A Bay Of Blood (a.k.a. Twitch Of The Death Nerve, a.k.a. Carnage) (1971)
Boo!
That's the cheesiest way we could think of to kick off our pre-Halloween horror festival.....
What better way to start off than with the film considered as the mother and father of all subsequent slasher movies.....the movie that birthed and inspired the rampages of Michael Meyer, Jason, Leatherface, Freddy Kruger and dozens of other generic psychos wielding all varieties of sharp implements.......
And who better to turn on the spigots of this never ending blood flow than than the painterly master of delirious, beautifully photographed horror and fantasy.....
Who else could we be speaking of other than that Italian Maestro of Mayhem, Mario Bava....
Nobody ever watched a Bava film for the intricacy of its storyline,,,,,(we doubt even Bava himself could ever figure out the plots of his movies).......his work was always about the stunning visuals.
Therefore, we'll not make even a perfunctory stab at what the hell's going on in "A Bay Of Blood", other than it's about a whole bunch of greedy people, more than a few of them borderline sociopaths, vying for ownership of some lush, rural real estate surrounding a bay.
Our cast of characters do make more than perfunctory stabs, though.......at each other.....with a full compliment of knives, machetes, spears and whatnot. The corpses here pile up faster than a bunch Trumpanzee anti-vaxxers in a COVID hospital ICU.
In addition to the motley collection of creeps who covet the bay for their very own, for your additional body-count pleasure there's a random gaggle of teens who crash the property..... and like hundreds and hundreds of movie teen victims yet to come, they get promptly skewered for their trespassing.(including a showstopper later copied by "Friday The 13th")
(The only thing missing here is having the kids first stop at a filthy, weird convenience store with a ghoulish clerk.....a trope later favored in American slasher movies.....)
The principal connivers (and knifers) among the entire unsavory bunch are played Luigi Pistilli (of the Sergio Leone 'dollars' westerns) and Claudine Auger ( the delectable Bond girl of "Thunderball") The fate reserved for these two becomes the movie's final sick, twisted joke......like a cherry placed on top of a blood-soaked strawberry shortcake.
Need we say more? Other than you can consider "A Bay Of Blood" essential viewing if you're into all genres of hardcore horror......and good news - you can plunge into the uncut version of this classic bloodbath on the new "Kino Cult" streaming site. (There's ads, but hey it's free.....)
For the fans, 4 stars (****)......for non-fans, be afraid.....be very afraid......and stay far away from the 'Bay'.
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