ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Murphy Howard I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Bezenby My feet stink! Just like my feet, so do the morals of 100% of the characters in this film - A bunch of beatnik types on a remote island courtesy of George Stark, an uber wealthy guy who's brought these people here in order to obtain a new chemical formula discovered by William Berger.Being the sixties, everyone's a bit groovy and all into each other's pants - Maurice Poli's wife Edwidge has huge Robert Smith circa 1984 hair and gold lame trousers and loves dancing in her bra and sleeping with the guy who owns the yacht. I think Berger's wife was into ladies but maybe not. You also have Ely Galleanni running around the island acting strange too (and she can't be more than seventeen in this one. In fact everyone looks pretty young, expect Maurice Poli who looks about fifty - yet he still walks the Earth forty-seven years later!).This being a giallo someone's got to be killed at some point and yacht boy is up for a stabbing first, so everyone's blaming Edwidge, who states "I like men - but I like them to be alive!". So who is the killer? Who wants the formula? And why didn't they invite William Berger instead of all those people?I suppose if you ask ten different people to make you an omelette you're going to get ten omelettes of varying quality depending on the skills of those in charge of the eggs (this is a great analogy - remember and change 'omelette' to 'pizza' before posting review so it makes cultural sense). Bava's one of those special cooks who just has a natural touch that makes everything taste everything better than anyone else.When not cooking, Bava made some of the best Gialli too, thanks to his ability to film things from unusual angles, fitting all the characters in one scene in one shot, and throwing in a curveball or too to totally confuse the viewer (that comes an hour into this one, where I thought the story had just forward to the end for some reason). Also, the wrapping of each victim in plastic and hanging in the freezer is a nice touch too (and often copied in slashers in the eighties).Lacking gore though (except someone being shot directly in the face at the end) - he'd remedy that in Bay of Blood!Oh - and the soundtrack was amazing!

Leofwine_draca A sluggish giallo from Mario Bava, largely considered to be one of the director's worst and for good reason: unfortunately, it seems writer Mario di Nardo forgot to populate his story with any likable characters whatsoever, leaving viewing a somewhat hollow experience. The plot is basically yet another variation on the old AND THEN THERE WERE NONE story by Agatha Christie, as a bunch of stuffy, uninteresting, upper-crust types gather together at a remote island villa and find themselves offed one by one by a mysterious murderer. However, fans expecting any of the bloody antics highlighted in Bava's later A BAY OF BLOOD will be sorely disappointed to find that the murders themselves are in short supply; largely off-screen, and with minimal gore and violence.Where the film does succeed is in Bava's effortless style and artistry with the camera and art direction. Packing his movie with (irritating) zooms, dissolves, sweeps, and close-up shots, the film looks good, very good in fact. Although the music has dated badly in the meantime and the fashions have gone out of the window, the visual spectacle is what makes this film work and Bava achieves some of his trademark imaginative imagery, including a beautiful cascade of glass balls leading to a murder victim and some splendidly macabre shots of dead bodies hung up in a meat locker. While it's nice to look at, the fragmented storyline, muddled conclusion and motive for the murders and frankly silly climax (belonging more in THE CABINET OF DR CALIGARI than here) make this a rum deal indeed.Thankfully, with the appearance of some splendid Euro-babes - including the delectable Edwige Fenech and Ira von Furstenberg - Bava makes the effort to pack his film with provocative, naked female flesh on display, the result being that this is one of his sexiest movies. The sight of Fenech cavorting in bright orange underwear is enough to make any man's blood boil. An interesting male cast has also been assembled, with shifty performers like William Berger, Howard Ross and Teodoro Corra lurking about the premises, but the script is so uninteresting that it sucks life from the murder-mystery. Ultimately, the film itself is only worth watching for ardent giallo-lovers who can survive on style and artistry alone; as a film, this is an abject failure, deeply flawed and with little else to recommend it.

jadavix "Five Dolls For an August Moon" is a tedious proto-slasher with giallo touches. It features the typical cast of older, debonair gentlemen with their young bimbos conducting affairs with whoever else - one in a lesbian tryst, for an even more giallo-type sense of trashiness (the slasher genre was too conservative for lesbianism).Anyway, the characters are all utterly charmless and distant. Slashers generally went with obnoxious teenage stereotypes; gialli use bloodless rich people. Either way, it's impossible to care about them.There is also no real attempt at suspense. The movie doesn't even try to make you care about what's going on; it's like looking at a series of photos of the location that occasionally have dead people in them.There is no on-screen violence that I remember, no nudity except for one scene with Edwige Fenech (who is wasted here) where you might have to squint, and no real reason to watch that I can think of, unless you are a Bava completist.

tomgillespie2002 Mario Bava arguably created the giallo; that very Italian brand of horror/thriller that combined psychosexual undertones with astonishingly beautiful women, a killer with black gloves, and penis-shaped weapons. Along with the likes of Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento, the giallo was highly inspirational to American film-makers such as John Carpenter, leading to the creation of that very American brand of horror, the slasher. As innovative as Bava was (and still is), his filmography contains a few duds, and Five Dolls for an August Moon is one example.Taking inspiration from, of all people, Agatha Christie and her novel Ten Little N*****s (now commonly referred to as Ten Little Indians, understandably), Five Dolls groups a bunch of wealthy people together at a weekend getaway owned by George Stark (Teodoro Corra). One of the guests is scientist Gerry Farrell (William Berger) who, as we come to learn, has made a revolutionary breakthrough in creating a new formula for industrial resin. Farrell quickly realises that he was invited to the retreat so Stark and his fellow industrialists can persuade him to sell his formula, which he declines. As frustration grows, the inhabitants shortly start turning up dead.The film is sporadically fun, especially the running joke that has the victims wrapped in plastic and hung in the freezer one by one which, by the end, is almost overflowing. Yet, although the premise sounds like classic giallo material, Bava makes his group of characters so indistinguishable from one another (although there's no mistaking the stunning Edwige Fenech) that it's difficult to get engrossed by the increasingly outlandish plot. For a Bava film, the visuals are shockingly bland, with only brief glimpses of his famous visual flair and complex use of colour. There are also precious few memorable set-pieces to savour between the quieter moments, with many of the murders taking place off camera. Certainly lower-league Bava.