6.2 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Five Dolls for an August Moon is Mario Bava's deliriously mad spin on an Agatha Christie-style whodunit. A space-age island retreat is visited by a group of friends and business associates—one of whom is a scientist who has invented a revolutionary chemical process. Soon the vacationers start dying, and the survivors begin to wonder who has the most to gain from these murders most foul.
Starring: William Berger, Ira von Fürstenberg, Maurice Poli, Edwige Fenech, Howard RossForeign | 100% |
Mystery | 27% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.83:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: LPCM Mono (48kHz, 16-bit)
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Cinematographer-turned-director Mario Bava is one of the horror genre's great transitional figures, and a particular influence on the development of the slasher. His first feature, 1960's Black Sunday, is a musty gothic chiller in the old-school Hammer Horror mold—foggy graveyards, crumbling castles, supernatural spooks—but by '63 and '64, with The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Blood and Black Lace, he near- singlehandedly set the template for a modern form of distinctly Italian horror: giallo. Characterized by lurid colors, psycho-sexual stories, and black-gloved killers wielding phallic weapons, giallo was horror gone Freudian, and Bava was its key practitioner, inspiring a whole cadre of younger filmmakers like Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, and Umberto Lenzi. In turn, their collective work inspired American filmmakers of the late '70s and early '80s—John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Black Christmas' Bob Clark—who, in what came to be called the slasher, further sexualized the form and doubled down on the limb-hacking, blood-spurting violence. Bava, then, is the progenitor of much of what horror hounds love about Friday the 13th and Halloween; some of his later films read like how-to instruction manuals for the future slasher sub-genre. This week, Kino-Lorber is releasing two of those films, 1970's Five Dolls for an August Moon and 1971's A Bay of Blood, both of which belong in any well- curated horror movie collection.
1 of 5 Dolls
Five Dolls for an August Moon looks spectacular on Blu-ray. Kino-Lorber has become known for their "as-is" transfers—performing minor color corrections but no substantial digital cleanup—so their releases often only look as good as the source materials they can obtain. In this case, Five Dolls's 35mm print—newly transferred into a 1080p/AVC-encoded presentation—is in excellent shape. There are a few fleeting age/budget-related issues—white specks, a hair or two sticking into the frame, the rare vertical scratch—but nothing pervasive or even remotely distracting. For the most part, the print is very clean, maybe even surprisingly so. Just as importantly, the print's filmic integrity is intact—grain is visible, edge enhancement or other forms of filtering are absent, and there are no harsh compression artifacts or encode problems. Clarity is greatly improved from previous standard definition editions, so much so that—as Tim Lucas points out in his commentary track—you can even make out the name on the check that Jack hands the professor at one point, a name that belongs to the stills photographer who documented the shoot. As you can imagine, then, fine detail is highly visible, and not only in closeups. Color is perfectly balanced too, punchy without looking oversaturated, with consistent black levels and highlights that never blow out. The high marks are well-deserved here.
Kino presents the film's English version in an uncompressed Linear PCM 2.0 mono track that does everything it needs to do. Sure, there are a few age- related concerns here—some light hissing, a few pops and crackles—but nothing persistent, harsh, or in any way distracting. The audio highlight is indisputably the groovy, organ/guitar score from composer Piero Umiliani. (The man behind the wicked earworm that is "Mah Nà Mah Nà," the song that gained international attention when it was featured on Sesame Street and The Muppet Show.) The music has a decent sense of clarity and projection, and the dubbed English dialogue is always easy to understand.
Five Dolls for an August Moon isn't often the first Mario Bava film fans reach for when they want a seamy, blood-soaked thriller—it's conspicuously nonviolent, with none of the Grand Guignol panache of the following year's Bay of Blood—but it's certainly worth watching for its stylishness and dreamlike mood. Bava himself was extremely critical of the movie, but while it's no masterpiece, it is odd and entertaining, and in its one-murder-after-another plotting, it played a definite role in the evolution of the slasher genre. Kino-Lorber's Blu-ray release features a stunning high definition transfer, lossless audio, and a must-listen commentary track from Video Watchdog editor Tim Lucas, so if you're a fan of gialli or low-budget '60s/'70s Italian moviemaking in general, it's an easy recommendation.
Featuring The Girl Who Knew Too Much / La ragazza che sapeva troppo
1963
Reazione a catena
1971
I vampiri
1957
Sei donne per l'assassino
1964
Special Edition | La morte accarezza a mezzanotte
1972
Standard Edition
1982
Perché quelle strane gocce di sangue sul corpo di Jennifer?
1972
L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo
1970
Operazione paura
1966
Sette orchidee macchiate di rosso
1972
Cosa avete fatto a Solange?
1972
4 mosche di velluto grigio
1971
Special Edition | La morte cammina con i tacchi alti
1971
Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga
1972
2018
1971
1980
Il coltello di ghiaccio
1972
Profondo rosso
1975
Il tuo vizio è una stanza chiusa e solo io ne ho la chiave
1972