Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

3 Stars for Edwige Fenech. 0 for the rest of the film. Somehow, someway Mario Bava found a cult following who will dismiss his poor choice of story/scripts/plot/dialogue/human communication and emotion, and praise his colors/sets/cinematography and maybe music, and his dark sense of humor. Bava lovers say style over substance. Disregard story, it's all about how cool it looks. So, the people who want stories are supposed to regard Bava as some kind of an abstract painter? I'm thinking more like some fool who throws a bucket of paint on a canvas and call it art? Let's face it, be honest, we're all adults here, or try to be, Bava sucks. And so does this guy Argento. Suspiria is one of the most amateur pieces of garbage I've ever seen, everything from the candy color lights to poor acting, scenes, sets, dialogue, story, music, cinematography, etc. I recently watched his Flies & Plumage movies. Garbage. It's a cult propaganda. Maybe I'm wrong that cult movies aren't just people who love certain movies, maybe the Argento cult really belong to some crazy German Witches who run a ballerina school for international students. Fresh Meat!Getting back to Bava. Planet of Vampires, poor cartoon garbage. Bay of Blood, poor story some decent scenes. Black Lace, pretty near garbage story. This movie, the story idea is there. The script, screenplay, dialogue, scenes, all suck. Music was good, entertaining. Cinematography was good, but not great. Sets great. Edwidge was great. The rest of the cast were OK. But, without the story and the scenes this thing is a joke. It went from great, to boring, to what the hell is this. The scene with the girl walking in the beginning, and then looking through the window at the party and Edwidge dancing and the fake killing, is all great stuff. Where did they get all those plastic body bags, from Planet of Vampire? Those glass balls, suck! No thrills, no death scenes, we get the aftershow!If the producers were to edit a 10 or 15 minute version, with only Edwidge than this particular version may get an 8 stars or even 10. As it stands, this is the best Bava movie I have ever seen. And it gets 3 stars for Edwidge alone. Minus points for all the garbage one must sit through.

Mario Bava accepted make this movie because he needs money,he has a few time to do an did so fast that the movie was a bad review by critics. The Deaths itself didn't appear on any scenes, no blood at all...a sin to giallo's fans...so the picture falling down in theater....discovery later by new critics as new gem from Bava...to me only the gorgeous girl was save the movie...even an Mario Bava's movie!!!

"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.

Here's a "5 Dolls" movie-quote that I think sums up my opinion of director Mario Bava in a nutshell - "I can't figure out if you're dangerous, or just stupid!".... Yep. That about says it all! From where I was sitting, "5 Dolls" (from 1970) was one of those moronic movies that contains more "WTF!?" moments in it than you can count on your (and your friends') fingers & toes.This film tried its damnedest to be so cool, so hip, and so sexy. And yet through all of its wasted effort it inevitably defeated itself on these all-important points and, as a result, nearly choked on its own spittle.Even though the 10 actors featured in this lame, Italian, Murder/Mystery were, on the whole, a pretty good-looking bunch, their overall performances were astoundingly flat and painfully self-conscious. And the gauntlet of emotions that they attempted to emote were hollow beyond any reasonable tolerance.Besides all of that, these actors (for the most part) always looked so ridiculously posed. There was nothing natural about their behaviour. For most of the time it seemed so annoyingly forced.And it was because of this "pain-in-the-neck" business that I couldn't have cared less about what happened to any of the characters in this picture. In fact - When, one-by-one, they were being murdered by a mysterious psycho, I got nothing but joy to see each and every one of them get offed.With all of that said - Let's face it, this film's failures were all director Mario Bava's own damn fault. I mean, Bava was such a clueless, "doofus-of-a-film-maker" that he had absolutely no talent for creating genuine horror or sustaining (in the truest sense of the word) even the slightest bit of suspense.On top of all of this, I think "5 Dolls" musical score sucked to the 10th power. From start to finish it was an irksome, grate-on-your-nerves mess of whiny organ music that didn't fit the situation or set the mood for a tale whose focus was supposed to be on the horror of multiple murders.