Movie Melting Pot…’Bay of Blood’ (Italy, 1971)

***WARNING – SPOILERS AHEAD***

Do you ever have one of those movies that is on your “must-see” list for years and years, and you just never quite seem to work it out? Â  This movie might be on your Netflix queue for months, even years, on end, and you keep telling yourself, “I’m gonna bump that up to the number 1 spot.” Â  Of course, the next week ‘Tales of the Black Freighter’ comes out, and you forget all about your “long-forgotten” film.

Mario Bava’s ‘Bay of Blood’ was that film for me.   And, I’m sure, all of this build-up and anticipation to finally watching this film put a damper on my enjoyment of it.   I don’t want to give the impression that I didn’t enjoy ‘Bay of Blood.’   Far from it.   But years and years of hearing about Bava’s most controversial motion picture puts certain ideas into one’s head that no film can, ultimately, live up to.  

There’s no question, whatsoever, of the influence this film had on the horror films that came after it. Â  Released in 1971, it was the first, true “slasher” (or “body count”) film, in which an unseen killer stalks a finite number of people who either most or all end up meeting gruesome and special effect-laden ends. Â  It was an unheard of concept at the time, and many found the film’s level of violence to be quite offensive.

It’s not unheard of to consider ‘Bay of Blood’ as Bava’s most violent film.   Within it, we have stabbings, hackings, decapitations, impalings, and the late addition of a shooting, the latter of which comes totally out of left field.   Christopher Lee reportedly walked out of the screening of the film at the  1971 Avoriaz Film Festival claiming to be completely revolted by the movie.   Hallmark Releasing Corporation, who specialized in exploitation films, picked up ‘Bay of Blood’ for American distribution and slapped the film with a rating of V for Violence!

For fans of horror since the release of ‘Bay of Blood,’ the concept may not be all that original. Â  The idea of people picking each other off for the sake of collecting a premium piece of real estate isn’t exactly groundbreaking. Â  Neither is the idea of a faceless killer stalking several people within the confines of a wooded area. Â  Anyone who has even heard of ‘Friday the 13th’ can grasp where the creators of that franchise got most of their ideas.

In fact, a few death scenes found in ‘Bay of Blood’ were copied almost verbatim in ‘Friday the 13th Part 2,’ the machete-to-the-face and the double impalement of two lovers. Â  Many claim the latter to have been one of the more original killings found in the ‘Friday the 13th’ franchise, but even that was something copied from this earlier piece of film horror.

‘Bay of Blood,’ however, pulls each of its thirteen (ironic, no?) murders off with stylish fashion. Â  This is thanks in large part to special effects guru Carlo Rambaldi, who would late go on to Oscars for his works on ‘E.T’ and ‘Alien.’

It is also unquestionable of the level of cinematography found in ‘Bay of Blood.’ Â  Due to budget constraints, Bava was forced to serve as his own DP. Â  This wasn’t exactly a difficult situation for the man to find himself in considering he had been working as a cinematographer ever since the late ’30s. Â  With ‘Bay of Blood,’ Bava both improvised in his filmmaking and crafted some amazing shots with his composition and lighting. Â  A child’s toy wagon was used for tracking shots, but those shots look no less professional than anything found in a mega-budgeted film. Â  

The lighting Bava utilizes is spectacular, particularly one of the latter scenes in which a character finds himself in the dark and uses matches to light his way. Â  When it is dark, a heavy, blue hue reflects off his face. Â  When he strikes a match, only his face comes into view, and you half-expect (mostly from the conventions horror has placed on film) to see someone standing directly behind him.

This is something else Bava was far ahead of the curve on. Â  He managed to break or work around conventions even before said conventions were deemed conventional in the eyes of horror fans. Â  

This is found right off the bat in the film’s opening scene. Â  A wheelchair-bound woman, alone in her house, is attacked and hung and by an unknown assailant. Â  She dies, the look on her face vintage, Italian horror fright. Â  The camera cuts to the feet of her killer and begins moving up the killer’s body. Â  It stops on his gloves. Â  He takes them off, revealing a rather large pinky ring. Â  Typical, horror convention, even giallo convention, tells us this is a clue as to the final reveal of he killer’s identity. Â  However, the camera keeps going up the killer’s body ultimately revealing his face. Â  What? Â  Do we know from the get-go who the killer in this film is? Â  Not a chance. Â  A second, unseen killer quickly dispatches of the first killer in brutal fashion, shattering anything we think we might know about where the film’s narrative or structure is headed.

Bava, a master at storytelling and filmmaking, finds a way to trump everything fans of horror think they know about how the genre is supposed to work. Â  He does it, no less, in a film that is nearly 40 years old, a film that was released nearly ten years before the dawning of the “slasher” age of horror.

‘Bay of Blood’ is a must-see for any fan of the horror genre, a truly effortless work of cinema that manages to both create and destroy the horror conventions of the films that followed it. Â  It was Bava in the later years of his career, but the filmmaker, 57 at the time of the film’s release, continued to work his magic around the camera lense and, to this day, continues to influece those who would follow him.

As a quick aside, ‘Bay of Blood’ was ‘Ecologia del delitto’, or ‘The Ecology of Murder’, upon its initial release in Italy. Â  In fact, the film reportedly has more alternate titles than any other film in history. Â  Apart from the various titles it went through during production like ‘The Stench of Flesh,’ ‘That Will Teach Them to Be Bad,’ and ‘Chain Reaction,’ it has gone through several titles after being released. Â  It was released as ‘Bloodbath’ in the UK. Â  In the US, it was originally released as ‘Carnage’ then retitles ‘Twitch of the Death Nerve,’ probably its most identifiable title. Â  It was later reissued as ‘Last House on the Left – Part II’ and ‘New House on the Left’ to cash in on the success of Wes Craven’s first feature.

‘Bay of Blood’ can be found included in The Bava Box Set: Vol. 2, which also includes ‘Lisa and the Devil,’ ‘House of Exorcism,’ ‘Kidnapped,’ and more.