Wheelchair-bound Countess Donati, the owner of an undeveloped bay, is murdered, and then the murderer is immediately murdered as well. Ruled a suicide, a group of unpleasant people all vie for ownership of the bay. They include an unscrupulous businessman (Chris Avram) and his secretary (Anna Maria Rosati), a daughter (Claudine Auger) and her husband (Luigi Pistilli), and an illegitimate son (Claudio Camaso). Living by the bay is also an obsessive bug collector and his fortune-telling wife. When four youths show up to party, it signals the beginning of a string of impalings, strangulations, and beheadings.
This is it folks. Forget about 1980’s Friday the 13th and 1978’s Halloween. Even 1974’s Black Christmas needs to be set aside. Horror veteran Mario Bava’s gore-fest Bay of Blood is the first true Slasher. It took those later films to get the movement going, but this is where it all began. While few Americans saw it in its initial run, the makers of Friday the 13th did, and it shows. Their own work can be politely called an homage, but the term “plagiarism” is more accurate, particularly for Friday the 13th Part II.
All the Slasher murders that became clichés in the ’80s are here. We have a couple speared while having sex. There’s the nude girl taking a swim, who comes out to have her neck slit with a machete. There’s the machete in the face (there’s just a lot of machete work). And I can’t forget the guy impaled so that he’s stuck against a tree. Add in a hand strangulation, a cord strangulation, a woman in a wheelchair being hung, several knifings, and a beheading, and you’ve got a majority of the death scenes in every Slasher made in the last twenty-five years.
Bay of Blood distinguishes itself in more ways than just being the first of its kind. Bava was a skilled director, and while I’d have liked to see a few less zoom-shots, this is one of the best made Slashers. It also has darkly comedic elements, something most of the others try for, but few get a handle on. I wouldn’t argue if someone wanted to classify this as a comedy. It just depends on if you think it is funny seeing an old woman breathing her last in time with the slowing wheels of her chair. Me? I laughed.
It is also unusual in its killers. There’s more than one (I won’t say how many), so we’re not just waiting for a single masked psycho to traipse out of the woods. This is a film with a very dim view of humanity. Most Slashers (particularly the teen ones) are inhabited by a group of “average” people, with about half being asses. The folks running about this bay are far from average, and they are much more than asses. Bava is suggesting that anyone can become a murderer with very little provocation.
Perhaps the most significant difference is that there are themes that can be mapped on to Bay of Blood. Face it, if you are trying to find meaning in Friday the 13th, you are wasting your time. But Bava appears to be making a socialist statement. Capitalism causes all of these people to act, and it has no conscience or mercy. In the economic world, you “cut” down your competition, or eventually, you’ll be the one sliced to ribbons. You get to see that metaphorically, in living color—blood red.
Making the message more complex, Bava has tossed in ecological concerns. I tried to ignore that (since I couldn’t believe a Slasher would have two themes), and stay with the economic analogy, but it kept popping up. Destroying nature destroys us. The bug collector goes to some pains to explain that you just don’t mess with mother nature. To bad these guys hadn’t worked out that this was not the right bay to do some major development. The ending, which is the biggest joke of the film, pushes home the idea that you need to preserve the environment.
Still, no matter how impressive Bay of Blood is as Slasher, it doesn’t look overwhelming when compared to more hardy competitions. The characters are thin and they act with insufficient motivation. The murders are not carried out with finesse, and it should be clear to everyone involved that they aren’t going to get away with killings that are so messy. The acting isn’t bad for the sub-genre, but that’s saying very little. Everyone is either stiff or over-the-top. The “teens” (they look around thirty) are painfully bad, and on several occasions appear to be confused on what they are supposed to be doing. I don’t speak Italian, so there is also the dubbing to contend with. Perhaps the actors did their most spectacular work with their voices, and it has been lost due to the dubbing. But I doubt it.
Gore hounds should be happy with the quantity of blood, but not the quality. No one would ever mistake the thin, bright, red liquid that flows everywhere for real human blood.
Bay of Blood is an enjoyable film, but nothing that needs to be repeated, or even searched out. It is a must-see for Slasher fans, and those are the only people that should bother picking up the DVD.
The film has gone by many names over the years, including: Bloodbath, Carnage, Chain Reaction, Last House on the Left Part II (although this movie came out first), The Ecology of a Crime, Twitch of the Death Nerve.
Bava also directed the engaging, but poorly titled ghost story, Kill, Baby… Kill!