L'île de l'épouvante

"Maestro of the Macabre" Mario Bava directs this island-set murder mystery, which owes more than a little to Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians. Although it has some of the hallmarks of giallo – a bevy of vixens luxuriating upon middle-aged sleazebags, ropey dubbing, and murder wounds that bleed peri-peri sauce – it isn't exactly a slasher. It's brief and bloody but not particularly brutal.

The opening starts like a fairy tale – albeit a very 1970s Italian one. Isabel (Justine Gall) prances through the woods like Carroll's Alice and comes to a house. Through the window she watches a forbidden party taking place. It appears that she witnesses a ritual murder – except it turns out to be a game.

But then a real corpse is found and the real game begins. On a remote island populated by self-interested, alcoholic, amoral millionaires ("Filthy swine from the same mould!"), everyone is a suspect.

The chief one initially is George (Teodoro Corra). He's brought a bunch of smug gits to the house to hammer out a business deal. They're all vying to purchase a secret scientific formula from Professor Fritz (William Berger). So when the professor cops it, the accusations start to fly and tensions start to fray. The bodies pile up quicker than you can say "Dario Argento".

Five Dolls wasn't a big release at the time and it's not a classic movie by any means (Bava himself disregarded it), but it's solid and reasonably tense. Naturally, once the murders begin everyone behaves like cogs in a movie narrative machine rather than a convincing human being, but that's par for the course. This is virtually a tech demo for Bava's craft – he's the Hitchcock of Italian cinema, as his choices of shots, focus, and fluid camera shifts show. And if nothing else you have a fantastic, unique jazzy score from Piero Umiliani, who even gives the bodies in the freezer their own jaunty piano theme.

Murder mystery fans will be frustrated by the film's pace, which sometimes gives us literally seconds between homicides. We're furnished with few clues to play with and the final twist is a dirty cheat. But let's not pretend there's no pleasure in watching these sharks eat each other; we're here to find out which of them makes it out alive, period.

Five Dolls is drenched in atmosphere and the production design gives a wonderful sense of the otherworldly – we could be on an alien planet. Silly and sexy, it's not an essential movie, but if you're interested in a macabre and hallucinatory curio from one of horror's most influential artists, look no further.

Art direction and cinematography are as distinctive as any of Bava's other giallo films of the period, but the garbled script to what is essentially little more than a standard body-count movie really lets this one down. After a plodding and talky start, the film disintegrates into a total mess. Bava pulls off the odd visual flourish, but such scenes never gel together. Still, the mesmeric use of zooms, focus pulls, and tracking shots and the stylish use of colour ensures that, from an entirely aesthetic perspective, this film never becomes boring, and as an auteur piece, is well worth a watch. Now, if only I could work out what the hell happened in it...

One of the few films directed by Italian horror maestro Mario Bava that I hadn't seen, as well as a film starring my latest object of cinematic lust, Edwige Fenech, 1970's "Five Dolls for an August Moon" was one that I eagerly popped into my DVD player at home. And it turns out that it was well worth the wait. In this very interesting giallo, a group of businessmen convenes, with their wives, at an ultramodern beach house on what looks to be a lonely Mediterranean island, with the purpose of convincing a scientist to sell them the formula for his new industrial resin. Before long, though, "Ten Little Indians" style, the group's members start to be killed off one by one, and, in a nice, eerie touch, are kept hanging in plastic wrap in the house's meat locker. The plot here is complex enough without being ultimately impossible to understand or swallow, although one or two points do not withstand logical consideration after the movie is done. Still, Bava's direction is typically stylish, with some memorable set pieces (dig those bouncing marbles!); a chic, jazzy score by Piero Umiliani aids immeasurably in moving things along (what a terrific soundtrack CD this film could have!); and the picture, though not as graphically violent as, say, Bava's "Twitch of the Death Nerve" (1971), still provides some grisly moments. And Edwige? Well, whether doing a frenzied dance number in gold lame bell-bottoms and matching brassiere or strutting around in various states of undress, this luscious Eurobabe does not disappoint. She is easily the hottest of the "five dolls" here; whotta knockout! My thanks to Image Entertainment for this great-looking DVD of a film never released theatrically here in the U.S.

An industrialist invites some of his friends to his island retreat in order to persuade a chemist (William Berger better known as Django}to sell them his new secret formula for an industrial resin. Of course he doesn't want to sell at any price and this leads to resentment and veiled threats which leads to all on the island being killed off one by one, in this "Ten little Indians" type thriller and of course there is a storm brewing and the phones are down, I think you get the picture….Now how do I review a Bava film without mentioning "Stylish" or "Superb use of Colour"…. I don't think I can really,but I will try…..This films theme is reminiscent of Bava's more famous work Bay of Blood, with its high body count….it has a funky little score too, very 60's…..the film at times tends towards black comedy with the body bags swinging in the freezer, I have to say it made me laugh and as with all Bava films the women are quite nice to look at…in particular Edwige Fenech a lady I have heard a lot about and I can see why….all in all an enjoyable little thriller, not Bava's best work but certainly worth a look