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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - September 8th

"A BAY OF BLOOD" Italian release in 1971

Legendary film director Mario Bava, the godfather of the Italian "giallo" horror genre, re-teams with actress Laura Betti for A Bay of Blood! The story follows the simultaneous murderous activities of several different characters as they each attempt to remove any human obstacles that stand in the way of an inheritance of a bay side estate - with an ending you will not see coming!

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At a remote bayside mansion, wheelchair-bound Countess Federica (Isa Miranda) is attacked and viciously strangled to death. Her murderer, the Countess's husband, Filippo Donati (Giovanni Nuvoletti), is himself brutally stabbed to death by an unknown assailant a few moments later, and his body is dumped in the bay. Scheming real estate agents Frank Ventura (Chris Avram) and his lover, Laura (Anna Maria Rosati), who had earlier hatched a scheme with Donati to murder the Countess for the land, arrive later - unaware that Donati has already been murdered - to get his signature on the sale (planning to kill him themselves later). Their scheme is dealt a potentially ruinous blow when Countess Federica's estranged daughter, Renata (Claudine Auger), unexpectedly appears, determined to ensure that her mother's estate comes into her possession. Accompanied by her husband, Albert (Luigi Pistilli), Renata visits the house of Paolo Fassati (Leopoldo Trieste), an entomologist who lives on the grounds of Donati's estate with his wife, Anna (Laura Betti), who tells them that Donati was responsible for the Countess's death, and that the Countess's illegitimate son, Simon (Claudio Volonté) probably murdered Donati and will most likely end up inheriting the property. Renata, who had no idea she had a half-brother, immediately begins making plans with her husband to murder Simon, who at the same time is orchestrating Renata's death in cohorts with Ventura. As Renta, Albert, Simon, Ventura, Paolo, Anna, and Laura (as well as four very unlucky teens) arrive at the mansion, just which one will survive the long bloody night and live to inherit the bay?

TRIVIA:   Mario Bava's personal favorite of all the films he made.

Top:   The Countess's estranged daughter and heir, Renata (Claudine Auger);

Above:   An unknown killer watches the shadows!

A Bay of Blood was a simple story idea concocted by director Mario Bava and actress Laura Betti as a way to allow them to work together again, as the two had got along so well on Bava's Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1969) and Blood Brides (1970). Numerous other writers had a hand in devising the final screenplay, including producer Giuseppe Zaccariello who provided the financial backing to the film after being convinced the murder-filled story (originally titled Odore di Carne - Stench of Flesh) had enough promise. Bava showed great enthusiasm for the film, but unfortunately the movie's budget was extremely low, and it had to be shot very quickly and cheaply, the location shooting being mostly completed at Zaccariello's Sabaudia beach house and its outlying property. Unfortunately the property had very few trees, forcing Bava to resort to various camera tricks to convince the audience that an entire forest existed. Acting as his own cinematographer (due to the severe budgetary restrictions) Bava found a florist who provided him with a variety of branches with some foliage still on them and dangled them in front of the camera! While the end result is certainly effective in creating the illusion, Laura Betti later remembered that, "We had to act the scenes strictly in front of those [stupid] branches — if we moved even an inch either way, the 'woods' would disappear!". The cast and crew would often laugh hysterically watching Bava "dancing" with his "precious branches". Creating the "forest" was not the only "no-budget" trick Bava employed, he also utilized a simple child's wagon for the film's many tracking shots as well!

To ensure the utmost realism in depicting the thirteen different murders in the film, Bava hired Carlo Rambaldi to provide the gruesomely effective special make-up effects. So impressive was Rambaldi's work, jurors awared him the Best Make-Up and Special Effects Award at the Avoriaz Film Festival and earned the film a "Special Mention" Award at the prestigious Sitges Festival, both in 1971. It was also at the same Avoriaz Film Festival, where the movie had its world premiere, that Christopher Lee attended a screening of the film, having expressed an interest in seeing the latest effort from the director of The Whip and the Body, which Lee had starred in eight years before. When Lee first saw the movie he was reportedly so disgusted at the level of violence he left the theater in protest.

