FILM FRENZY

Brigitte Skay in A Bay of Blood (Photos: Severin)

A BAY OF BLOOD (1971)
★★★ (out of four)
DIRECTED BY Mario Bava
STARS Claudine Auger, Luigi Pistilli

If Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 Psycho is considered the grandfather of the slasher flick, then Mario Bava’s 1971 giallo A Bay of Blood can be designated as its demented uncle. Some would argue (and have) that this is actually the first true slasher flick, but at any rate, its influence on its American descendants is undeniable, starting with the fact that some of the slayings on view were blatantly copied in the Friday the 13th series.

A Bay of Blood, which was released over the years under a wide variety of monikers including Carnage, Ecology of a Crime, Blood Bath, The Last House on the Left Part II (even though it had nothing to do with the Wes Craven film and even preceded it by one year), Massacre at Blood Lake, and, most famously (and imaginatively), Twitch of the Death Nerve, was banned in a few countries (including England, where it made the notorious “video nasty” list), and it’s easy to see why — I expect many of the period’s moviegoers had never witnessed such splatter on screen before. It opens with the murder of an elderly countess (Isa Miranda) who owns some highly coveted bayside property. Her death sets in motion a convoluted plot in which various greedy relatives will do anything to take possession of said property — the killings start piling up, with innocent victims in the forms of nosy neighbors and horny kids looking for a place to score.

Rarely has a film been populated so exclusively with unlikable characters — every time you think a hero(ine) appears on the horizon, he or she turns out to be as awful as everyone else. Yet this is all part of Bava’s thesis on — to borrow a phrase from William Shakespeare … and Charles Bronson — the evil that men do. Bava examines his characters as if they were bugs pinned to cork boards — it’s certainly no coincidence that one of them, the quirky Paolo Fossati (Leopoldo Trieste), is an entomologist. There’s a famous scene that was later directly swiped by Friday the 13th Part 2, in which a spear is thrust through a copulating couple. In the Jason Voorhees franchise, the corresponding scene was merely a “cool kill” meant to goose the teen audience — in A Bay of Blood, it’s a heady and thematically relevant way to correspond with a sequence in which Paolo is shown spearing an insect for study.

A Bay of Blood certainly isn’t funny in any conventional sense, but it’s clear that Bava was tackling this material with tongue firmly planted in bloody cheek. This is most evident during the wicked ending, which feels random, registers as ridiculous, but also exudes a strangely cathartic pull.

I’ve generally never been a fan of modern (i.e. Halloween-and-beyond) slasher flicks, most of which are witless and wanting, but I’ve found much to appreciate in the earlier movies that in one way or another informed this most disreputable of genres: Psycho, Peeping Tom, Homicidal, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Black Christmas. This courtesy extends to several giallos, including this one. Like fellow giallo practitioner Dario Argento (and, soon thereafter, thriller maestro Brian De Palma), Bava’s technical prowess, assisted by dazzling camerawork and deft editing, is invigorating to not only watch but study. As for A Bay of Blood’s convincing gore effects, they come courtesy of Carlo Rambaldi, who would later win a trio of Oscars for his work on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Alien, and the ’77 King Kong. Heck, it was probably Rambaldi’s blood-soaked contributions to this picture that helped make poor little innocent E.T. so desperate to phone home.

A Bay of Blood has been released in a deluxe 5-disc limited edition, with both the Italian version and Italian re-release version housed on one 4K Ultra HD disc and one Blu-ray disc, the English version given equal treatment, and the soundtrack offered on CD. Extras include audio commentary by film critic Tim Lucas (Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark); a 2004 making-of featurette; interviews with assistant director Lamberto Bava (Mario’s son) and co-writer Dardano Sacchetti; a discussion of the film by director Joe Dante (Gremlins); a video essay; and storyboard comparisons. Also included is a replica of the barf bag handed out to patrons when the film played theaters under the title Carnage.

(To purchase this title on the Severin website, head here.)