When people throw around well deserving names like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci when describing the pinnacles of Italian horror, another name that isn’t hurled into the ring not nearly enough is that of Mario Bava, an auteur whose massively atmospheric works didn’t only change the face of filmmaking in his native land – it changed the very face of horror itself.
After assaulting the 60’s with a syring of classics such as Black Sunday, Black Sabbath (different movies, believe it or not), Planet Of The Vampires and the seminal Giallo prototype Blood And Black Lace, Bava set his sights on the 70’s and promptly delivered A Bay Of Blood, a stunningly violent kill-a-thon that served as an inspiration for the slasher movie explosion of the 1980’s.
Grim, vicious, yet loaded with visual flair, horror cinema simply wouldn’t be the same without it – just ask Jason Voorhees. I mean… you know – if he could talk, that is…
The elderly and wheelchair bound Countess Federica Donati is musing about matter know only to her as she wheels herself around her bayside mansion when she is murdered by a mystery assailant who makes her fatal throttling look like a self inflicted hanging thanks to the inclusion of a handy, forged suicide note. So far, so whodunit, but when the murderer is instantly revealed to be her husband, Filipino, the story begins to subvert our expectations – and then flips it completely when he too is murdered, stabbed to death by another shadowy killer.
Thus a deadly chain of events are set in motion as various family members and oppotunists come out of the woodwork in order to claim the bay for various purposes.
First, there’s shifty real estate agent Frank Ventura and his lover, Laura have designs on the property and even conspired with Filipino to murder the countess, but has no idea that their inside man has been stabbed to death. On top of that, Filipino’s estranged daughter, Renata, her husband Albert and their two young children have arrived to claim what they believe is rightfully theirs, only to find out from local couple Paolo and Anna that the Countess had an illegitimate son, Simon, who, like the odd pair, live on the grounds.
If matters weren’t getting complicated enough, a quartet of groovy, tripped out kids who find everything “wild” and “far out” deside to crash the bay, ghoulishly drawn by the news of the death Countess and soon a gruesome battle of last man standing gets into full swing as everyone targets everyone else in order to make sure there are no other heirs or witnesses left to prevent full ownership of the titular bay.
Who will be left standing to claim their prize once the blood finally stops flowing in this stylishly brutal case of winner slays on?
Blessed with one of the coolest alternate titles I’ve ever heard of with Twitch Of The Death Nerve (isn’t that the greatest?), A Bay Of Blood is a fascinating carving of Italian cinema that’s the exact point where Giallo meets Slasher. Spear heading (in one case, literally) the creative killing spree that would soon power countless, American slashers throughout the 80’s but outfitting it with a typically complex, Giallo-style murder plot that would cause Jessica Fletcher to have a full-blown embolism, the importance of the movie’s legacy simply can’t be overstated.
In a cracking twist, all the major players in this tale of Agatha Christie meets Dario Argento have about as many morals as Homer Simpson has hairs and almost all of them thoroughly deserve the stabby, chokey or choppy deaths that await them around every corner. Behold the steely side-eye of Claudine Auger’s Renata as she hen-pecks her sweaty husband (Luigi Pistilli) into numerous homicides in order to secure what she believes is rightfully hers; or the easily manipulated Simon (Claudio Camaso) who’s resentment of the world at large has left him willing to slaughter pretty much anyone if asked; or even the perfect-haired machinations of smug real estate agent Frank and his Bambi-eyed lover.
Moving onto the subject of those well-deserved deaths, in true slasher fashion, Bava pumps each demise with a strong infusion of sexual energy that gives the violence an almost perverse, dream-like feeling. The voluptuous, life-loving and naturally scantily clad Brunhilda has her neck sliced by a bill hook and writhes rather suggestively on the ground as her life blood bids her adios and as if that wasn’t enough, Duke and Denise are impaled with a spear while engaged in intercourse in a two-for-one murder that was shamelessly ripped off by Friday The 13th Part 2. Further more, freed from the need to make any of this Jerry Springer-meets-Wes Craven actually make sense, Bava is emboldened to force-feed us a string of haunting images to compliment the on-screen slaying. Upon spotting something undulating under a sheet in a boat, Renata yanks it back to reveal her father’s corpse entwined with the slimy tendrils of an octopus; the Countess hangs, suspended at a strange angle as the only thing keeping her from face planting into the carpet is the noose that’s killing her. However, the most memorably jarring moment comes at the movie’s ending, which attempts to beat George Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead at it’s own game of downbeat nihilism and very nearly succeeds.
Those resistant to the trippy and often illogical pleasures of old school, Italian horror cinema will no doubt find A Bay Of Blood ugly and crass despite the heaps of style evident in the streamlined storytelling and the visual flair. But to those who know, that’s the very thing that makes this lurid example of slice & dice with a difference as it tackles its darkly humourous tone with an edge sharper than some of the implements these greedy bastards use on each other.
Twists, turns and very real sense that anything could happen, A Bay Of Blood takes the usual rules of a whodunit and rams an octopus in its face as it makes up some new rules as it goes along. The result is a bona fide horror classic that surprisingly remained under the radar despite inspiring some true genre heavyweights (seriously, Sean S. Cunningham and Steve Miner ripped it off mercilessly during their stay at Camp Crystal Lake) A Bay Of Blood may not be as visually gorgeous as Blood And Black Lace or as haunting as Black Sunday, A Bay Of Blood made its mark and made it deep.
Most definitely a bay to remember.
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