By TESS HENSON

How appropriate is that I am writing this article about a giallo style "survivor" movie shortly after having participated in a Mario Bava "survivor" game on one of my horror e-mail lists where we voted off Bava’s films until one was left? Very, I say!

For that is exactly what this film is--a bloody fun "survivor" game a la Ten Little Indians, if you know what I mean. However, this film, Five Dolls For An August Moon (1970) (aka 5 bambole per la luna d’agosto, Cinco munecas para la luna de agosto (Spain) and Island Of Terror (US dubbed version) did not survive the game. In fact, there was probably more discussion on the list about this particular movie than any other while the game progressed.

Why, you ask? Because this film is either loved or hated by Bava fans--there seems to be no middle ground--and that makes for some fertile, and sometimes heated discussions (particularly amongst those fans who defend it’s kitschy Seventies glitz).

How did it fare? Well, out of approximately 24 Bava films which we were voting on, it was the eleventh to be kicked off the celluloid island--right after Caltiki: The Immortal Monster and right before The Girl Who Knew Too Much.

So, it fared considerably well, and was in good company with the films that were its bookends. Was I sad to see it go? Not particularly, and had in fact been voting for it in three previous rounds before it finally got the boot--or boat--off the island, so to speak.

Of course some of those were "save" votes so that a couple of my other Bava favorites, namely Caltiki and The Girl Who Knew Too Much could make it on to the next round. However, that does not mean I do not like the film, neither does it mean I love it. Suffice it to say there are some things I really like, and some things I don’t. But, let me give you the rundown before we get into my personal likes and dislikes.

The premise is this: A rich industrialist, George Stark (Teodoro Carra), has invited a professor, Fritz Farrell (William Berger) , who has seemingly developed an important industrial resin that will revolutionize the world, to his beachfront house along with the professor’s wife, Trudy (Ira Von Furstenberg), and a group of other wealthy would-be purveyors of the resin, and their wives.

His scheme is to persuade the professor to sell the much sought-after compound. He and his cronies are offering the professor the big, big money – but he ain’t sellin’. So, they go about knocking each other off, until, in a twist ending that either leaves you with a "huh?" sort of feeling, or makes you feel that it was thought up and slapped together in five minutes, only one is left to abscond with both the resin, and all the million-dollar checks that have been wafted under the professor’s nose throughout the film.

Pretty cut and dried, and no real surprises, except perhaps for the "huh?" ending. Now, putting aside the routine storyline, let me hit upon some of the highlights of the film. Perhaps my favorite character is Isabel (played by the ethereal Ely Gallaeni) who at first comes off as the sort of resident island wild-child--simple, and spending most of her time on the wind-swept beaches and living a sort of animalistic life, but longing for something richer as we see when she steals an expensive shawl from one of the other ladies and hides it on the beach.

We find out in the end, that this is all sort of an act, as she spies an opportunity and slyly acts upon it, leaving her the only survivor, and rich to boot! She is strange, and seemingly a little mentally off-center when we are first introduced to her, but isn’t lunacy the curse of genius? I’ve always thought so.

Some of the shots of her on the beach, playing like a child on a swing hung from a dead tree are disturbing and quirky at the same time, especially considering Bava had his "zoom" face on. His use of the zoom is much more prevalent here than in any other Bava film I’ve seen so far, and it lends to the film’s downright wackiness.

Which brings us to another highlight. At the beginning of the film we are subjected through the eyes of Isabel as she peers in a window of the beach house to a bizarre party scene. Groovy jazz-rock music is blaring in the living room while the guests look on at Marie Chaney (busty Edwige Fenech) as she bumps and grinds to the frenetic beat. The camera zooms in and out, in and out on Fenech, giving the film a kind of trippy, psychedelic feel. By the end of the scene, you will know every inch of Fenech’s curvaceous body, whether you want to or not. A little something for you dog-faced boys!

After the booty dance, Marie is subjected to a faux sacrifice to the God Kraal (who is he, anyway?) and it’s all very "shagadelic baby, yeah!" and sets up the Ten Little Indians premise, as during the staged sacrifice, the guests are all given weapons with which to take a "stab" at Marie, when suddenly the lights go out. When they come back on, Marie has seemingly been stabbed to death, and lies in a tied-up heap on the floor, drenched in blood.

However, it is a gag, as a guest sprays seltzer water on her and washes off what appears to be red jam instead of blood. All have a good laugh as Marie yips at the cold water being sprayed all over her breasts.

Yet this scene foreshadows Marie’s death, as later she is found dead, crucified to a tree with a knife plunged in her ribs just like in the staged sacrifice earlier. One of the guests states "…seltzer water won’t bring her back this time." Indeed.

