Review by David Paul Hellings
@HellingsOnFilm
“Arrow Video is delighted to announce the release of their latest giallo, Five Dolls for an August Moon, directed by the master of the macabre, Mario Bava. Arriving on Blu-ray and DVD from 1st February 2016, this dual-format release joins a roster of previous Bava titles released through Arrow Video – A Bay of Blood, Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Lisa and the Devil, Rabid Dogs and Blood and Black Lace.
This new disc comes loaded with a wealth of bonus content including the documentary Mario Bava: Maestro of the Macabre – a profile of the director, hosted by Mark Kermode and featuring interviews with Joe Dante, John Carpenter and Tim Burton).
Wealthy industrialist George Stark (Teodora Corrà, Django the Bastard) has gathered a group of friends – played by a who’s who of Italian genre cinema including William Berger (Faccia a faccia), Ira von Fürstenberg (The Fifth Cord), Edwige Fenech (Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key) and Howard Ross (The New York Ripper) – to his island retreat. He hopes to entice them into investing in a new project, but soon the sunbathing and cocktails parties give way to murder, as the corpses begin to pile up one by one.
Paying homage to Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, Five Dolls for an August Moon turns the style up to ten. Surrounded by beautiful women, stunning locations and flamboyant fashions – and abetted by Piero Umiliani’s equally exotic score – Bava creates one of his most eye-catching movies, a visual tour de force”.
via Arrow Video
Review:
Director Mario Bava allegedly once claimed that he didn’t like his film “Five Dolls For An August Moon”. In fact, he didn’t like any of his films. So, the story goes. Bava felt constrained in the structures he dealt with and unfulfilled by his results. Every artist feels this way a lot of the time and Bava was no different. Overly self critical, he didn’t recognise how influential his work was and would be and how well they would age, so stylish then that they now appear retro-chic at times.
Bava’s version of/tribute to the Agatha Christie classic “Ten Little Indians” is one of his most visually stylish and striking films, a giallo that owes much to Director of Photography Antonio Rinaldi. It’s so stunningly shot, the sets so hip, and the cast so good looking and fashionable that looking at it now, at times it’s as though we’re spectators to a high budget 70s after shave commercial. There’s more to it than that, of course. Bava underrated himself, in a way that Lucio Fulci did, but Dario Argento in his supreme self-belief never has. ‘Five Dolls’ was made under protest by Bava with a pre-selected cast by the producers and yet it is a film worthy of the director and sits well in his catalogue.
‘Five Dolls’ plays nicely as a Christie homage and unlike “Ten Little Indians” you have a chance of not guessing whodunit in Bava’s outing. The film is full of black humour and has one of the most engaging soundtracks to any giallo (save the Goblin/Argento outings) which can be also savoured in the optional music/effects track, creating a campy sense of a Bava world mixed with an engaging sense of farce as the body count rises. Piero Umiliani’s soundtrack is fun and self-aware.
“Five Dolls For An August Moon” remains an oddity in the Bava film collection: a contract piece for which he held no love, but a film that retains the hallmarks of directorship that make Bava such a giallo legend. The Blu ray is a fine release from the HD elements provided, reflecting the beauty and colour of the visual style of the piece.
Crazy, fun, a joy to watch, the ‘Five Dolls’ Blu ray is sure to please fans of Bava and Italian horror alike. A welcome release.
Special Features
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentations
- Optional English and Italian soundtracks presented in original uncompressed mono PCM audio
- Optional isolated Music and Effects track
- Optional English subtitles for the Italian audio and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for the English audio
- Audio commentary by Mario Bava’s biographer Tim Lucas
- Mario Bava: Maestro of the Macabre – a documentary profile of the director, hosted by Mark Kermode and featuring interviews with Joe Dante, John Carpenter and Tim Burton
- Theatrical trailer
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys
- Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Glenn Kenny and a new essay by Adrian Smith on the Fancey family and their efforts to bring international exploitation titles, including Five Dolls for an August Moon, to a UK audience during the 60s, 70s and 80s
