Blu-ray Review: Mario Bava’s FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON

Arrow Video’s Blu-ray of Bava near-miss reviewed.

Arrow’s gradual roll-out of Mario Bava’s catalog continues with the curious giallo, FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON. With many of the great director’s nailed-on classics already available in spruce new editions, there’s a sense that we’re getting to the bottom of the barrel here; Bava himself practically disowned the film. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot to enjoy.

The whodunit plot is pure nonsense about a group of acquaintances assembled on an island. Among them is Professor Gerry Farrell (William Berger), the focus of some interest having just invented an amazing new formula for “industrial resin”. Exciting stuff that industrial resin. Industrialist George Stark (Teodor Corrà), his business partner Nick (Maurice Poli) and Nick’s cohort Jack (Renato Rossini) each offer a cool million dollars for the patent, while their various wives and lovers (Ira von Fürstenberg, Edith Meloni, Helene Ronee) slink around providing background plot and counterplot. There’s also the oddball teenager Isabelle (Justine Gall), the groundskeeper’s daughter pinballing through the middle of everything.

Resin aside, the set-up of a landlocked group of suspects with a killer in their midst dispatching them one-by-one is clearly indebted to Agatha Christie’s AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (AKA Ten Little Indians and, before that, something worse). Bava’s dislike of that novel apparently matched his contempt for the short-notice project he found himself directing, which perhaps explains some of his more perverse decisions. Principal among those is the way in which the deaths – arguably the point of a giallo, and markedly more energetic in Bava’s previous BLOOD AND BLACK LACE and subsequent BAY OF BLOOD – happen offscreen and we’re only shown the bloody aftermaths. The comparative lack of gratuitous flesh also seems odd given the presence of softcore queen Edwige Fenech. And the solution to the mystery is… whatever.

Nevertheless, what you do get is a great running joke about storing bodies in the deep freeze; a crazily psychedelic score by Piero Umiliani; and Antonio Rinaldi’s vibrant cinematography. If Bava’s off his game, everyone else is firing on all cylinders.

THE DISC

As ever, it’s startling and strange to watch a Bava film in as handsomely restored a condition as this. It isn’t perfect – there are still lines and crackles on the source print that clearly couldn’t be remedied – but Arrow’s 1080p overhaul is obviously a marked improvement on whatever ropey DVD or ancient VHS you’ve had to make do with previously. Although the dubbing remains terrible, regardless of whether you choose to watch the film in English or Italian. There’s an isolated music track, and a fun commentary by Bava expert Tim Lucas. If his attempt to rescue FIVE DOLLS’ reputation doesn’t quite convince, it’s at least an earnest and informative attempt.

The main extra feature is an hour-long documentary on Bava from 2000, narrated by British critic Mark Kermode and featuring on-screen contributions from Joe Dante, John Carpenter, Tim Burton and Kermode’s contemporary Kim Newman. It’s a decent retrospective, but it sits oddly alongside the film it accompanies: underlining FIVE DOLLS’ status as an inessential Bava footnote by never once mentioning it at all.