Five Dolls for an August Moon (5 bambole per la luna d'agosto) is a 1970 Italian giallo film directed by Italian horror auteur Mario Bava starring Ira Furstenberg, William Berger, Edwige Fenech, Howard Ross, and Teodoro Corra. The plot is an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery inspired by Ten Little Indians about party-goers staying on the private island of rich industrialist George Stark (Corra.) Two of the guests are Prof. Farrell (Berger) and his wife, (von Fürstenberg) who have been invited to the island in an attempt to get Farrell to sell a formula for industrial resin. Other potential buyers for the formula are Jack, (Ross) and Nick (Maurice Poli.) Rounding out the group are Jack's wife, Peggy (Helena Ronee,) Nick's wife, Marie (Fenech) George's wife, Jill (Edith Meloni) the island caretaker's daughter, Isabelle (Justine Gall,) and George's butler, Charles, (Mauro Bosco.) As the booze-filled partying, back-stabbing wheeling and dealing, and secret affairs go on, the guests are gradually killed one-by-one and the survivors must figure out which among them is the killer before they are killed next.
One of Bava's lesser-known works, Five Dolls did not do particularly well upon its release, but has since been recognized as one of Bava's best.
Five Dolls for an August Moon contains examples of the following tropes:
- Answer Cut: When Nick asks what happened to Marie, the shot immediately after is of her stabbed, dead body tied to a tree. Later, after Nick has disappeared, one of the characters asks where he is, cut to his plastic covered dead body being added to the others collected in the freezer.
- Asshole Victim: A couple of the men qualify. Nick acts like a jerk much of the time, and encourages his wife to sleep with other men if it brings a business advantage. He gets pissed off when he finds out Marie slept with George's butler for no other reason than she wanted to give him a thrill. He also acts surly much of the time.
- Also, George is a typical money-grubbing businessman who isn't afraid to slap his wife. When he "reconciles" with her later, it's implied he semi-coerces make up sex.
- Bath Suicide: George's wife, Jill, apparently kills herself in the bathtub. It's never made clear if she actually did, or if the murderer killed her and staged her death.
- Big Fancy House: George has a sweet mansion on his own private island.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Trudy. While she's having an affair with George's wife, she seems otherwise innocent, even ganged up on by George, Jack, and Nick for the formula after Prof. Farrell's apparent death. She still remains strong-willed, and has the makings of a final girl after the main party is down to her, Jack, and George. Then we discover that she was in cahoots with Jack the entire time, and killed Jack's wife for him. She also tries to murder Jack so she can collect the three million dollar cashier's checks AND keep the formula, but Jack manages to kill her with his own gun after she shoots him, and they both die.
- Blithe Spirit: The teenage Isabelle comes off as this.
- Bloodless Carnage: Jack ends up shooting George FOUR times in the chest, and there's not a single gunshot wound, odd considering most of the other deaths, while not seen, are at least bloody in the aftermath.
- Brutal Brawl: After the death of and Nick's wife Marie, Nick accuses George of murdering her, which escalates into a brutal brawl between the pair that sees lots of destroyed furnishings, leading to the surprise reveal of George's wife, Jill, apparently having committed suicide.
- Chekhov's Gun: Or in this case, BOAT. After the motor launch disappears, everyone on the island is stranded. George later locates it hidden under various flora, but when he goes to tell the remaining survivors, he runs smack dab into a murderer.
- Decoy Protagonist: Based on his billing, and the seeming importance of his character, Prof. Gerry/Fritz Farrell seems like he's the hero of the group. He stands up for Isabelle at one point, seems morally upright, declining multiple million dollar offers for his resin formula as he wants it to benefit everyone, not just the respective businessmen, and he's the first that is vocal about there being a murderer on the island and wanting to leave. Then, out of nowhere, he's shot by Isabelle at the halfway point of the film and his body disappears. He does pop up at the very end, however, and we find out he's not a nice guy.
- Didn't Want an Adventure: Prof. Farrell came to George Stark's island home to rest, and isn't interested at all in George, Nick, and Jack trying to outbid each other for Farrell's resin formula. He wants to stay even less after George's butler is murdered and Farrell realizes there's a killer among them.
- Dramatic Shattering: During the brawl between George and Nick, a piece of artwork filled with colorful glass balls gets knocked over and shattered. The camera follows the rolling balls down the spiral staircase to the big tub on the house's ground floor, where they spill into the water filled tub containing Jill's body, apparently dead from suicide.
- Dub Name Change: Professor Fritz Farrell is Gerry Farrell in the English dub.
- Also, George's butler is Charles in the American dub, and in the Italian cut, it's Jacques.
- Due to the Dead: As more and more people are murdered, the bodies are wrapped in plastic sheets and stored in George's freezer to prevent decomposition.
