Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970)

Five Dolls for an August Moon is a movie Mario Bava didn’t want to make and he disliked the final movie intensely. He was offered the directing job, he needed the money so he accepted and he was then told that shooting would have to begin within two days. He’d read the script and hated it, considering it to be an obvious and clumsy rip-off of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Which is exactly what the script is. He said he’d need time to rewrite the script completely but he didn’t get that time.

Some people believe that Bava’s 1963 film The Girl Who Knew Too Much was the first giallo. Others think that the accolade should go to his 1964 offering Blood and Black Lace. Either way it’s generally accepted that Bava was the man who invented the giallo genre.

Five Dolls for an August Moon sees him back in giallo territory.

The setup is a classic one from the golden age of detective fiction. Put a bunch of people on an island, make sure they have no telephone or radio contact with the outside world and then have the only boat on the island mysteriously disappear. Give them all plausible motives for murder and then let the killing commence.

The setting is a very cool modernist beach house.

In this case the primary murder motive is a chemical formula for a new industrial process. Professor Farrell (William Berger) is the man who invented the formula and he’s the only one who has it. Three ruthless businessmen have invited Farrell to the island where they hope to persuade him to sell them the formula. The problem is that Farrell isn’t interested in money or material possessions and he won’t sell.

The three businessmen are George Stark (Teodoro Corrà), Nick Chaney (Maurice Poli) and Jack Davidson (Howard Ross). Also present are George’s tortured artist wife Jill (Edith Meloni), Nick’s wife Marie (Edwige Fenech), Jack’s girlfriend Peggy (Helena Ronee), Farrell’s wife Trudy (Ira von Fürstenberg), the gamekeeper’s daughter Isabel (Ely Galleani) and the houseboy Charles.

It might be worth mentioning that in real life Ira von Fürstenberg was an actual princess. Not a princess by marriage but by birth.

There are romantic and sexual tensions as well, which could also offer secondary motives for murder. Trudy Farrell and Jill Stark are having a lesbian affair. Marie Chaney is sleeping with the houseboy. Her husband doesn’t mind that she’s having an affair, he just thinks it was bad taste to choose a servant.

Charles the houseboy is the first murder victim. There’s no way to contact the police, they’re going to have to wait until George’s yacht shows up in a few days to pick up the guests, so they hang the corpse of the unfortunate houseboy in the freezer. It’s lucky that the beach house has a huge walk-in deep freezer. They’re going to need it. That freezer will soon be filled to overflowing with corpses.

While just about everybody has a motive for murder, a desire to get their hands on a formula worth a fortune, there’s no obvious reason why anybody would kill the houseboy. Nonetheless it’s obvious that one of them did kill him.

A second murder soon follows. Paranoia starts to set in. Lots more murders will follow.

Bava clearly didn’t care much one way or the other about the story but being Mario Bava he uses it as an opportunity to pull off some very stylish visuals. Oddly enough, given that the giallo genre became known for spectacular murder scenes and given that Bava gives us some impressive examples in his other giallos, most of the murders take place off-camera.

The sets are superb.

Bava gives us some fine images - the glass balls rolling down the stairs provide a wonderful moment.

The great thing about the exterior shots of the rather wonderful beach house is that this is a Bava film so there was no house. It’s a glass painting, but since this is a Bava film it’s done so well that you can’t tell. In fact lots of things in this movie aren’t real - there’s a non-existent yacht and a non-existent pier as well.

The acting is mostly quite adequate, with Ira von Fürstenberg and being particularly effective. Edwige Fenech gets one very very brief topless scene but apart from that she keeps her clothes on. She still manages to sizzle.

This movie flopped at the box office. In retrospect that’s not particularly surprising. It was shot in 1969 but by the time it was released giallos (and thrillers in general) were becoming more overtly violent and overtly sexy. Five Dolls for an August Moon seemed very tame by comparison. Bava would learn his lesson and in future would offer a lot more blood. His decision to have the murders take place mostly off-camera also probably hurt the movie commercially.

Kino Lorber’s release provides a very good transfer and there’s a commentary track by Tim Lucas.

Five Dolls for an August Moon is a bit of a mess but Bava’s visual brilliance redeems it to some extent. Worth seeing if you’re a Bava fan.