Short Night of the Glass Dolls (1971)

Dir: Aldo Lado

The so-nearly palindromic Aldo Lado began his illustrious career in horror with this incredibly strange giallo. Jean Sorel plays Gregory Moore, a recently deceased journalist whose corpse is, uhhh, convinced it isn't really dead. Immobile on its slab in the morgue, it tries to solve its own murder by piecing together various scenes from its last few days alive. If you think that's weird, rest assured it gets weirder. The backdrop of early 70s Prague provides a suitably eerie and oppressive backdrop but the film loses points for being slow and, at times, incoherent. That said, this may be a result of the horrific English dubbing on the print I saw. Gregory's friend Jack, in particular, is utterly incomprehensible; his accent a growly, nasal mix of Scottish, Jamaican, Russian and Irish. I didn't understand a word he said so it's entirely possible I missed some of the plot on account of this. Still, the climactic scenes are shocking and weird enough to leave a fairly good impression, even if it's a bit of a chore getting there. **1/2