Recently talking about Giallo queen Edwige Fenech on IMDbs Classic Film board,I decided that it was time to watch a Fenech Gialli for the first time.Taking a look at a box set of auteur film maker Mario Bava,I spotted a collaboration that he had made with Fenech,which led to me staying up for the August moon.The plot:Wanting to get a breather from work, Professor Gerry Farrell & his wife Trudy decide to join industrialist George Stark and other couples for a "happening" weekend taking place on a remote island.Shortly after things start to flow,Gerry Farrell begins to suspect that he was not invited so that friends could catch up with him,as each of them start to offer bags of cash in exchange for his now formula of industrial resin.Sticking to his principles,Gerry turns down all of the offers.As the men argue among themselves,Stark's wife Jill decides to go for a walk on the beach.Getting stopped in her tracks,Jill finds out that a fellow guest has been left brutally murdered on the beach.As the bodies start to pile up,the surviving guest become increasingly desperate to get Farrell's new formula by any means possible.View on the film:Getting into the spirit of the "happening",director/editor Mario Bava & cinematographer Antonio Rinaldi dazzle with wah-wah whip- pans that give the partying a frenzied atmosphere. Despite working as a "director for hire" (and being very dismissive about the movie later on)Bava clearly displays an excellent attention to detail for the film,as the blunt murders take place against a whirling psychedelic backdrop,which goes from each of the women wearing lavishly colourful dresses,to the murder scenes being covered in shimmering blood and rolling crystal balls.For the screenplay,writer Mario di Nardo gives the Giallo a satirical Film Noir bite,as Nardo makes all the guests more concerned about getting Farrell's new formula than they are about the bodies stacking up.Digging into the Film Noir root of the Giallo,Nardo fills the weekend guest list with shady femme fatales and smart suited men who would hang anyone out to dry (or in this case on a meat hook!) to get one step ahead in the business world.Whilst the satirical slices give the movie a brittle comedic edge,the casual nature that the characters treat the murders in is sadly reflected in the screenplay,with Nardo paying little attention to building up any clues,and and also treating the murder set pieces in a relaxed manner which withholds any tense atmosphere from them.Looking gorgeous wrapped in eye-catching clothes,the beautiful Edwige Fenech gives a wonderful performance as guest Marie Chaney,whose flirtatious charms are given a femme fatale shine by Fenech,as Chaney tries to wrap all the men around in to giving her what she wants. Joining Fenech, William Berger gives a great performance as Gerry Farrell,with Berger smoothly carrying Farrell's naïve innocence into something more sinister,as the August moon rises.

A small group of people come to an island to relax but soon find themselves trapped on the island with a murderer in their midst.I love that the film features Tunisian-born Maurice Poli, who would go on to appear in Bava's "Baron Blood" and star in "Rabid Dogs". He has a such a good look about him, I would watch him in just about anything. (Unfortunately, it seems that he did not make any English-speaking films, so it may be harder for me to track his stuff down.) Craig Butler called the movie "a confusing and not terribly exciting whodunit... the mundane, run-of-the-mill story and the only-adequate cast keep Dolls from being anything but a mediocre movie." I disagree. While it may not be much of a whodunit, I actually enjoyed the cast and thought it developed into much more than "mediocre".

I know that the director, Mario Bava, has a very good reputation, but this film and another one on the same DVD (Four Times That Night) really make me wonder. Plus, I've seen quite a few of his horror films and also found them to be very inconsistent. Clever 'tricks' such as rapidly panning in and out for a psychedelic effect and a choppy film were clearly evident in "5 Bambole Per la Luna D'Agosto"--but also were some nice closeup shots of the bodies and some inventive camera work as well. It's really hard to pin down his...or this film.This movie is a variation on Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians" (also called by another name originally--one that IMDb rules prohibit reviewers from using). But, the plot has been reworked so much that it's hard to tell it has much to do with Christie. The most obvious change is that this film was 'sexed up' quite a bit--though it actually shows very little. But the sexual content is rampant and there's even a subplot involving lesbianism. I think most of this can be chalked up to 1970--when film makers were deliberately testing their limits and breaking taboos.But, as I said in the summary, there's a lot to like and a lot to hate about the film. It has a nice twist near the end about drugging the remaining people and a tape recorder. There also are a lot of very beautiful women in the film and this sure didn't make watching it very difficult. But, on the other hand, the plot seemed to bounce all over the place and the gimmick about sodium penathol made no sense at all--nor did all the times the one lady kept ripping off her clothes for no reason at all (though, as I said, you don't see much). It really made the film pretty cheap and silly. Overall, I was not particularly impressed by the film but it did at least keep my interest. A decent time-passer, but that is all.

This plays out less like a giallo film and more like a simple murder mystery, or, to be unkind, an adult Scooby Doo episode that mated with Gilligan's Island.A group of acquaintances are staying together in a lovely villa while the men-folk discuss business. The business at hand involves a professor's new formula for an industrial resin that has the potential to make someone a lot of money. Several of the guys offer the professor million dollar checks for the formula, but he's not ready to sell out just yet. So, naturally, someone is just going to have to DIE! So, the only boat on the shore seems to have been set adrift, leaving the "friends and lovers" to figure out whodunit, and how to get home.If I recall, all of the death scenes are off-camera, and Bava is having some fun with music scores and dark comedy. As the bodies pile up, the still-living decide to wrap the corpses in plastic and hang each of them in the meat locker next to a massive slab of beef to swing to and fro on hooks to a strange musical ditty that seems to be the "Meat Locker Theme." There is some blood, but it's tame, and you'll probably realize by the way these people treat each other, even supposed spouses and lovers, that none of these jerks deserves to make it back alive. The worst aspect of the film is the unbelievability with which the remaining cast carries on their daily routines on the island knowing there is a killer among them. They barely act upset when someone dies. Oh, there may be some tears, but they get over it real quick! I enjoyed how Bava set up so many of the scenes from the exact same camera points in the house or on the beaches, but had different action taking place. I wouldn't recommend this for giallo fans, but if you like Italian thrillers or just Mario Bava in general, search this one out.