- Dwindling Party: As is natural in a murder mystery.
- Final Girl: Subverted. It seems Trudy is going to be this, until we discover she was part of his plan the whole time. The actual final girl is Isabelle, but she's not hardly involved at all in the main narrative of the film, only having limited interactions with the main party. She doesn't really join the main narrative until the very end, when she sneaks into George's house after Jack and Trudy have turned on each other and killed each other, and steals the cashier's checks as they lay dead in the freezer. She also attempts to steal the resin formula, but gets scared off when Jack pulls an Almost Dead Guy on her and grabs her hand before expiring completely. Further, Jack pays no attention to her despite killing virtually everyone else himself, and obviously he doesn't consider her important enough for it to be necessary for him to kill her with the rest.
- Foreshadowing: After Nick leaves, and Trudy, Jack, and George are left alone, they all drink a liquor concoction that Jack has brewed up and pass out, then disappear before George's yacht crew comes to pick them up, before returning once again. When Jack is revealed as the killer, in partnership with Trudy, it becomes clear that Jack drugged George's drink so they could hide him while he was unconscious, clean-up and hide so the crew missed them, before returning George and the mess to the living room. It's also during that time that Jack kills Nick.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Nearly every murder in the film takes place off-screen.
- Hope Spot: When it's down to three survivors, George ends up finding the missing launch, and dashes back to tell the other two he's found a way to get everyone off the island. He runs into the house, where one of the murderers is waiting for him with a gun. After a brief conversation, George is shot to death for knowing too much.
- Hypocrite: As it turns out, Prof. Farrell. The resin formula he claims to want to share with the world and not sell to the greedy businessmen is a formula he actually stole from his partner, and he murdered said partner in order to steal the formula.
- I'm a Man; I Can't Help It: Nick does just about everything but hump Trudy Farrell's leg, basically saying it's in his nature.
- Irony: Isabelle, the daughter of George's island caretaker, who is on the peripheral of the events of the film, ends up as the last one standing and pockets all three of the checks, made out to cash, that George, Jack, and Nick were trying to use to buy Prof. Farrell's formula. None of the three men accomplish their objective, and Jack, who was intending to murder everyone in partnership for the formula with Trudy, gets killed by her, making all his actions for nothing. The movie ends with Isabelle in expensive clothes being chauffeured in a Rolls Royce.
- Jerkass: Both Nick and George have elements of this. Nick prostitutes his wife out for business endeavors, and is actually indignant when she sleeps with George's butler, as it provides him no business benefit for her to do so. He also forces Farrell to take a million dollar cashier's check, and when Farrell returns it to Marie, Nick claims he never got it and claims it solidifies the sale of the resin formula to him. Also, George isn't very nice to his own wife, slapping her when she understandably starts freaking out over murders taking place. Also, George and Nick aren't above backstabbing each other to try and get Farrell's formula for themselves.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Prof. Farrell. Left on death row for murdering his partner in creating the resin formula, Isabelle meets him and reveals that she can't cash the last million dollar check that Nick brought because it has a pin number she doesn't know. Farrell does know it, and gives it to her so she can collect the last million, as he'll never be able to spend it in his present circumstances.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Trudy and Jill, who are having a secret affair, and who both take great care in their makeup.
- Master Actor: Jack. He arranges for his wife to be murdered while he's present to give himself an alibi and does a damn fine job of selling his grief about it. The actor also does a good job of flying under the radar, when his character is actually the film's multiple murderer.
- Mind Screw: After the party has been reduced to four people, And Nick has left in a huff, Jack, Trudy, and George pass out in George's messy living room after drinking. The screen dissolves, and then the living room is entirely clean, the trio are missing, and seemingly in an alternate universe, the crew of George's main yacht show up to pick everyone up, think everyone is gone, and then leave. The screen dissolves again, and Jack, Trudy, and George are back in their original positions in the messy living room. Apparently, this was not a freak event. Jack and Trudy, in cahoots, moved the passed-out George, cleaned everything up, Jack killed Nick, and then the pair of them hid until the outside crew left, then reset everything. How they managed to pull it off so effectively is left to the viewer's imagination. Trudy even has the nerve to play back George's tape recorder, which had been running since she recorded her prior message, and they hear the crew come in, speak, and leave, and Jack and Trudy play confused as to how the crew managed to miss them. When Jack and Trudy are revealed as in cahoots, it makes slightly more sense since it would have taken both of them to clean up and reset everything.
- Ms. Fanservice: Marie, played by Edwige Fenech, spends most of her scenes in lingerie or dancing in revealing clothing. Subverted somewhat, as Mario Bava didn't include any actual nudity, although it's teased heavily.
- Oh, Crap!: George running into the house after finding the motor launch to find himself instantly at gunpoint by Jack.