[discussing Paolo's capturing and studying insects]
Simon: Sure, but the squirming little creatures still end up under your microscope. Yeah, he's dead alright but at least I eat my squid. But I don't kill as a hobby like you do.
Paolo: Good Lord, Simon; you make me feel like a murderer.
Simon: I'm not saying that, Mr. Fossati; but if you kill for killing's sake - you become a monster.
Paolo: But, man isn't an insect, my dear Simon. We have centuries of civilization behind us, you know.
Simon: No, I don't know. I wasn't there.

Top:   Anna's (Laura Betti) psychic abilities won't be enough to save her;

Above:   Entomologist Paolo (Leopoldo Trieste) has an uneasy encounter with Simon (Claudio Volonté)

To this day, A Bay of Blood remains Bava’s most controversial film and arguably started the "slasher" craze, which is still popular today, and with many fans still counting Mario Bava as the grandfather of the modern slasher film. Like many early Italian films, A Bay of Blood had numerous titles during production and for the release; among them The Stench of Flesh, Thus Do We Live To Be Evil, That Will Teach Them To Be Bad, Chain Reaction, The Ecology of Crime, Before the Fact, and Bava's own personal suggestion, Twitch of the Death Nerve (which was used for the US release). The reasoning behind the multiple titles was simple, when the film was performing poorly at the box office under one title, it was pulled from theaters and re-released under a different one! One of the re-release titles for this film was The Last House on the Left Part II (or New House on the Left), even though this film has nothing to do with Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left (1972), in fact it was made a year earlier than Last House.

To be expected, A Bay of Blood received very mixed reviews from the critics. Jeffrey Frentzen, reviewing the film for Cinefantastique, called Twitch of the Death Nerve (as it was then known), "the director's most complete failure to date. If you were appalled by the gore and slaughter in Blood and Black Lace, this latest film contains twice the murders, each one accomplished with an obnoxious detail... Red herrings are ever-present, and serve as the only interest keeping the plot in motion, but nothing really redeems the dumb storyline." Joe Dante (the future director of Piranha, The Howling and Gremlins), on the other hand, was enthusiastic about the film, writing in The Film Bulletin (later reprinted in Video Watchdog) that it "features enough violence and gore to satisfy the most rabid mayhem fans and benefits from the inimitably stylish direction of horror specialist Mario Bava. Assembled with a striking visual assurance that never ceases to amuse, this is typical Bava material, simply one ghastly murder after another - 13 in all - surrounded by what must be one of the most preposterous and confusing plots ever put on film."

GOOF:   The Count is stabbed repeatedly in his back and then he falls on his back and dies. When the killer is dragging him away, there should have been a blood trail leading from The Countess to the door.

Top and Above:   As the long and bloody night goes on, the bodies start to stack up!

Also among the film's fans was another legendary horror filmmaker Dario Argento. Argento loved the film so much, he had a friend (who was a projectionist) steal him a print of the film during its first run in Italy. The theater ended up having to show Blood Brides to replace the stolen print for the remainder of the film's week and a half run in the cinema (reportedly, Argento still possesses the print to this day). The film is probably the most influential of Bava's career, as it had a huge and profound impact on the slasher film genre; Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) takes two murders from this film, almost shot for shot -  one character is slammed in the face with a panga machete (even though Bava's film had a billhook and not a machete), and two teenage lovers are interrupted when a spear impales both of them. Writing in 2000, Tim Lucas wrote that Bava's film is "the acknowledged smoking gun behind the 'body count' movie phenomenon of the 1980s, which continues to dominate the horror genre two decades later with such films as Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer and their respective sequels." In 2005, the magazine Total Film counted A Bay of Blood among the 50 Greatest Horror Films of All-Time, and in 2006, Gary Johnson wrote, "Twitch of the Death Nerve is one of the most imitated movies of the past 30 years. It helped kick start the slasher genre... [Bava’s] influence still resonates today (although somewhat dully) in movies such as I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream and Urban Legend".

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   80%  

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