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.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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