William Berger, Ira von Fürstenberg, Edwige Fenech

A small group of people come to an island to relax but soon find themselves trapped on the island with a murderer in their midst.

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49% liked it

1,718 ratings

Unrated, 78 min.

Directed by: Mario Bava

Release Date: February 14, 1970

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DVD Release Date: May 15, 2001

Stats: 54 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (54)


  • December 1, 2007
    About 40 minutes into 5 Dolls For an August Moon, one of the characters says something about everyone waiting for something to happen and it never does. That pretty much sums up this movie. It's got none of the gore or sleaze that later Bava movies are known for, but at the same ...( read more)time it's got none of the style of his earlier works either. And that twist at the end isn't even really worth it, but the goofy score and the saucy Italian women save this one from being a total waste.
  • December 1, 2006
    Interesting but not totally successful Bava picture. The Maestro creates a strange vibe by not actually showing any of the murders onscreen but the plot is quite weak. Edwige Fenech is, as always, really, really good.
  • January 18, 2009
    Stylish, but incomprehensible.
  • November 30, 2008
    While I love Bava as much as the next dude, this movie surprised me a bit. It DID entertain me, but not in the way I was expecting. I got more out of the groovy mod aspects of the film than the actual giallo mystery, which I never thought I'd say in a million years.

    It just felt...( read more) slow and diluted to me and I didn't really get hooked into any of the characters, like I normally would in this type of film.

    However, I will say that it was still more entertaining than much of what gets put out in Hollywood today.
  • November 2, 2008
    Pretty dull for a Bava flick.
  • July 26, 2008
    God, these movies just get worse and worse.

    I went from thinking that Bava was one of the most talented directors ever to being a hack from Italy. Here's my major problem with his later films: He made such great movies early on in his career. I thought that the man was a ge...( read more)nius. But by this period, we just start seeing these overly convoluted movies that really don't represent the genre he's good at creating.

    This is a giallo mod movie. I don't know if that can even exist, but it does. Now, there's always an issue with mod movies in the sense that they totally depend on the atmosphere of the mod scene to carry the movie, regardless of the content. This movie is not totally devoid of content, but there are definitely gaps in the logic that this movie tries to present itself as. Like I mentioned, Bava uses very convoluted plots and this movie is no exception to the rule. I feel like he understands everything in the story, so he avoids telling the audience anything that would give them too much insight into the mystery. Perhaps he is so desperate for making sure that the end stays secret that he just leaves huge plot points out of the movie. I mean, there are characters that you have no idea who they are and barely reference. I mean, they're on an island! There's a killer! You'd think that anyone who'd be on that island would be suspect and discussed to no end. But apparently, that means that the story is simply going to go the way Bava wanted and that's the way it is going to be. Fie! Fie on this film!

    The only real pull that this movie has is that it is pretty fun to see how people are going to get murdered. Really, that's not that much of a draw because everyone gets murdered on a variation of knife stab. Sure, there's one sniper shot and the body is dragged away. (Why? Who knows? Maybe to distract you from the fact of who the real killer is. Too bad you can't solve it because, as I mentioned time-and-time again, there's just not enough info to make heads or tails of this movie.) I do like Bava significantly better when there is a body count. What this movie really reminds me is Bay of Blood (or for you people with the older print of the movie: Twitch of the Death Nerve.) But Bay of Blood has the cryptic storytelling with an eventual payoff and huge amount of gore. This movie (in comparison) is extremely tame with the gore. Really, the goriest scene is not even a real death. More often than not, you'll find bodies, but not actually see where things went haywire.

    This really is a mess of a movie. Somewhere in here, there's a halfway decent film just begging to be recut and partially reshot. I'm not saying that this movie is anywhere near the mess that Roy Colt and Winchester Jack is, but there needs to be some massive restructuring for this movie to be considered good.
  • January 5, 2008
    Not Bava's best work by a long shot, this loose adaptation of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians is more of an exercise in style than anything. Pretty pictures, but the plot does meander in spite of a fairly short running time.

    Rental at best.
  • November 2, 2007
    Classified as a classic = Interested.
  • July 19, 2007
    All CLASSICS are GOOD

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