Cheap 5 Dolls For an August Moon (DVD) Price

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Customer Reviews of 5 Dolls For an August Moon

I love this bad little movie that has a lot going for it.
The plot (such as it is) is lifted from Agatha Christie - which hardly matters as much as the fact that it has a great, utterly whack euro-lounge score by Piero (Muh-nah-muh-nah) Umiliani. The characters are all... Oh, who gives a crud? Certainly not the director. Bava just screwed off for this one - but that's a big part of what makes it so irresistible. The crash zooms and zip pans are all over the place. The avoidance of onscreen bloodshed is somehow more perverse than the gory set pieces he arranged in other films. What we get are some imaginative murder tableaux and the occasional wild visual that seems to have been thought up on the spot. (Watch out for rolling glass balls! Why, you ask? Ha ha ha ha - foolish earthling...) Edwige Fenech does a wild go-go dance just before becoming a virgin (hah!) sacrifice for her rich bored friends - and that's just the beginning. The costumes and interiors will make your eyes water. The lush exteriors will make your mouth water. For a slipshod labor of hate this is one bouncy and colorful picture. Just don't expect it to make a lot of sense or engage you on anything more than a purely sensory level. While Bava reviled this picture, I hear it isn't anywhere near as bad as "Doctor Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs." <
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>This is actually one of the better Image releases of a Bava picture, offering English, Italian and an M&E audio track, with English subs. The picture isn't perfect, but it's quite luscious and more than acceptable - and the menus are pretty nice featuring complete cues from the score (now available on CD - whoopee!) taken from an LP. HOWEVER (!!!), the cool "5 Dolls" trailer, which has some AWESOME music that is not from this score, is not included here or on any other Bava DVD. <
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>For casual viewing, this is pretty tasty. My heart wants to give this five stars, but my brain is looking at four and saying, "Aw, come ON!" <
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Did I Miss Something? Cause I Was Really Disappointed!
5 DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON is said to be Mario Bava's worst film & I couldn't agree more. It looked like Bava didn't care about this movie at all. Sure, it had style to spare cause it's by Bava, but for the most part, this movie is just plain boring. The only saving graces of this film is the colorful direction, beautiful women, & some sleek & stylish visuals.

Unless you're a serious Bava fan, this movie may not be for you.

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the indiscreet charmlessness of the bourgeoisie.
It is surely no coincidence that the two greatest adaptations of Agatha Christie (Rene Clair's 'And then there were none' and this) have been by directors who might be loosely called Surrealist, and have been based on the same book, 'Ten Little Indians', in which the traditional emblem of consciousness in the crime novel, the detective, is removed, allowing the unconscious free rein. 'Five Dolls for an August Moon' is not often rated as highly as Bava's horror films, but I think it might be his masterpiece, the murder mystery as Bunuellian bad dream. a number of couples are invited by magnate George Stark to his island retreat, as cover for his attempts to force a brilliant scientist to sell some secret formula that is worth millions but potentially dangerous. the increasingly tense atmosphere soon becomes the backdrop for a series of grotesque murders.

There is something of 'the Tempest' about 'Five dolls', with its enchanted island (seemingly pivoted around the title moon), a presiding power manipulating everyone's movements and an Ariel-like figure flitting freely and decisively on the margins. but it is Bunuel who is the true guiding spirit - like the party-goers in 'The Exterminating Angel', Bava's bourgeoisie can't leave their opulent surroundings, and their elegant facade is soon stripped away to reveal sexual neurosis, financial greed and violence (lingering traces of fascism in the bright new democratic, industrial Italy, and all prominent in the brutal George); while, like 'Belle de Jour', the mystery narrative is subverted by a complex pattern mixing dream, subjective point-of-view and reality - one amazing sequence sees the survivors magically disappearing when potential rescuers arrive on the island.

As ever, the house is central to Bava's vision, in this case a gorgeously gleaming, futuristic, spacious white interior, reworked into kaleidoscopic shapes by Bava's prowling camera, his quickswitch, wide-angle tilts and his use of deep deep-focus. the Hammond-dominated soundtrack is one of those infectious masterpieces seemingly de rigeur in the Euro-B-movies of the time, and so badly lacking in these gloopy, over-orchestrated times. the missing formula is more than a McGuffin: a powerful symbol for the absence (emotional, moral etc.) debilitating these awful characters. Surveillance is another prominent Bava theme, the all-seeing, unseen eye watching our every move in modern society - in this case the act of spying/looking/viewing and the act of killing are explicitly linked in a moment of Hitchcockian frisson.