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€.
Though set on an island, Bava shot ‘Five Dolls for an August Moon’ on the beach at Tor Caldara in autumn 1969. The Starks’ impressive two-storey retreat, with its sweeping staircase and flat roof, was a glass-painted matte shot positioned atop the headland at Tor Caldara, with jetty moorings stretching into the sea. The island in Agatha Christie’s original novel is based on Burgh Island, off the coast of Devon, with its grand art deco Burgh Island Hotel, which at low tide can still be visited today. The interiors of Stark’s place were recreated at DEAR Studios in Rome. The beachside residence, tropical garden and stylish interiors are an opulent, exotic setting, which rather overshadows the film’s static, repetitive action. The lounge is dominated by a staircase spiral and the décor screams conspicuous, tasteless wealth. The Starks even have a ‘houseboy’. For their decadent ‘murder games’ – the sacrifice of a virgin – Charles serves up a variety of knives to the houseguests on a tray. In keeping with the film’s excess of grooviness, Piero Umiliani’s main theme is a syncopated lounge track with licks of Hammond organ. The sometimes overly intrusive score, with great swathes of organ and bass, is present throughout, in the manner of a Jess Franco movie. At the denouement, Bava deploys Led Zeppelin-esque rock tracks ‘Neve calda’ (‘Hot Snow’) and ’Ti risveglierai accanto a me’ (‘You Wake Up Next to Me’), performed by Italian experimental band Il Balletto Di Bronzo (The Ballet of Bronze). Antonio Rinaldi was the cinematographer, with Bava billed as editor, though he probably had a hand in the shooting and shot composition too. The colourful visuals recall Bava’s tour de force, ‘Danger: Diabolik’ (1968) and Diabolik’s revolving bed from that film makes a reappearance in the Starks’ residence. Look out, too, for that giallo staple, the bottle of J&B (Justerini & Brooks) blended whisky.
Arrow’s release of this lesser Bava giallo is good value. Among the extras are an excellent documentary ‘Mario Bava: Maestro of the Macabre’ hosted by Mark Kermode and featuring many clips and interviews with the likes of Tim Burton, Joe Dante and John Carpenter. There’s also a trailer and the Italian language version of the film with English subtitles – there are some minor differences in character names, but in the main the dialogue and story are very similar to English language print. Tim Lucas delivers a detailed, trivia-packed feature length audio commentary, while the package also includes a booklet with a discussion of the film by Glenn Kenny and a very good article by Adrian Smith on the Fancey family of cinema promoters and their distribution of many exploitation film titles, such as ‘Five Dolls for an August Moon’ in the UK. Far from being diabolical, ‘Five Dolls for an August Moon’ is what might be termed – after the psychedelic master thief – a ‘giallo fumetti’ that fans of Bava, gialli and colourful cult cinema will relish.
Text © Howard Hughes 2016
HOWARD HUGHES is the author of a range of film books including MARIO BAVA: DESTINATION TERROR and CINEMA ITALIANO: THE COMPLETE GUIDE FROM CLASSICS TO CULT.
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