It is not as if the Godfather of Italian Gore was beyond having a bad day, especially considering that he spent a large portion of his career fighting restrictive shooting schedules and nonexistent budgets. Yet, we are nonetheless left to judge what appears before us onscreen which, in this case, is his lackluster expose upon greed, 5 Dolls for an August Moon.
Entrepreneur George Stark (Teodoro Corrà), seeking to purchase the formula for a new synthetic created by Fritz Farrell (William Berger), invites the professor to his tropical island along with several of the host’s wealthy friends should Stark’s initial offer of one million dollars need reinforcement. However, when the scientist refuses to sell, stating that ideas are more important than money, party members begin dying. As the pursuit to procure the formula continues, the threat of death becomes increasingly greater. Who is the killer and what will become of the survivor?
Mario Bava adapts Christie’s Ten Little Indians and examines the nature of greed with 5 Dolls for an August Moon. However, what results is what would become known as his working draft of the theme, successfully executed a year later and appearing under the title A Bay of Blood. What dissipates and dilutes the otherwise engaging premise is that, with a gaggle of ill-defined characters and an all-too-short running time in which to issue the briefest overview of those involved as well as the convoluted plot, the viewer becomes frustrated with the poorly constructed and controlled narrative.
As Bava congests his tale with several unnecessary characters, the male leads are followed by their wives and girlfriends, mistresses, and tagalongs as the hunt for the right price as well as the now sacred formula is forced to share screen time with the sexual tension which comes along with what is frequently both, not always exclusively, sex for pleasure and sexual bartering. Hence the line by Marie Chaney (Edwige Fenech), “I’m a dirty whore. That’s why I’m taking a shower: At least now I’ll be a clean whore.”
Bava seems to walk through the picture for, despite his exotic, atypical Bava locale–a desert island, as he churns the events within along with little gusto or even concern, we pause as the image of the famed Italian femme fatale goes unappreciated for the first time in recent Bava memory while the male caricatures appear as apathetic as their creator. What’s more is, though death surrounds us, arguably on a greater, more ready basis than most of the filmmaker’s canon, the pain, suffering, and consequential bloodletting is eschewed for, what the viewer is given to deduce, lack of interest.
Granted, the moral of the story is that greed inevitably leads to death, a leitmotif which the horror genre would come to recycle in bulk a decade later in its recasting of the morality cycles of Medieval Yesteryear, yet when the folly artist substitutes the sound of flesh upon flesh during a fight scene with that of whips cracking, even the most strident Bava fan is left to throw his or her hands up in the air.
Far from the girth and reward evidences with his horror masterpieces, in either their philosophic or psychological scope, 5 Dolls for an August Moon’s greatest defeat is perhaps that it cannot decide if it wants to be a thriller, black comedy, or horror film. As its suspense is happenstance more than unrelenting, its comedy infrequent and coyly circumstantial, and its terror limited to snippets of blood and the trite situation wherein death becomes a relief more than a threat, Mario Bava’s halfhearted effort leaves its viewer sadly disappointed. Perhaps this is the reason that the feature didn’t debut in America until two decades after its domestic release
-Egregious Gurnow
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