- Plot Twist: At the film's halfway point, Prof. Farrell, who seems to be the film's lead, is surprisingly shot by Isabelle and becomes the apparent second victim. At the end, we discover that Isabelle faked his death by shooting him with a bullet laced with sodium pentothal. She then put him in a small boat and drifted him away from the island. At the end, we discover he's on death row, largely because Isabelle's plan was successful. When he was found, because of the effects of the sodium pentothal bullet, Farrell confessed to killing his scientific partner and stealing the formula. Despite the situation, and his liking of Isabelle, he gives her the pin number for Nick's million dollar cashier's check so she can cash it.
- Psycho Lesbian: Trudy Farrell. She's having an affair with George's wife, Jill, helps Jack set up an alibi by shooting Jack's wife Peggy, and when they're doing an exchange of money for the formula, she shoots Jack in the face.
- Recycled Premise: One of the issues that Mario Bava had with the script was that it was mainly a rehash of And Then There Were None with different characters, an updated and slightly different setting, and no credit for Christie.
- Red Herring: As more and more people die, and as George Stark continues to survive, it gets more and more likely that he's the culprit, as others believe. But when he discovers the motorboat, which is Jack and Trudy's escape vessel from the island, Jack reveals as he holds George at gunpoint that he was purposely leaving George alive to take the fall for the murders. However, now that George knows about the boat, Jack can't risk him convincing the authorities that Jack and Trudy are the actual killers, so he shoots George to death.
- The Reveal: Jack, who it seems couldn't be the killer, due to him being in the room when his wife Peggy was killed, actually IS the killer. He killed everyone BUT Peggy, and gloats that he was going to set up George to take the fall before George discovered too much and Jack kills him.
- Also, Trudy Farrell, who in spite of having a secret affair with George's wife Jill, seemed the most moral of the women save for Peggy, and seemingly being set-up as the film's final girl, was actually in cahoots with Jack, and she's the one that shot Peggy from afar to give Jack a stronger alibi against being the killer.
- Prof. Farrell, who we thought was the film's second victim, is revealed to be alive and on death row at the end. Isabelle took a liking to him. She shot him with a bullet laced with sodium pentothal, and put him in a small boat and drifted him away from the island to keep him safe from the murderer. The effects of the bullet caused him to confess to murdering his scientific partner and stealing the formula, and he's convicted and about to be executed for the crime.
- And, Isabelle, who was in the background for most of the film, ended up collecting all three cashier's checks that George, Jack, and Nick intended to pay Farrell with for the resin formula, cashing them, and is now living a life of luxury off of George's island.
- Saying Too Much: Played with. Initially, Jack and Trudy were planning to kill everyone but George, then leave him behind to take the rap for all the murders by simply disappearing on the hidden motor launch. However, when George accidentally finds it, Jack feels that George will be able to possibly convince the authorities that he's not the killer, and that Jack and Trudy killed everyone and escaped, so he kills George to make sure George can't talk.
- Screw the War, We're Partying: Really, this goes on for a lot of the film. Most of the early deaths are just written off as bumps in the road to the guest's constant booze-filled bash. No one seems very concerned at all until after the third or fourth death. Only Prof. Farrell raises any issue at all in the early goings.
- The Sociopath: In this case, Jack. He arranges for his innocent wife to be killed in his presence merely to take off some of the potential suspicion of him being the killer, and he kills everyone else on his quest to get ahold of Prof. Farrell's resin formula. Trudy Farrell has hints of it as well. She's Peggy's killer, and doesn't seem perturbed about Jack's actions or her own, as long as she gets millions.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: Plentiful. There are some ominous music cues befitting a "And Then There Were None" style murder mystery, but much of the score is lighthearted and jazzy. The musical cue when they put bodies in the freezer is cool, but sounds like a bizarre calliope.
- Ten Little Murder Victims: One-by-one the members of the party begin to drop.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Jack shoots George four times in the chest, two times before George falls down, and then twice more as he's laying on the floor.
- Too Dumb to Live: After the survivors have dwindled to four, and have decided their best chance for survival is to stay together in one room, Nick gets pissed when Trudy suggests he's the killer into George's tape recorder, and angrily storms out of the room. One of the other characters even lampshades his actions by saying he's being stupid. Predictably, the next day, the three who remained are still alive, and Nick has been killed off-screen.
- Also, the entire party, in general. After the first murder, Prof. Farrell is the only one who raises much of an issue, and relents when it seems they can't escape. Most of the guests seem to view the continued murders as a distraction from their boozy partying, and from George, Jack, and Nick trying to buy-off Farrell for his formula.
- Visual Title Drop: The bodies collecting in George's freezer are the "five dolls" of the title. The survivors end up putting in a total of five before it's down to three of them.
