Mario Bava's Bay of Blood (aka Twitch of the Death Nerve, aka A Zillion More Titles No Really Look Them Up, 1971) is widely considered to be the grandpappy of the slasher/body-count genre and it doesn't take a huge leap of logic to figure that hey, as such, the film is gonna have a bunch of gore and a bunch of violence and it's probably going to turn off a lot of people. In this regard, Bay of Blood certainly does not disappoint. And let me tell you, friends, that despite all the sights we've seen in the 40-plus years since this film hit, it's still as much of a shocker as it was then.
Some of this is due to the graphic nature of the kills- impalements, decapitations, face-hackings, throat-cuttings, and more are all on full display and, of course, many of these scenes would be aped later in "dead teenager" offerings such as Friday the 13th and its sequel.
More than the gore, though, it's the lingering shots Bava employs that serve to disturb the viewer as we're forced to watch that ol' death nerve a-twitchin'. All in all, the film is a downright nasty piece of work.
It's tough to put together the pieces of this murder mystery until roughly halfway through its running time. Up until then, you may find your patience wearing thin as you try to suss out who is who and who's killing who and who's zoomin' who as characters enter and exit the show with little explanation as to motivation and/or how they relate to one another. But when it all comes together, it comes together fast and Bay of Blood reveals itself to be not only a nasty piece of work, but also a delightfully gleeful black comedy in which terrible people do terrible things all in the name of greed. The familiar "inheritance plot" spirals out of control as people simply must be killed- you know how these things go- and eventually no one is left unscathed. When her husband questions if all the death is really necessary, cold-hearted snake Renata (Claudine Auger) explains, "Will you stop being such an old maid? You have to rely on instinct in certain situations." In other words, if someone gets between you and the money, it's murderin' time.
Though Bay of Blood may not rank among Bava's best work, it's still far better (and far more stylish) than the majority of the films it would influence later. And if nothing else, it's given me a burning desire to be a wealthy Countess so I, too, can dismiss people by simply saying "I'm late for my nap."
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