Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970) on Netflix
NR19701h 22mHorrorMysteryThriller
George Stark invites the chemist Gerry Farrell to his island retreat, where Stark and his partners want Farrell's industrial resin formula. Farrell refuses, and a body is found on the beach.
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- IMDb5.7/103,980 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
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Plot summary
A group of guests gathers at the island retreat of the industrialist George Stark. One of them is the chemist Gerry Farrell, who invented a formula for an industrial resin and destroyed the original documents. Stark, his partner Nick and their colleague Jack each offer Farrell a million dollars from their Swiss bank accounts; he turns them down. Trudy, Farrell's wife, keeps a secret affair with Stark's wife Jill. With the motor launch sent away and the radio out of order, there is no way to reach the mainland. A body is found on the beach, and the guests understand that one of them is killing the others.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Five Dolls for an August Moon lost its director days before filming, so producers Mario and Pietro Bregni appealed to Mario Bava; biographer Tim Lucas thinks the original director was most likely Guido Malatesta. Bava considered the script a poor ripoff of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None and agreed only if paid up front.
SPOILER
Bava kept his usual camera crew, headed by Antonio Rinaldi, and made two changes to Mario di Nardo's script: the corpses go in polythene bags inside a walk-in freezer instead of underground graves with cross-shaped headstones, and he added the twist ending with Farrell and Isabel.- Producers bought Mario di Nardo's script for Five Dolls for an August Moon intending it as a vehicle for actress Edwige Fenech, but early publicity instead spotlighted Princess Ira von Fürstenberg, who was one of the film's principal investors.
- Mario Bava painted the matte painting used for the exterior of the Stark house himself, while the interior was a real beach house on the Torre Astura coastline, near the beach where many scenes were filmed.
- Five Dolls for an August Moon was made on such a low budget that most of the cast had to wear their own clothes.
- It was the only film in Mario Bava's career where he had to do the editing entirely by himself.
