5 DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON (1970; d. Mario Bava, w. Mario di Nardo)

Womanchild Isabel skirts horizon (personality on two edges) of beach (three) on island (of consciousness w/i sea of unconsciousness; aka dream), removing shoes to wade (Nature Girl here to exact penalty from corrupt moderns; cf later Bava Ecologia del Delitto/Twitch o/t Death Nerve) along shore to stylish villa (civilization) perched on cliff (another edge), where she watches (cf other Bava witnesses in Black Sunday milkmaid, title Girl Who Knew Too Much, Hatchet f/t Honeymoon boy, 4 Times That Night doorman, et al: dir same, reporting on horrors of own country) dissolute hipsters (behind glass: Self-contained, ie facets of own personality; cf again Sunday maid’s window vantage on imminent nightmare) watching, to various degrees of entertainment (mise en abyme of audience viewing girl viewing partiers viewing spectacle, revelers à la actors in movie-w/i-movie [title, à la Bava’s 6 Donne per l'assassino aka 6 Women f/t Murderer: dir’s Hitchcockian attitude twd stars as disposable mannikins representing greater meanings – archetypes manifesting selves in dream; see also Lisa + the Devil’s similarly arrayed ciphers]), libidinous Marie (cf Sunday’s sim’y charged witch Asa, like her soon splayed on coffetable altar) dancing to bachelorpad record (à la Bavian disco infernos in 4 Times + Danger: Diabolik - the anarchic unconscious yielding up its contents) + being offered as sacrifice by host George (virginal offering à la 4 Times’ spectacle o/t torn dress), daggers passed out to others (instruments of own demise; declined by surprise survivor, modest Professor Farrell) aka ego undercover thru much of dream) as lights go out (consciousness absenting self so taboo dreamwork may occur) + come back on to reveal stabbed + strung-up Marie (as for-real, later: rehearsing loss of innocence), till her husband Nick exposes gag by dowsing ketchup-blood (issue from hymen-piercing ) w/ spritzer (purification, leaving voyeur Isabel free to experience own deflowering/corruption à la Girl Who).

Houseboy Jacques + Marie (affair Oedipal nature of all detective adventures, per Freud) neck on speedboat (he steers w/ feet: dir’s contemptuous attitude twd for-hire position, as shared by J; only vehicle off island [in absence of yacht George sent away: isolated mind in sleep] primacy of O complex) while party girls Trudy + Jill prepare banquet (filthy-richness à la similarly doomed/despised upperclass Sunday, I Vampiri, Whip + the Body, Kill Baby…Kill!, Diabolik + 6 Donne figures) + hostess Peggy paints (documentarian director [food à la still life], married-for-$ his similarly mercenary status), interrupted by Isabel (her parents due to pick her up following mother’s operation [Jacques, who refers to self as "second mother" to others, not-the-mother 1st victim in her Electric progress]; absence of model for romantic development – they to help her "cross over" divide – leaving her to replicate it/them in dream); meanwhile, 3 husbands grill Professor (consciousness; grouping masc duplicate of preceding scene) over secret formula (occult knowledge similar to Isa’s dilemma, lounging Jack [not-Jacques, agent of not-connection + transport]’s offer to throw in wife Jill [as later Nick/Marie] advancing oedi subtext) each wants to purchase (his disinterest in $ à la innocent girl) + over which his best friend died (Self in whose mind all takes place, serial murders disintegration of personality on descent into darkness) + which he burns after all leave (à la map, removing action farther from linear rational course).

Trudy + Jill take romantic walk (lesbianism diverging from now-immolated "formula") + observe Marie’s shipboard assignation w/ (dead) Jacques (loss of driving wheel), whose body found on beach next day (removed from boat: sex no longer transport from Self) by Peggy (overturned canvas à la burned paper, art putatively going out of film/narrative), Farrell next discovering telephone lines out (sensory disengagement from outside world) + boat gone (final physical remove), men all hoisting Jacques into freezer for storage (body in "suspension" during sleep); Nick offers Farrell $5m (à la title "dolls": people = currency/merchandise) + leaves him account # (22333: five numerals, individual numbers adding up to 5 – total corpses by end actually 7 [à la Deadly Sins]), he returning check (left on bed by bra à la hooker/john) while Isabel secretes stolen shawl (fetish à la veil aka hymen, hidden in yonic hole in rock), observed by Nick, who’s stopped from accosting her by Ferrell (came to tell him about check: Nick $ linking him to Isa), whom Isa likes for being different from others (like loner self) + whom she engages in philosophical chat (soul-mates) on impermanence of money (punctuated by waves erasing $ sign she draws in sand: cf similar beach-dwelling/etching seer in Knives o/t Avenger + Sunday’s riverside washergirl, objects of admiration in their films here turned on head by Bava’s changing script to make her "killer" – ostensibly turning on own anima).

