1970's "5 Dolls for an August Moon" ("5 Bambole per la Luna d'Agosto") was regarded by director Mario Bava as his worst film, for a number of valid reasons, chiefly a lackluster script with interchangeable characters that are doomed right from the start of this knockoff of Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians." Another is that he accepted the offer to begin shooting two days after signing on, with little time to work out its many inherent weaknesses, leaving the audience to decide on the merits of the events (or lack thereof) displayed on screen. We have three couples gathered together at the island retreat of industrialist George Stark (Teodoro Corra) and his wife Jill (Edith Meloni), not so much for a weekend getaway as to make a play for a new resin formula created by Professor Gerry Farrell (William Berger), accompanied by wife Trudy (Ira von Furstenberg). Nick Chaney (Maurice Poli) would like nothing better than for his young bride Marie (Edwige Fenech) to use her feminine wiles to achieve his goals, while Jack Davidson (Howard Ross) also covets the formula, each of the three men signing a check for a cool $1 million as incentive for an unwilling and secretive Professor. Also on the island is the young gamekeeper's daughter Isabel (Justine Gall), living away from the main house and often seen spying upon the filthy rich. Unlike previous Bava entries such as "Blood and Black Lace," there are no stalking sequences to build suspense, nearly all the victims found quite dead and no means of escape as they await the arrival of another launch, storing the corpses in a giant walk-in freezer. Perhaps the experience of making a silk purse out of this sow's ear inspired the director to do his own take on the same material, since 1971's "Twitch of the Death Nerve" served up multiple murderers and corpses in a ballet of blood that proved to be one of his very best.
Review of Five Dolls for an August Moon
