Waste of time

One of the best films i have seen

Good idea lost in the noise

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Foreign journalist Jean Sorel finds himself locked inside his 'dead' body, unable to communicate with the outside world. As doctors prepare to perform an autopsy on his body, he recounts the events leading up up his predicament. It all started when his girlfriend Barbara Bach disappeared and he goes in search of her...The plot of this a-typical giallo is intriguing, and director Aldo Aldo, who also wrote the screenplay, manages to keep the tension going. Yes, the movie is fairly slow-moving, and it lacks the creative and gory murders and setpieces you'd find in a more conventional giallo (altho 'convential giallo' sounds wrong on so many levels!), but it's utterly fascinating, and beautifully shot. And there is a lot going on, as Sorel uncovers more and more details related to Bach's disappearance... Definitely pay attention! The musical score by Ennio Morricone is also pretty nice and atmospheric, adding to the overall unique mood of this movie. The final 20 minutes or so are a trippy, and then the movie ends in a 'wow' moment. A top-notch giallo!

It's not every day that you see an entry into an Italian exploitation subgenre - giallo - and see possible inspirations for Stanley Kubrick's later career.But then, "Short Night of Glass Dolls" really isn't a giallo. There's very little violence here, or lurid shock tactics. The sex and nudity isn't gratuitous or erotic and is saved for one very specific scene.What "Short Night of Glass Dolls" is, is a brilliantly understated and gripping thriller, the horror of which gradually dawns on you just as it closes in on the comatose hero. The atmosphere is stifling, as in a room slowly filling with odorless gas. This is one mystery you almost wish you hadn't started to follow, but the execution of it is masterful.

It's funny how basically every Italian thriller made during the '70's gets labeled as a Giallo, though not all Italian thrillers are being such ones of course. Even though it does basically has the same type of atmosphere over it, this movie is simply being a straight-forward mystery-thriller, with a great story and lots of other great elements, that all help to make this an original- as well as an effective watch.Thing that immediately becomes obvious about this movie is that is a very well made one. It really has a great visual directing style, which gives the movie a good atmosphere and feel to it but the movie has a great narrative in it as well.It's a movie that constantly jumps back and forth between 'present time' and lots of flashbacks, that show what happened all previously, to the main character and he got into the threatening and unusual situation that he's in. This is an approach to the story that works out really well for the movie and actually also enhances the movie its tension and mystery.I really loved the story itself as well, that isn't anything too likely but it's all well written and executed in the movie. It features some nice nice thriller and mystery elements but I really don't want to spoil much about it, since this movie is really something you have to see for yourself and take things as they come along, without knowing in advance which direction the story is heading toward. It's a movie with plenty of good surprises and plot-twists in it, as well as an highly effective, unforgettable ending. The story is mainly the reason why the movie works out as a very original one within its genre as well.The movie does a good job at keeping things going and maintains a good pace throughout but it can't really prevent the movie from dragging a bit at points and some moments in the movie actually come across as a bit pointless. But anyway, the movie is just over 90 minutes long, which is too short to get really bothered by any of this.A real great accomplishment from Aldo Lado, who made his directorial debut with this movie. He had some experience with the genre as a writer but it seems as if he had saved his best script for himself with this movie. Unfortunaly his career as a director never really took off, which is simply due to the fact that most of his other directed movies never reach the same level of greatness as this one. A shame because he really showed a lot of promise with this directorial debut.Luckily it still of course doesn't change anything about the fact that this movie is one great and original watch.8/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

As far as I know, there exist only two films that are narrated by corpses telling their story from "the other side": the 1947 Bela Lugosi vehicle "Scared to Death," one of the world's worst, and Billy Wilder's 1950 offering, "Sunset Blvd.," one of the world's best. And then there's Aldo Lado's meaninglessly titled "Short Night of Glass Dolls" (1971), in which a man, only supposedly dead, lies in a morgue and thinks back on how he came to be there. It turns out that the semistiff is an American journalist named Greg Moore (sympathetically played by Jean Sorel), who had been working in Prague and dating a beautiful young local named Mira. When Mira mysteriously disappeared, Moore had entered into an investigation that soon broadened into an attempt to learn why so many other young women had recently vanished.... Featuring as it does only a small handful of virtually bloodless killings, "Short Night" hardly qualifies as a giallo--a mystery thriller would be a more apt description--but still has much to offer. Lado, in this, his first film, does a fine job (I much prefer this one over Lado's "Who Saw Her Die?" from 1972), and Ennio Morricone's waltzlike score for the film is at once somber, atmospheric and dreamlike. Prague itself is shown to be as gorgeous a city as you may have heard, and speaking of gorgeous, Barbara Bach, in her small role as Mira, is very appealing and not a little sexy. Ingrid Thulin, here playing a fellow journalist of Sorel, looks much less severe than I am used to seeing her in Bergman pictures; a pleasant surprise. The film ends very strangely, and its decidedly downbeat suggestion of evil triumphant should linger long in the memory. In truth, this is not a bad little picture at all, and beautifully captured on the Anchor Bay DVD that I just watched.