In short: Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970)

Original title: 5 bambole per la luna d’agost

Some rich businesspeople have invited a scientist (William Berger) for a bit of vacation time on an island. In truth, they don’t really want to give the guy a time of rest and relaxation, but wheedle, seduce, buy (the going price seems to be a million dollar – in 1970!) or threaten the formula for a revolutionary industrial resin out of him. Things start to go badly once the two only ways off the island disappear under strange circumstances, and someone starts murdering their way through the assembled horrible rich people. Well, at least they have a huge walk-in freezer and large see-through body bags for the body count.

When asked in interviews Mario Bava called the sardonic giallo Five Dolls for an August Moon one of his worst movies. It’s not much of a surprise he thought that way, really, for Bava was not at all involved in the pre-production of the film, only taking the directing reigns two days before shooting started, so he had little control over most of the cast and crew, and really couldn’t give the script by Mario di Nardo the rewrite he thought it needed. That sort of experience does tend to sour a director’s opinion of a movie.

However, as a viewer nearly fifty years later, I can’t say I agree with the great director at all here. Sure, the script is your typical giallo-riff of Christie’s “And Then There Were None” concerning a bunch of horrible rich people in an isolated location dying – or killing each other – in various ways, and the characters are so thin, they’re more like visual props, but Bava compensates – one might sometimes even say overcompensates – for all of this by turning this bog-standard plot about how horrible the upper classes are (you can certainly call it political subtext, if you’re of a mind) into a series of of shots and rhythmic sequences that seem to suggest meanings and double meanings not at all in the script, making internally very ugly yet outwardly beautiful people look even more beautiful in settings that present like something crazed interior decorators made up in their dreams, providing everything with a seductive sheen so intense it suggests the unhealthy and wrong with its sheer beauty. While he’s at it, Bava’s editing rhythms give what would be a slow and talky movie in the hand of most other directors a real kick in the behind, making the film feel fast and furious even when very little is actually happening.


Bava also has quite a bit of fun with how unlikeable all of his characters are, playfully suggesting some actual human feelings in some of the sociopaths only to gleefully reveal that whoever we thought might actually not deserve a horrible death is indeed even worse than the rest of the gang. Clearly, nobody innocent or even only half corrupt could make it onto this island. So it’s only consequent that the film treats their demise increasingly sardonically, its camera gliding through the freezer with a macabre chipperness.

The New Gladiators (1984)

The future looks dire. In the year of 2072, Earth is in a dubious state. The bloodthirsty masses are entertained and kept in their place by the beauty of violent TV shows. No other show can beat the ratings of market leader "Killbike".

This doesn't make the boss of the permanently second placed network WBS (hm, do they have a connection to Warner Brothers?) "your friend Sam" (Giovanni Di Benedetto), who only communicates with his subordinates via video screens, very happy at all.

Friendly Sam orders his second in command Cortez (Claudio Cassinelli) to develop a revolutionary new show that will take the future of television back into the glorious past of entertainment: Gladiatorial combat to the death between convicted killers.

This wonderful idea proceeds well, but the helpful artificial intelligence Junior (who has more to do with the running of the world than the humans have) discovers a fatal flaw in their concept - they need a real hero among their killers to effectively channel audience sympathies. There is no better candidate for this than the "Killbike" champion Drake (Jared Martin).

The trouble is, Drake isn't on death row. But Junior has a plan.

Some time later, Drake's beloved wife is brutally murdered, her killers are shot. Drake, who, as we will find out later, is innocent of the crime, but is sentenced to death anyway. He could of course become a gladiator instead.

When our hero arrives at the training facility for the show, he finds himself the favorite target of their SS-garbed warden Raven (Howard Ross), as well as of some of his own "colleagues" like Kirk (Al Cliver). Only Abdul (Fred Williamson!) is just too damn cool to waste his breathe with stuff like this.

But Drake's natural charisma and his love for nearly suicidal acts in favor of the other gladiators soon win them over.

Which is a good thing when you see that their "training" is a combination of mild brain-washing and physical torture.

Drake is even charming enough to bring technician Sarah (Eleonor Gold) over to his side. With a little research she finds proof for Drake's innocence. Even worse, she finds proof that Junior must have something to do with the frame-up, which should be impossible, since its programming doesn't contain a potential for EVIL.

Disturbed, she visits Junior's inventor Professor Towman (Cosimo Cinieri). Towman has retired from scientific work and now lives, playing the organ, in a ruined church full of computer equipment. He agrees to give her a (beautifully quaint looking) keycard for Junior's inner sanctum. Before he can also give her the codes to reprogram his wayward creation, he is murdered.

At least, Sarah is able to get a little more information from Junior now, none of it very pleasant, though.

Drake and his friends won't be too happy about the fact that the winner of their game is going to be disintegrated.

Fortunately, they all have seen Spartacus, well, make that The Arena and know just what to do.

Many critics will tell you that Lucio Fulci's Eighties work in other genres than horror was completely and absolutely terrible hackwork made by a man totally disinterested in the movies he made.

After watching The New Gladiators, I am not one of them. It's surprising what a neat little piece of Italian SF-action cheese this is. It has everything this kind of film needs: A minimalist score by Riz Ortolani, production design that mixes old Rome, neo-neo-fascism, Blade Runner and Eighties ideas of high tech into a memorable thing of shoddy beauty, unnecessary gore (including a little eye mutilation, of course - it is a Fulci film), Fred Williamson, Al Cliver and Jared Martin as a surprisingly solid, even somewhat sympathetic hero.

Fulci develops at least two quite rousing scenes of male bonding and (of course, again) just ignores the stupidity of parts of the film's backstory and worldbuilding with the correct amount of verve.

It's also amazingly fast-paced for a Fulci film, the action is not brilliantly staged, but competent enough. And I dare you not to laugh or cry out in happiness during the final gladiatorial fight on motorbikes (not that vehicles were in use during training - oh well) including the silliest helmets and ornaments imaginable. Also, two decapitations for the price of one.

What puts The New Gladiators close to my heart is something different, though: It's the honest, if misguided, interest Fulci shows in a thing he normally didn't care about at all: His characters as something like people. Mind you, I am not saying the film works as a character study. But it develops enough motivation for most actions in the film to keep the characters somewhat believable, the most un-Fulci-like thing I have ever seen.

 

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