5 Bambole per la Luna D'agosto (Italian release title)

A trio of millionaires invite a professor/inventor to an island retreat, hoping to persuade him to sell a secret formula for industrial resin. They are each accompanied by their wives, some of whom are harbouring secrets (lezzin' rather than resin) of their own. A (mostly) unseen assailant begins knocking off the wholly-unfleshed-out characters one by one. Who is behind the murders, and why is there a teenage girl running around the island entirely unsupervised?

5 Dolls for an August Moon marked a return to the giallo genre for Mario Bava, six years after his genre-defining Blood and Black Lace. (It is worth noting that the film was released in Italy one week before the genre re-defining Bird With the Crystal Plumage.) Essentially a reworking of Agatha Christie's Ten Little *cough* Indians, the film was shot in 19 days, and has been denounced by no less than the director himself as being his worst film.

As anyone who's seen Dr Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs would testify, Bava didn't always get it right. And,  as anyone who's seen Dr Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs would testify, 5 Dolls is not his worst film. It's obvious that Bava had little interest in the script or characters of the film (the latter being a pity, as the cast is top-notch), but he made up for this by directing the absolute s**t out of it. If one was to approach the film expecting something along the lines of B&BL (or Bava's other famous giallo, Bay of Blood), it'd be impossible to be anything but let down by it, as  you'd be hard-pressed to argue that 5 Dolls is anything other than a failure as an out-an-out giallo. The murders either occur off-screen, or involve death-by-gunshot (which most genre enthusiasts would probably agree is even less agreeable than an off-screen murder); there are no real stalk-and-slash sequences, and there is no concrete line of investigation taken by any of the characters, who spend most of their time hanging out, trying to steal scientific formulae, and shagging. Oh, and occasionally hanging a corpse in the walk-in freezer.

Bava had just come off a brace of spy pictures (the aforementioned Dr Goldfoot and Danger: Diabolik), and the pop-art aesthetic of these films is alive and well here, with the decor of the villa in which much of the action is set being straight out of a 60s spy caper. The McGuffin at the centre of the plot, a formula in the possession of William Berger's scientist, as well as the logic underpinning the film's final revelation, also sit uneasily within the confines of the giallo.

While I disagree strongly with Bava's assertion that it's his worst film, it is plain that he is  coasting* along.  However, as I said above, his direction is at times phenomenal. The entire film takes place in either set-based interiors or at the seaside, the two locations where Bava was most comfortable throughout his career. The film's rushed production schedule likely forced him to think creatively, and he utilizes the restless-camera-on-a-tripod approach here to greater effect than in Bay of Blood, where the zooms and reframings can occasionally become intrusive. They do intrude here, but only when Bava wants them to. The final shot of the sailor sequence is an example of a seemingly simple shot which is perfectly conceived and executed. Also worth a special mention is the wrestling sequence, which turns into a marbles-falling-down-stairs sequence, which directly leads to the discovery of an apparent suicide. If this sounds a bit scattershot and mad, it is. And so is the film.

Aka L'uomo più Velenoso del Cobra (Italian release title)

This quasi-giallo was scripted by Ernesto Gastaldi and directed by Bitto Albertini, who was shortly to find some success with his black version of Emmanuelle, titled Black Emanuelle (the success of which was hijacked by Joe D'Amato, who churned out several sleazy sequels). In common with Gastaldi's other films of the early 70s, there is little discernible Argento influence, with the motive behind the killings being inheritance-related, and plot taking precedence over style and effect (and scenery taking precedence over plot). This latter emphasis can be at least partly attributed to the director, who seems far more interested in showcasing the exotic locales (the film was shot in several countries, among them Sweden and the US, with the second half being set in Africa) than in wringing any tension out of the script. A perfect example of this lack of interest (/talent) can be seen in a sequence where the film's 'hero', played by George Ardisson, is stopped by police while transporting the corpse of a recently-murdered woman (Janine Reynaud) in the front seat of his car. Lucio Fulci staged a similar sequence to great effect in Touch of Death (his last good film), but here Albertini stages the scene as a routine conversation between the policemen and Ardisson, generating no tension whatsoever. Looking through his filmography, it's clear that his fondness for filming in foreign climes far surpassed his interest in the thriller film.

The film itself is moderately effective (and my appreciation of it possibly hampered by watching it on a pan-and-scan DVD), but comes up short as a giallo by virtue of having too few potential suspects. In common with other early 70s Gastaldi films (The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh, The Curse of the Scorpion's Tail), we see the killer in plain view early in the film, and the identity of the figure issuing their orders (with all of two potential suspects) is the mystery at its heart. The lead character is presented as a former mobster who has been banished from America for past misdeeds, but ultimately we see no real dark streak in Ardisson's character, and the gangster backstory is both lazy characterization and an excuse to set the opening half hour in New York's underworld, to little effect. Some of the internal logic fails to stand up to scrutiny also (a character walks away from an exploding car with only faint burn marks on their clothes, and a scene set in the great Luciano Pigozzi's New York apartment makes absolutely no sense on second viewing), so this is far from top-tier Gastaldi. If you have to watch one giallo which is set in exotic locales, don't watch this one.