed body being ferried about the hospital, these flashbacks comprise the bulk of the film.

The man (French-born Jean Sorel) turns out to be a Western journalist whose Czech fiancée (Barbara Bach) disappeared, propelling him on a search. Thus, Paralyzed interweaves a medical thriller with a mystery film. Yet because of its mise-en-scene (its Prague setting and black leather jacketed Communist police), it also imparts the sensibility of an espionage thriller. And as the tale progresses, it becomes an occult thriller.

This blend of mystery, foreign intrigue, and the occult has been done elsewhere. Former "Watergate conspirator" and CIA intelligence officer E. Howard Hunt was also a remarkably prolific novelist who published numerous thrillers under various aliases (e.g., David St. John, Gordon Davis, Robert Dietrich), sometimes spicing his novels with the occult (The Coven, The Sorcerers). The X-Files episode, "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man," was inspired by the real-life Hunt.

It's difficult to discuss this film in detail without spoiling the surprise ending. Thematically, it posits a millennia-long exploitation of the freedom-loving young by the Satanic elderly. The film not only features threatening commissars, it depicts old people as inherently scary, a device used in Rosemary's Baby and The Sentinel. In one scene, Jean Sorel sneaks past a decrepit group of Communist Party hacks in evening dress, male and female, listening lifelessly to a slow-moving classical concerto. Their faces are pasty white, reminiscent of the dead souls in Carnival of Souls. This image contrasts starkly with another scene featuring a lively young, long-haired folk singer.

Style-wise, this film is your typical 1970s Euro-thriller. Lots of telephoto shots with shifting focus, heavy use of zoom lens to create energy (the pre-MTV equivalent of a shaky camera and frenetic editing), and badly dubbed dialogue.

A curious and enjoyable film. October 2, 2005

A great giallo

It was a beautiful day indeed when Anchor Bay released a box set of four classic Italian gialli films. Most fans of Italian horror films know all about these colorful murder mystery pictures-- thanks to Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, and Dario Argento--but how many of us know about Aldo Lado? Two of his films appear in the boxed set, "Short Night of Glass Dolls" and the impenetrable "Who Saw Her Die?" On the surface, both films look like absolute grand slam winners. We've a killer on the prowl, gruesome murders, red herrings, and a protagonist determined to bring the guilty to justice. Lado also gives us point of view shots from the killer's perspective, an evil and powerful conspiracy working behind the scenes, and style wafting off the screen in waves. Yep, "Who Saw Her Die?" and "Short Night of Glass Dolls" are definitely gialli in most respects. The latter film measures up well when compared to the giants of the genre. "Short Night of Glass Dolls" approaches the greatness of Argento's epic films "Deep Red" and "Tenebre," and compares just as well to Lucio Fulci's massively entertaining "Don't Torture a Duckling." "Glass Dolls" is definitely a better picture than "Who Saw Her Die?"

Whereas "Who Saw Her Die?" took place in Venice, "Short Night of Glass Dolls" is set in Prague, Czechoslovakia. As the film opens, we see a groundskeeper finding the lifeless body of a journalist named Gregory (Jean Sorel) in a dense thicket. Not surprisingly, he calls in the authorities, who arrive and move the body to the local morgue in the hopes of discovering its identity and the cause of death. But Gregory, we soon learn, is not dead. Rather, he is in a cataleptic state as a result of an injection brought about by an odd series of events. The journalist tells us his story as the doctors examine his body before removing it to a freezer pending further investigation. At one point a doctor friend of the reporter arrives to identify the body, and expresses astonishment when he notices that Gregory's temperature seems much higher than it should be. This doctor even attempts to revive his friend since cases supposedly exist where someone who appeared dead did in fact wake up. Alas, there are also cases where a deceased individual's temperature remained elevated for some time after death. Thus it comes as no great disappointment when the attempts fail to bring the reporter back to life. It is an enormous disappointment to Gregory, however. Especially when they wheel him in for his autopsy...

