Moustroll
Good movie but grossly overrated
Cleveronix
A different way of telling a story
BelSports
This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
LeonLouisRicci
Master Mario Bava Directs and Shoots another Film that Transfigured and Ignited Horror Cinema in the Decades to come. This is Without Doubt (so many times these sort of proclamations have doubt) the First "Slasher" Film. Hitchcock's "Psycho" (1960) can be Sighted as a Spark but without the Fire that Bava sent Blazing. It's a Sub-Genre of Horror that Survives to this Day. It has Survived Critic and Parental Wrath and Disdain and is one of the most Profitable.The Movie is Famous for its Body Count (13) that was used in Advertising Campaigns, Bloody Gore, No Redeeming Characters, Excellent Makeup and SFX, Haunting Mood and Cinematography (Bava), Fast Pace, and an Ending that No "Body" saw coming.Viewed Today it seems Familiar, due to the Hundreds of Imitations and Followups Churned Out in the last 35 Years. Bava's Emphasis Turns to Blood Bathing and Gruesome Gore after He Reinvented the Gothic Gloom Cinema in the Sixties.He Ushered in the 1970's and Wrote the Training Manual that made a lot of People a lot of Money. Mostly Hacking the Maestro with Little Style and Wit and No imagination with Eyes Only on Box-Office Receipts.The "Slasher" Genre does have its Restraints with Repetition Punctuating the Pictures and One Upmanship the Order of the Day. Objectively even Bava's Movie is Missing certain Elements of Plot, Character Development and Overall Concern for Complexity. The Checklist Style, Invented here, has made "Slashers" the most Guilty of Guilty Pleasure Exploitation.
Mr_Ectoplasma
Mario Bava's "A Bay of Blood" mainly follows Renata and Albert, a young couple vying for ownership of property on a remote bay after Renata's mother, an heiress, is mysteriously killed at her estate. The couple arrive on the property in the midst of a bloodbath in which just about anyone coming in contact with the area is dying in mysterious ways, but the worst is yet to come.The thriller to launch Bava's career into the seventies, "A Bay of Blood" (sometimes titled "Twitch of the Death Nerve") plays out like a gratuitous Agatha Christie novel brought to the screen. Punctuated by savage murder sequences, the film is a mystery and a morality play at its core, meditating on themes of greed and amorality. The script is jarring, shifting from character to character and disorienting the audience as each are flayed open on screen. When we finally do get to the ostensible protagonists, multiple bodies have already hit the floor; it's a double-edged sword as the disorienting nature of the narrative is both frustrating and effective at putting the audience on edge.The cinematography is fantastic, and the camera-work is frenetic, characterized by dramatic zooms and some chilling POV shots from the killer. The dreary bay and the kitschy seventies house sets are richly atmospheric, and a lively score adds to the proceedings. The ending is downbeat and also darkly humorous, and as ridiculous as it may be, it falls in line with the film's greater thematic aims.Overall, "A Bay of Blood" is a solid film even in spite of its narrative quirks. It does leave the viewer feeling somewhat debased among a sea (or rather, bay) of carnage, but it is, as all of Bava's films are, aesthetically interesting and attains its own weird atmosphere. The special effects are also nicely done, and the film delivers for gorehounds. Some have given it the title of the "godfather" of the slasher film, and while it feels more like a giallo, I can see where people come to draw that comparison. 8/10.
