Short Night of the Glass Dolls

We turn a new corner on this blog, as we have reached the final film in the Giallo Collection with this. This one was placed last in my box set most likely at random by whoever was stuffing the cardboard case with the individual DVD cases, but I choose to believe they were placed in an intentional order so that this could be the coda to the whole experience.

The film feels like a proper ending to the “series”, at least, as it’s got by far the most callbacks to other films. First and foremost, it’s by the same writer-director as Who Saw Her Die? (Aldo Lado) and, like that film, also features a score by Ennio Morricone, though this one is admittedly not as good. Further, its plot is kind of a mashing together of Johnny Got His Gun and that episode of the Twilight Zone where a guy is paralyzed but conscious and has to find a way to convince the doctors that he’s not really dead before they start an autopsy. You may have guessed by now what the film’s plot is. I don’t want to give anything away, but let’s just say that it somehow involves a guy who is paralyzed but conscious and has to find a way to convince the doctors that he’s not really dead before they start an autopsy.

Most of the film is told in flashback, however, with him remembering the days leading up to his unfortunate condition, where he meets a girl and, in true giallo fashion, she suddenly disappears and he takes it upon himself to lead the search for her after the police show their normal level of uselessness. It’s not exactly difficult to figure out the various twists and turns of the plot even without factoring in how cobbled together from spare parts this film is, and I can’t claim the visual feel of the movie is anything but a bit of a step down from the other three films (You never really notice how visually necessary Venice is until you can no longer look at it, you know?). I suppose its biggest weakness is simply that it comes after three films that were all better movies than it, making it even more difficult than it otherwise would have been not to notice how second rate it is. It doesn’t even manage to go entertainingly over the top when it should to salvage the whole operation, it just sort of plods along at its own meandering pace, never really getting the voom needed in a giallo. I made fun of the Bloodstained Shadow yesterday, but that was at least entertainingly bad, this one’s just…dull. It so does not live up to its fairly interesting name. Don’t check it out when you’re watching the others.