Drunk Nick unsuccessfully comes on to Trudy ("best formula yr husband came up w/" while undoing blouse – she chemical product of Farrell/unconscious’s imagination) + Farrell goes to Nick’s room unsuccessfully to retrieve check (left on Marie’s bra, she Nick’s "formula" – one sexually independent, other sexual cog), then all waste time ("Everyone seems 2B waiting for something that’s not happening" - bi Trudy the Tiresian truth-teller: husband’s genuine elixir) till Isabel shoots Farrell (satisfying everyone's longing: 1 – next step in mind’s dissolution on reaching twd revelation of core i.d. thru elimination of false i.d.s [wife’s discovery of his body 1st time 1st name "Fritz" given], + 2 – revelation itself, "killer" very innocence which leaves self open to hurt, dir’s cynicism defense mechanism against others’ exploitative avarice) + drags body off (à la Girl Who, 6 Donne + other murderers: pathological repetition fear of simultaneously alluring death; he mind to Jacques’s body on dreamer’s sleep-descent) into sea (of unconscious; à la "$", he her object of value); next morning Jack finds plugged Peg (shot in head further violence to brain; film cheating bigtime, according to later reveal) + bolts, Isa watching (on swing à la Kill Baby + Shock’s angels of death, in-out zooming à la 4 Times’ visual copulation now she no longer "innocent") as others search grounds for him (she eyes of island itself, taking out Fritz upping stakes in lengths other characters aka civilized man will go for false/synthetic values) only to find him back in house (search metaphysical, for answer w/i selves) while Marie staked to tree (à la opening "ceremony": 1 – archetypal become real/tangible in dream, + 2 – sacrifice as tho to nature itself; cf tied-to-tree impaling of similar raven-haired erotic force of nature in opening Sunday).

Hubby Nick wallows by digging for formula (everyone’s fleeting grief shallowness of both affection + personæ, all just layers o/t onion) in George’s desk, inciting fight on discovery (men’s emotional + physical violence vs. wmn’s sympathy + support, epitomized in Trudy's sexual attentions), knocked-over marbles (crystalline wholeness connecting one scene/i.d. to next) cascading down to despondent Jill’s suicide tub (crystals "tumbling after," lost opportunity having her Geo’s wife insteada Jack’s), "I can’t go on" on mirror death of anima due to men’s avarice/animus; Trudy turns on reel2reel (so "at least my voice remains" – vestige of femininity; replacing Nick’s record [nature vs artifice], characters repeatedly revealing music score 2B diegetic serially rupturing wall btwn audience/movie: this is our story, too) + all but Nick pass out in living room on Jack’s mixed drinks (literal communal unconscious), during which time Coast Guard shows up (everyone's dream of rescue from certain death) to find no one there (fleeting return of consciousness naturally evacuating dream-theater; they also already "dead"/ghosts/imaginary) then leaving (as tape runs out [at nearly 60m mark]: life – evidence of Trudy’s existence), all waking again to find loner Nick 5th "doll" (they/consciousness losing ground + powerless against it; 56-yr-old filmmaker’s anxiety, also, over deteriorating body [title "moon" own late-summer flicker; cf Rabid Dogs’ anesthetized boy Agostino]).

George uncovers inoperable boat outside (failure to "launch" frustrating self-described "man of action") + returns to house to find gunman-saboteur Jack (not-Jacques, who cd + did commandeer skiff, Jack disabler who also spiked drinks), who confesses murders (but for Farrell: only subduing body, not rationality; Bava, in executing story, purporting to do same) before killing him (from POV of another Bava Witness [+ still another, outside: oversight/consciousness returning in spades) then finding Trudy on Nick+Maria’s revolving bed (also à la Diabolik; she o/t 360° sexuality), who leads him to formula – in ring in Maria-bra (yoni in cleavage: women’s reproductive/sexual power holding Secret) – he pays $1m for (as w/ Geo, sexual insinuation) + she deposits in clutch (à la vagina – black, + unregenerate) also housing pistol (her Pwr only yielding death, corrupted by $ fetish), each finishing off the other (mind collapsing on self in psychic deep-freeze), Isabel then nabbing both $ + microfilm (Bava’s secret formula movie itself, which he pockets despite many hands in stew; Jack’s death-grip gotcha! apparent inspiration for DePalma’s similar Carrie shock-climax [he, as Itln-American contemporaries Scorcese + Coppola, taking much inspiration f/t homeland Masters]).

Closes door on freezer ("5 dolls"/corpses inside bloody fetuses returned to frigid womb, plastic wrap [cf Planet o/t Vampires’ similar] cauls)/opens door on jail (dressed to kill: sexualized) to find surprise! Professor Farrell in cell (sim deep freeze, he/soul only viable "baby") as off-camera voice (Self invisible in dream) pronounces judgment on him (death by hanging à la "dolls’" similar dream-suspension) for murder of colleague (Self, in whose island-mind entire film took place; Kruger middle i.d. – discovered at center of narrative labyrinth – in imperfect progression from Fritz Farrell to George [missing H] to Isabel to Jacques/Jack/Jill to [missing L] Maria to Nick in reworking of Agatha Christie’s Alphabet Murders), having shot him w/ sodium pentothal bullets (job of [objective] psychic satellite to derive truth from red-herring dream narrative; used by her veterinarian dad, all characters venal animals) to save him from others (in love, he complementary genius-self accidentally separated from when he told cops all); needs Nick’s bank account number (formula to unlock final $1m payoff, she using one method no one else thot of, affection), then heads out to waiting car (cement steps cfg opening natural landscape, Nature Girl now gone irremediably modern), instructing driver to take her to Switzerland (neutral state she returned to on completion of psychic project, where final treasure lies) à la Kruger/Farrell’s departing soul.