The story behind this man's condition is an odd one, full of danger, intrigue, and a conspiracy to take over the world in order to install a new morality. It all started when Gregory's wife Mira (Barbara Bach) arrived on a visit and promptly disappeared. His friends at his place of employment, Jessica (Ingrid Thulin) and a Scottish reporter named Jack (Mario Adolf), do what they can to assist Greg in his time of despair. Since he's a reporter, it is inevitable that he will launch a full-scale investigation on his own to find out what happened to his woman. What follows is typical giallo, as a murderer (sans black gloves, oddly enough) starts wiping out people around Gregory. His friend Jack, for instance, soon falls prey to the murderer when his investigations on behalf of his pal set off alarm bells somewhere. Anyone who gets too close to the horrific truth risks his or her life, most of all Gregory when he uncovers the people behind Mira's abduction. A cult of elderly people, black magic, sacrifice, and a mess of glass dolls (yes, the title hints at a significant element in the film's resolution) lead directly to that injection which left our reporter friend in an irreversible state. "Short Night of Glass Dolls" ends on a note of utter hopelessness. This is one bleak film.

In an interview entitled "Strange Days of the Short Night," Aldo Lado discusses the reasons for making the film. In the true spirit of the age--meaning the 1960s and 1970s--Lado lensed a picture that took a scathing look at the wealthy old European elites. These are the figures involved in his black magic cult in "Short Dolls," and their abduction and corruption of the young mirrors the perception among youths of the time regarding their elders. The idea that a dark, evil plot lurked behind the façade of great power must have appealed to adherents of the counterculture. There is also an irony in the fact that this group indulges in scandalous behavior behind closed doors, behavior that they publicly profess to despise in the culture at large. Lado claims he used retirees living in a nursing home as actors in these scenes, and that they attacked their roles with gusto! Those Italians! Predictably, the conspiratorial nature of the film and the risqué final scenes brought Lado into direct conflict with censors. "Who Saw Her Die?" suffered a similar fate thanks to scenes involving violence directed at children. Lado seems to relish, even all these years later, the controversies his films sparked.

Anchor Bay provides another stellar DVD release. The picture and sound quality are good for a film this old, and they even throw in the trailer for the movie and a director's filmography along with the interview. I'm elated that I am finally seeing these sorts of films. This box set is an excellent addition to any horror film buff's DVD library, and the news that Anchor Bay will release a second set of four more Italian gialli is an exciting development. "Short Night of Glass Dolls" is an excellent way to spend a couple of hours.





January 1, 2005

Not good

Admittedly the idea of narrator being a corpse is a very intriguing hook for a film. Thus Lado's debut begins with much promise. It seems to have the makings of a fine giallo. Where it completely and utterly tanks, however, is in the gialloness itself, for this isn't a giallo so much as it is a conspiracy story dressed up in the thinnest Hitchcockian device of a vanishing girl. To me, what makes giallos so fun and fascinating to watch is the sheer edginess of the violence and sex. You will find none of this here, except for an atrocious orgy scene. There really isn't even that much of a body count to provide an added element of menace-come to think of it, aside from the dead narrator, there really wasn't anything menacing about this movie. The climax and unravelling are both a joke: Lado couldn't seriously expect any view to swallow the kind of world domination theory he was trying to shroud his film in. He'd of done better trying to marginalize the threat/'menace' in the film as was done in a far superior manner with the Prisoner television series (when our hero was spinning in a chair and getting freaked out looking at a chandelier) where the setting was a tiny village in a remote and isolated location. Finally, could somebody please explain the title? I don't remember any reference to a glass doll at any part of the story. If it's a metaphor, then both it and the title have to be the mother of all cinematic non-sequitors. June 29, 2003

Recommended for horror/detective fans

An unusual and challenging horror/suspense film. Great concept, story line, editing, and overall wallop. Not much like a traditional giallo. Only downside is the dubious dubbing and sometimes awkward foreign dialogue, but if you're used to the genre, it's not too bad. This original film deserves a bigger audience. This deserves a place with the best of Italian horror/fantasy cinema. August 13, 2002

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