Main Cast: Max von Sydow, Stefano Dionisi, Chiara Caselli, Rossella Falk, Paolo Maria Scalondro
Release Year: 2001
Country: IT
Run Time: 117 minutes
Plot
Director Dario Argento, best known for his stylishly bloody horror films, revisits the style and themes of his early directorial efforts in this tense crime thriller. A prostitute (Barbara Lerici) discovers one of her customers has a taste for much rougher sex than she's willing to give him; trying to sneak away from her john, she accidentally walks off with one of his scrapbooks, from which she discovers her client apparently committed a series of unsolved murders almost 20 years earlier. The john tracks down the prostitute and murders her to insure her silence; this awakens in him the desire to kill again, and soon he's once again leaving a bloody swath across Italy. Ulisse Moretti (Max Von Sydow), the police detective who investigated the earlier wave of killings, is brought out of retirement when clues link the new murders to those committed in the early '80s, and the aging cop finds his sometimes foggy memory jolted back to recognition by the growing number of bloody victims. Meanwhile, Giacomo (Stefano Dionisi), whose saw his mother being killed by the murderer as a boy, learns that the killer is back at work, and sets out to investigate the case on his own. Non Ho Sonno features an original musical score by the rock band Goblin, who also wrote music for a number of Argento's best-known films. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Sleepless opens with Detective Ulisse Moretti (Max Von Sydow) investigating a series of murders in Turin in 1983 known as The Dwarf Murders. The main suspect, a giallo novelist named Vincenzo de Fabritiis, turns up dead and the case is considered closed. However, seventeen years later, a similar series of murders begin and draw the since retired Moretti back into the case. Moretti teams up with Giacomo (Stefano Dionisi), whose mother was murdered in the 1983 spree, to determine if de Fabritiis is still alive or was actually innocent of the crimes for which he was accused. As the murders continue, the investigating duo discovers that the murderer is arranging their murder to an old nursery rhyme about the killing of animals.
This is the third Argento film that actor Gabriele Lavia has appeared in.
This was the first Argento film since 1985's Phenomena to feature a music score by Goblin.
Alternate versions
The original US video release from Artisan Entertainment was heavily edited for content. Every murder sequence in the film was trimmed down for less graphic violence, including the decapitation murder of the concert singer which omits the image of the head hitting the floor. In all over a minutes worth of footage was cut.
European DVD releases of the film are completely uncut.
