By
Howard Hughes
‘Five Dolls for an August Moon’ is Mario Bava’s 1970 psychedelic spin on Agatha’s ‘Ten Little Indians’/’And Then There Were None’
with the addition of 70s fashions, a funky soundtrack, a walk-in meat fridge
and a revolving bed. This movie is all about ‘The Look’ and has all the Bava signatures
present – the overuse of zooming camera techniques, the appearance of the beach
and headland at Tor Caldara on Anzio Cape in Italy as the main filming location,
the effective, budget-defying special effects shots and the consummate
cinematography. Though often written off as lower-tier Bava, Arrow’s brand new region 2 Blu-ray/DVD edition, with vibrant colours and sound, shows Bava’s finesse and ensures
its success.
Businessman George Stark (Teodoro Corra) and
his wife Jill (Edith Meloni) invite guests to stay at their luxury shoreline
residence on a secluded island. The visitors are Professor Jerry Farrell
(William Berger), his wife Trudy (Ira Fürstenberg), mysterious Isabel (Justine
Gall), the Starks’ temporary ward, and businessmen Jack Davidson (Renato
Rossini) and Nick Chaney (Maurice Poli) and their wives Peggy (Hélèna Ronée) and
Marie (Edwige Fenech). The trio of businessmen want to persuade Jerry to part
with the formula for a new type of synthetic industrial resin and offer him millions
of dollars, but Jerry stubbornly refuses. In the boozed-up, decadent atmosphere
of Stark’s retreat, hedonistic excess, murder games, marital infidelity and
jealousy flourish. For example, Marie is having an affair with the Stark’s resident
houseboy Charles (played by Mauro Bosco), who rounds the island’s occupants up
to an even ‘ten’. Soon the guests are stranded – George sends away the island’s
yacht and later the motor launch, the only other way to leave the island, vanishes,
while radio contact with the outside world ceases. Then the killings start…
The principal objective of this static albeit
stylist giallo is to kill off its attractive cast – in that respect, it is very
much a rehearsal for Bava’s ‘A Bay of Blood’/’Twitch of the Death Verve’ the
following year. Some of the scenes in the Starks’ landscaped garden, with it
tropical palms, are very similar to the later film. But whereas in ‘Bay of
Blood’, we see many of the killings enacted before our eyes, often in graphic
detail, here his camera discovers the corpses already in eternal repose. We
suppose that the principal motive for the killing is greed for Professor Jerry’s
secret formula for resin, which he plans to unveil at a chemists’ convention in
Geneva the following month (presumably September). In typical giallo style, the
film’s title is evocative, but meaningless. The ‘five dolls’ are the five beautiful
women and the film’s French title, ‘5 Filles dans une nuit chaude d’été’
translates as ‘Five Girls on a Hot Summer Night’. Most of the mystery’s
revelations involve flesh. Edwige Fenech, the beautiful heroine and future
screen goddess of continental sex comedies and gialli, is most memorable as
Marie, one of the female protagonists – mainly because she plays the role clad
in underwear, bikinis, towels or less. Most of the actors are rudimentarily
going through the motions, with William Berger, Ira Fürstenberg and Justine
Gall being most notable for putting some effort in. The women aren’t
particularly well-rounded characterisations and mostly exist to be dressed,
undressed, caressed and distressed. The men are iniquitous, greedy and easily
dislikeable – Nick tries to persuade Marie to seduce Jerry to gain the formula
– and as a result of their lack of sympathy, it’s difficult to become involved
in the plot or the victims’ plight. It is
one film Bava singled out for criticism in interviews as the least favourite of
his work: “They paid me on Saturday and I had to start filming on Monday. I had
to accept the script (by Mario Di Nardo) which was just a horrible rip-off of
‘Ten Little Indians’. I had to keep all the characters, but I took revenge by
changing the identity of the killerâ€.