A wealthy industrialist gathers a group of friends to his island retreat to persuade them to invest in his new project. But the drinks and decadence inevitably turn to murder as one by one the partygoers end up on the sharp end of a knife…but who’s on the other end?
Neatly linking many of the strands of our festival is this wonderfully dated and groovy addition by the master of giallo himself, Mario Bava, and starring the queen of giallo herself, Edwige Fenech, in an early role. Based on Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, Five Dolls for an August Moon relies on some wonderful visual flourishes to really bring it to life. The whole film exists to tease, to play and to have fun: the story is as nonsensical as its 1970s décor, and serves as a reason to propel the characters from one gaudy interior to another, while all the time romping around in the sheer murderous absurdity of it all.