accattone74
Whereas Black Sunday may be one of the most influential films for the discerning Gothic horror artiste, Bava's 1971 'tour de snuff', Twitch of the Death Nerve, is unarguably the most influential toward the genre's eventual turn to bloodlust. Whether you like it or not, the definition of a horror film hasn't been the same since Twitch, and chances of its influence ever completely receding are next to nil. The first film to exploit its body-count as the main reason for viewing, Twitch of the Death Nerve even hits the ground running (or wheeling rather), with the first two of its thirteen ghastly murders occurring in the first scene alone. Besides the high mortality rate of the characters, and Bava's diabolical tunnel vision of the carnage, another not so easily noticeable (yet perhaps most lasting) influence of Twitch is the complete reliance on set pieces to reach its sadistic goal. Every murder is methodically, systematically designed for optimum shock, and the film's cameraman (Bava himself), art director, actors, writers, editors, FX men, etc., all play their crucial and individual parts to perfection each time, thereby making each piece stand alone like masochistic movements in a sadistic symphony.Said actors run the gamut from fallen icons of World Cinema (like Isa Miranda), and ex-Bond Girls (Thunderball's Claudine Auger), to Laura Betti, and a Brechtian spaghetti western star (Luigi Pistilli). The writers include none other than Dardano Sacchetti, who had just recently penned Argento's Cat O' Nine Tails, and would go on to give Lucio Fulci one of the finest scripts of his career – The Beyond. Carlo Rambaldi, who would go on to win two Oscars for Alien and E.T., created the then-state-of-the-art special effects. I suppose I should mention the story line, which is often attacked for being inconsequential, illogical, irrational, impossible to sort out, or simply the odious ex machina to simply get from one murder to another. I find it all pretty simple to explain myself – I don't see what's so difficult to understand. Bava's penchant for cynicism and his fascination with humanity's dark side has never been more apparent than in Twitch of the Death Nerve, whose plot concerns greed, real estate, the raping of the environment, and revenge.All the action transpires around a beautiful, undeveloped bay and its surrounding picturesque landscape/acreage, whose owner (Isa Miranda) has been murdered. Those who wish to convert the entire area into a fashionable resort now threaten the forests and natural life. But just who is the real heir to this potential fortune now? And who won't stop at nothing to own it all, or to preserve the land's natural state. Throw in some sex-crazed teenagers who stumble and wander where they shouldn't belong, and you've got the makings for wholesale slaughter. Beheadings, faces cleaved in two, necks gouged apart, bodies run through with spears & tridents, flying pots of boiling water, hangings, strangulations, bodies being blown to shotgun bits – Twitch of the Death Nerve's got it all! Video Watchdog's Tim Lucas said it best, "…the horror genre had seen nothing quite like it before – and it's seen very little unlike it ever since." Touché. As with his work on I Vampiri and Black Sunday, Bava likely had no idea that what he was making would change the course of horror film history. Twitch of the Death Nerve was a film for which Bava was especially proud – the body count, the blatantly offensive amorality, the over-indulgent carnality, and the ludicrous lump of unlikable characters.All these things were purposeful commentary on Bava's part – to take a stab at the industry, the genre; to see what he could do with a little bit of money; to push the envelope; to push the buttons and watch people's reactions. Such are valid and fun reasons for doing what he did. Little did Bava know that Twitch's genius would be singularly responsible for a whole bevy of '80s crap, including Friday the 13th, Part II's blatant theft of two of Twitch's death scenes. Argento's Bird and Bava's Twitch were the nails in the coffin for the first half of Italian Horror's heyday. The dark, alluring fantasies were now gone. No longer would the plots be semi-innocent, or quasi-Victorian. No more wandering through fogged graveyards and abandoned castles. Though Bava continued to make some work of merit in the '70s (Baron Blood, Lisa and the Devil), never again would he find himself at the forefront of the genre he almost single-handedly created. The future belonged to perversion, degeneracy, gore, hysteria, cannibalism, Teutonic witches, zombies and Goblins…lots and lots of Goblins.
callanvass
This is regarded as the original slasher. That may be true, but I didn't find anything special about it. It helped facilitate change in the horror genre and it influenced Friday The 13th. It is easy to tell with the lake itself, which is eerily reminiscent of Camp Crystal Lake. A Bay of Blood plods too much for my liking at times. There were certain points where I was really getting into it, and then it pushed me away by becoming languid. There are too many scenes with people wandering, and nothing all that interesting happening. The atmosphere is solid. It does have moments that are genuinely creepy. The opening shot gave me the chills, and the finale definitely provides suspense. It was just too inconsistent for my liking. I didn't care for any of the characters. They were all a little too cold for me. I know that was the point, to augment the mystery at hand, but I would have liked to have seen somebody I can root for. Gorehounds will be pleased with the amount of blood. We get an amazing slit throat, bloody stabbings, a squid on a rotten corpse, and more. The most infamous gore scene is the double impaling with a spear, which Friday The 13th Part II ripped off. It is done much more graphically in this movie, and wasn't cut by censors. Mario Bava's direction is pretty stylish. His lighting was great, as were the POV shots. I also have to give credit to the picturesque cinematography. There are a few twists in this movie, but the ending angered me. It felt very contrived and unbelievable. Final Thoughts: I'll give credit where credit is due. It facilitated change, it's stylish, and the gore scenes are great. Despite all of those qualities, it isn't nearly as interesting as all the hype suggests. It is well worth a look, but don't expect a classic6.2/10
