🏝️ Premise: A Villa, a Beach, and an Invited Murders
Picture a glamorous Italian villa beachfront: white-clad socialites, champagne flutes, cliché suspicion, and waves crashing like criticism. Five Dolls for an August Moon opens with a group of would-be vacationers who just happen to be heirs and hangers-on, summoned to a balmy Mediterranean estate. The occasion: Mrs. Mossington-Stay’s (Antonella Interlenghi) engagement party. The bonus: wacky “scientific experiments.” The spoil-sport: closed-off property, suspicious lockdown, and one-by-one murders.
It’s straight out of Ten Little Indians, with more sun and less plausibility. “Who would kill our host?” they ask—and you lean back to answer: “Someone who can’t act and forgot to bring a believable motive.”
🎭 Characters: Stereotypes Sunbathing in Plain Sight
Let’s sunbathe with psychometry:
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Helen (Edwige Fenech): A nurse with weird allergies. Supposed to be kind, but she looks like she’s trying to figure out if her spitshine job included murder cleanup.
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Helen’s fiancé, Robert (John Richardson): The handsome chap with moral turrets. He switches between concerned fiancé and cover-up accomplice faster than you can say “alibi.”
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Thorne (Fabio Testi): The cliché “rich playboy” who grins too much and fidgets with cufflinks, like he memorized “bad guy vibes for dummies.”
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Mrs. Mossington-Stay: Hostess with the most erm… figure? Hiding something, but we can’t tell what, because she never seems stressed enough to be interesting.
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William J. Baxter (Isarco Ravaioli): The scientist with eyeglasses and a dead-eagle stare. Think “mad scientist meets travel agent”—a combination so inert he can’t even invent a decent red herring.
Every character is defined by a wardrobe staple or a nervous tic (or neither), not by motive, personality—or likeability.
🧨 Plot: Tiny Red Herrings, Big Blanks
Someone suggests smuggling death onto the island via a suitcase, which is witty. Then they forget it immediately, like ghosts in L. Ron Hubbard’s brain. Bodies pile up in amateurishly staged murder scenes: a stab here, a choke there, sudden POV shots of dripping blood. But we never learn why each murder happens—just that later, someone collapses and dies.
There’s talk of inheritance, love triangles, and secret projects, but it’s all as shallow as the pool they never swim in. Even bonus “scientific contraptions” like lie detectors or chamber transmissions tick scenes forward like a bored toddler, not a clever writer.
🎬 Direction: Bava on Low Battery?
Mario Bava’s earlier films—Black Sunday, Blood and Black Lace, Kill, Baby… Kill!—had lush colors, sound design that slapped you, and gothic paranoia. Here? It feels like someone handed Bava the keys to a villa, then refused to feed him sunlight during shooting.
Yes, there are odd angles. Yes, there’s a decent storm sequence. But the chills are faint and disposable. It’s more hotel brochure than horror art. For a director who made your nightmares beautiful, this is like waking up to a lukewarm cup of coffee that tastes slightly of dust.
💡 Atmosphere and Ambience: Sunshine Without Shadows
The villa is gorgeous—white marble, dunes, moody drapes—but it never feels inhabited, let alone haunted. People wander in crisp dresses, laugh at sunsets, nibble hors d’oeuvres, and vanish offscreen. There’s no sense of dread, no claustrophobia—just a breezy lunch party where the punch is spiked and the bartending is lethal.
The thunderstorm sequence should build suspense, but because the script failed on character stakes, it just drenches the screen without charging it.
🧩 Suspense and Red Herrings: Puzzle Pieces That Don’t Snap Together
The writers throw in one red herring after another—poisoned wine, suspicious scientific equipment, cryptic phone calls. Yet the red herrings are more like red hot Cheetos—colorful, tangy, but ultimately flavorless in the narrative.
Suspicions bounce around like a hyperactive beach volleyball. But by the time we get a final reveal (and you know there is a final reveal), it lands icy, hollow, and predictable. You don’t feel shocked. You feel sorry: for the detective character who’s forced to pronounce it aloud like a bad game show host; for the audience who waited for the twist; and for Bava, who seems too polite to clap his own film offstage.
🎭 Acting: Cardboard Castaways
The acting feels like a dramatized insurance commercial—a husband-wakes-up-and-tells-you-he-was-buried-alive kind of seriousness. Nobody sells tension. Nobody conveys fear. They either overact in silence or undersell every line. It’s hard to maintain atmosphere when your cast looks like they read the script five minutes before rolling.
Edwige Fenech, famous for her beauty, barely registers; she drifts through scenes like a lost ship in a sunlit sea. Fabio Testi looks sulky. John Richardson looks bored. The only face that registers relief at dawn is that of anyone reading this review, because they’re done.
⚰️ Gore: A Splash, Not a Drama
If you came for psychic thrills and opulent terror, forget it. The murders are quick, with just enough blood to keep the censor off your vine. A neck twist, a drop-to-the-floor, a faint “oof.” Repeat. It’s like Bava was contractually obligated to kill five dolls—and so he did. But the deaths lack any emotional resonance. Even the body drops look like someone left them on the lawn for the landscapers.
🎨 Design and Score: Unfortunate Aesthetics
The European soundtrack—flavored with lounge music and hammer-fall cues—never builds trouble. The theme keeps insisting it’s spooky, but the shots keep showing people sunbathing. The editing is distracted. The colors are saturated, but the bedroom is bright enough to read by. This should be a giallo with style. Instead, style is the only luster mask left for what’s missing underneath.
🤷♂️ Why It All Feels Pointless
Bava’s previous work had thematic resonance—sexuality, death, religious fear, technology. Five Dolls offers… five models, a murder spree, and a sleepy farmhouse. It doesn’t challenge viewers. It doesn’t surprise them. It doesn’t even tease halfway decent horror pacing.
This film is like ordering tiramisu and getting plain vanilla pudding that smells vaguely of coffee. There’s no payoff, no texture, just something that looks the part, but tastes weak.
🧾 Final Verdict: Portfolio Filler with a Villa View
Five Dolls for an August Moon isn’t a total disaster. It won’t ignite your sanity. But it’s not the kind of movie that haunts your dreams, your memories, or your TikTok faves.
It’s a Bava misfire—subset: “Italian-holiday-who-died.” A glossy postcard promising intrigue but delivering lukewarm pool water. You’ll identify who dies, you’ll realize who the murderer is, and you’ll doze off before the final credits.
Edwige Fenech – Italy’s cult movie beauty queen – https://pochepictures.com/edwige-fenech-from-beauty-queen-to-cult-cinema-icon/