Short Night of the Glass Dolls (DVD)

While not horror, giallo and our genre go together like peanut butter and jelly (or blood and gore, if you will). The super-stylish sexy cinematic shockers, first introduced in Italy in the 1960s and enjoying their heyday in the 1970s, were pioneered by auteurs like Mario Bava, Dario Argento, and Brian de Palma and they continue to influence the work of filmmakers like Eros Puglielli, James Wan, and Matthew Saliba.  

Perhaps one of the most overlooked of the seventies giallo gems is director Aldo Lado's first film, Short Night of the Glass Dolls.

Immobilized by a death-mimicking poison, American reporter Gregory Moore (Jean Sorel), tells the story of how he wound up in the morgue — about to be autopsied alive! — through a series of flashbacks. While on assignment in Russia, Gregory stumbled upon a politically motivated murder, which led to the disappearance of his beautiful, butterfly-obsessed girlfriend, Mira (Barbara Bach). (This movie is also known as Short Night of the Butterflies.) Gregory teamed up with his colleague Jacques Versain (Mario Adorf) and when they joined forces with rival reporter Jessica (Ingrid Thulin), things heated up as the nude bodies of young women turned up all over the city… but how and why did Gregory wind up on a metal slab, body paralyzed and mind intact?

Short Night of the Glass Dolls is an unusual entry in the giallo genre. It actually feels like a noir, with a touch of psychological horror. It's got a more cohesive, serious storyline, less gore, and is more straightforward than most gialli, but it does have many of the hallmarks — stylistic cinematography, exaggerated colors, a baffling mystery, blind characters, paranoia, quick cuts, atmospheric music, fast cars and the latest haute couture.

Thoroughly engrossing and lastingly haunting, Short Night of the Glass Dolls is well worth a look for fans of horror (you'll see why, when the film comes to its shocking climax).

Unfortunately, the DVD only offers a dubbed version with no captions for the hearing impaired; but it is presented in widescreen and it does contain a highly-entertaining and very informative interview with Lado, who, looking back over the decades, recounts some pretty funny and freaky tales about the filming of the movie back in '71.

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