Another underlying theme is the sort of implied lesbian romance between Trudy Farrell and Stark’s wife Jill (Edith Meloni). As likable as Stark is in the beginning of the film, he soon becomes detestable as we watch him slap his wife silly as she grieves over the death of Jacques (Maurco Bosco), the hunky houseboy who gets killed first, and who is sleeping around with Marie--who is married to rich-boy Nick Chaney (Maurice Poli)–and maybe even Stark’s wife as well. No wonder she longs for the softer touch of a woman, and Trudy seems to genuinely love her.

Jill likes to torture herself though, by hiding in the trees outside Trudy’s bedroom, watching her make love to her professor-husband. She eventually slits her wrists in a tub of warm water later on in the film.

Howard Ross and Helena Ronee round out the cast as Jack and Peggy Davidson. At the end of the film it looks like Jack will be the sole survivor--that is, until Isabel comes along! In either a slapped-together ending, or again, one designed to make the viewer go "huh?" we find out that the professor was not really killed earlier on in the film, but shot by Isabel with a gun loaded with drugged darts.

She does this because she has fallen for him after a brief encounter with him earlier on the beach, and does not want him to become a victim of the other murderous guests who are after his formula. So, in effect she is saving his life by doing this.

The effects of the drug on him are another matter however, as we shall see. After knocking him out, Isabel lets the rest of the guests find his supposedly dead body on the beach. When they all head back to the guesthouse to call the authorities, Isabel drags his unconscious, but still very much alive body back to a beach cave where she holes up and sort of keeps him drugged.

Some time later, in an involved scene, which would take up way too much space to describe here, the authorities finally show up. While they find no one in the house, apparently--as it’s explained in the final scene of the film--they do find Isabel and the drugged professor on the beach. Because of the drug, he spills to the authorities how the resin really isn’t his, but one of his colleagues whom he killed in order to acquire it.

All this takes place off-screen and we, the viewers, are let in on the twist in the final scene when Isabel confronts the professor in prison, telling him that she needs more money as she has already gone through two of the three million dollars that had been tossed about that weekend. He gives her the account number for the final million, and off she trots to collect her treasure.

See, it is also revealed in the final moments of the film that Jack Davidson is the killer of all except the professor who isn’t really dead, and he and the other survivor, Trudy, fight and kill each other over the resin. Isabel witnesses all this and when everyone is dead she grabs the resin and the money and runs. Smart girl.

There is much to like about this groovy little film--the glitzy Seventies clothes, the big, teased and hair-sprayed hair, women who look like they’ve just walked off a Virginia Slim’s cigarette ad in a Nixon-era glamour magazine, and men who look like they’ve just walked off a "I’d rather fight than switch" Tareyton cigarette TV commercial (remember those?). There is the swingin’ soundtrack by Piero Umiliani, and as always, the brilliance of Bava’s direction.

While most of this film takes place outdoors on the beach, the scenes that do take place in the house are very nice to look at. Bava, for the most part, abandons his use of colors and lets the unique architecture of the beach house itself become the atmosphere of the film.

There is the cool sunken living room, the bedroom with the round, rotating bed (shaguar baby, yeah!), shots of a scantily clad Fenech lounging on the said rotating bed, a spectacular fight scene in which the brawlers knock over a jar of multi-sized glass balls, which then roll down a cool spiral staircase and into a tub where Jill has taken her life, surreal shots of plastic wrapped corpses (ala Twin Peak’s Laura Palmer) hanging in a chilled meat locker, and exterior shots of the house perched atop a sandy cliff overlooking the ocean. Oh, and lots of zoom!

Before I stated that I would point out my likes and dislikes. Well, it seems that I don’t have any dislikes because now I am hard-pressed to think of any. While this isn’t Bava’s finest film by a long shot, it is an interesting little filmic diversion, especially for you fans of the groovy Seventies.

My source for this article is the Image Entertainment DVD from the Mario Bava Collection. The film is presented in it’s 1.85:1 theatrical aspect ratio, widescreen and uncut. The special features on this disc include audio tracks in English and Italian with optional English subtitles. The only thing I didn’t like about the English audio track is that one cannot turn the subtitles off--strange.

The DVD also includes a Mario Bava biography and liner notes by Tim Lucas; director, star and composer filmographies; a poster and photo gallery; and trailers for Baron Blood, Twitch Of The Death Nerve, The House Of Exorcism, Black Sunday, Black Sabbath and The Girl Who Knew Too Much. With the exception of the English audio track, this is an altogether excellent disc.