Welcome to Mario May, where we’ll be discussing the films of Mario Bava. Now, we’ve already discussed several of them over the years, so be sure to review our thoughts on those by searching “mario bava” from the Home page (or by clicking the links in the filmography below.) This month, we’ll discuss some Bava films I watched for the first time. Our last entry is…
My experience with Mario Bava films, both this month and prior, draws me to conclude that Bava was a director ahead of his time, at least in the last decade of his career. Why else is every story about the making of one of his films related to losing bets, running out of money, or working with a low budget from the start? This may be a rhetorical question, because I don’t know that his films were big box office draws… at the time.
Today, though, A Bay of Blood (1971), for example, is largely considered Bava’s most influential film and perhaps one of his best. Yet it began as a happy accident when producer Dino De Laurentiis learned that screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti had fallen out with Dario Argento and persuaded him to work with Bava on a giallo. Along with co-writer Franco Barbieri, the initial effort ended in arguments and De Laurentiis exiting the project.
Bava supposedly owed back taxes and desperately needed to complete a film. With new writers Giuseppe Zaccariello and Filippo Ottoni, and star Laura Betti, Casi imparano a fare I cattivi (You Dare Learn to be Bad Guys) began filming in early 1971. It soon became Reazion a catena (Chain Reaction), then La baia d’argento (The Bay of Silver), before landing on Ecologia del delitto (Ecology of Crime.) Interestingly, A Bay of Blood may be the movie with the most alternative titles ever, including, Twitch of the Death Nerve.
So, here we are again with Bava working miracles to produce a film that’s quite remarkable considering the circumstances. With the low budget, he was also the credited director of photography, and that’s perhaps the biggest improvement over our previous movie, Hatchet for the Honeymoon. A Bay of Blood looks gorgeous. While we must admit the glorious colors are still missing, the ones that are there, such as the sky, are deep and rich.
The special effects by Carlo Rambaldi (King Kong-1976, Alien, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial) are fantastic and undoubtedly inspiration for things to come. In fact, the scene where a character is chopped in the face with a hawkbill machete is more realistic than many of its 1980s imitators, Savini sometimes included. At least two scenes were lifted directly from A Bay of Blood for the first two Friday the 13th movies.
While A Bay of Blood shines as a graphic precursor to the slasher film, it shares another characteristic common to the subgenre: a sometimes-nonsensical story. The plot is there; after watching it, the pieces fit together. However, during its 84-minute running time, it took me a long time to determine who was who and why things were happening, but I still don’t know who the perpetrator of all the murders was. I think there was more than one.
I specifically disliked the ending. It’s an obvious element from Sacchetti’s original story; however, there’s no buildup for it in the final version. It could have been a terrific ironic twist with even one scene to establish context. For me, this leaves A Bay of Blood an important historical horror film, but not necessarily a great movie. It’s not as good as the sum of its parts, but those parts, on their own, cannot be beat.
A Bay of Blood is available as part of the Mario Bava Collection box set from Shout! Factory. You may have seen it and not known it under a variety of alternative titles, particularly, Twitch of the Death Nerve.
Mario Bava Filmography (Director)
1957
Lust of the Vampire (uncredited)
1958
The Day the Sky Exploded (uncredited)
1959
Hercules Unchained (uncredited)
Caltiki, the Immortal Monster (uncredited)
The Giant of Marathon (uncredited)
1960
Black Sunday
Esther and the King (Italian Version)
1961
The Wonders of Aladdin
Hercules in the Haunted World
Erik the Conqueror
1963
The Evil Eye
Black Sabbath
The Whip & the Body
1964
Blood & Black Lace
The Road to Fort Alamo
1965
Planet of the Vampires
1966
Savage Gringo
Knives of the Avenger
Kill, Baby… Kill
Dr. Goldfoot & the Girl Bombs
1968
Danger: Diabolik
The Odyssey (TV Mini Series)
1970
Five Dolls for an August Moon
Hatchet for the Honeymoon
Roy Colt & Winchester Jack
Four Times That Night
A Bay of Blood
To be continued… next Mario May!
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