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Cinque Bambole per la Luna d'Agosto
Five Dolls for an August Moon
Italy 1970
produced by Luigi Alessi, Mario Bregni, Pietro Bregni, Ira von Fürstenberg (executive) for Produzioni Atlas Consorziate
directed by Mario Bava
starring William Berger, Ira von Fürstenberg, Edwige Fenech, Howard Ross, Helena Ronee, Teodoro Corrà, Justine Gall (= Ely Galleani), Edith Meloni, Mauro Bosco, Maurice Poli
written by Mario di Nardo, music by Piero Umiliani
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Professor Farrell (William Berger) has just made a ground-breaking
discovery - so businessman Stark (Teodoro Corrà) invites him, his wife
Trudy (Ira Fürstenberg) and family friend Isabel (Ely Galleani) over to
his island where he and his businesspartners Davidson (Howard Ross) and
Chaney (Maurice Poli) want to persuade him to sell the formula - and the
three of them and their respective wives (Edith Meloni, Helena Ronee,
Edwige Fenech) are set to stop at nothing to persuade the professor to
give up the formula, be it money or sex or whatever else. However, the
professor's unwilling to sell, and the three businessmen soon start to
play dirty and try to trick one another. And then somebody kills the
houseboy (Mauro Bosco), which gives the situation some immediacy,
especially since it's soon found out there's no way of actually leaving
the island and the phonelines are cut. And then the professor is shot dead
as well, which puts everybody on edge. And from here on the businessmen
and their wives seem to fall like flies, with the killer remaining elusive
throughout - and maybe nothing is what it seems, actually ... In
the 1960s, director Mario Bava has paved the way for the giallo genre with
films like The Girl who Knew
too Much and Blood and
Black Lace, however it took until the next decade and Dario
Argento's Bird with
the Crystal Plumage for the genre to come into its own - so in a
way, Five Dolls for an August Moon was Mario Bava's first giallo in
name ... and not one of his better movies actually. Sure, Bava shows a
sure eye for its locations, architecture, interior design, fashion,
camerawork, and the film looks just great and oozes early 1970s decadence
- an intended effect -, but its plot, borrowing heavily from Agatha
Christie's And Then There Were None, is just too
over-convoluted, and not helped by basically under-developed characters.
So in a way, it's one of the best-looking, but not one of the best gialli
of its time.
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review © by Mike Haberfelner
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Robots and rats,
demons and potholes, cuddly toys and shopping mall Santas,
love and death and everything in between,
Tales to Chill Your Bones to is all of that.
Tales to Chill Your Bones to -
a collection of short stories and mini-plays ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
from the post-apocalyptic to the weirdly romantic,
tales that will give you a chill and maybe a chuckle,
all thought up by the twisted mind of screenwriter and film reviewer Michael Haberfelner.
Tales to Chill Your Bones to
the new anthology by Michael Haberfelner
Out now from Amazon!!! |
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