Welcome back readers if I have any
left after the cannibal/zombie showdown film of Zombie Holocaust.
Trust me, I suffer its scars more than you. Unless you went out and
saw it. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT??!!!! Anywho, hows about a scary
Italian horror movie? Okay stop running, it is not Bruno Mattei.
I'm talking the master of the Giallo movies, the cream of the crop
of scare, the building blocks that made Dario Argento and
Lucio Fulci want to be
directors. The one and only Mario Bava (Hercules
in the Haunted World, Black Sunday, Evil Eye, Blood and Black Lace,
Kill Baby, Kill, Danger: Diabolik, Blood Brides, Baron Blood, The
House of Exorcism and Beyond the Door II).
This is A Bay of Blood a.k.a. Twitch of the Death Nerve, The Last
House on the Left Part II, The Antecendent, Bay of Blood, Bloodbath,
Blood Bath, Ecology of a Crime, Chain Reaction and Bloodbath Bay of
Death.
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| Robert Evans Italiano! |
This film is better known by Twitch of
the Death Nerve in the states but that's a bunch of savages that know
no better. Pity them. No offense fellow Americans but A Bay of
Blood just sounds soooOoO much better a title. Twitch of the Death
Nerve sounds like an organ harvesting film.
Our macabre tale opens with some 360
pans and a view of the lake house. Photo phobics, it wasn't bad
tracking like an Uwe Boll flick. You will be alright. A spinster
wealthy wife (Isa Miranda of Everybody's Woman, The Secret of
Helene Marimon, Abandoned, A kiss for a Killer, When Stangers Meet,
Compact and The Avengers TV series) has met her end of days
violently. The reason? Well it was either too many bedpan changing
or the sick amount of money she was worth.
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| Hangin' out. Hangin' out with my homies..Gonna have ourselves a party. |
Won't lie to you, her "suicide"
is creepy from the gag for air, to her body swaying limply from
hanging. With a suicide note planted by her dearly grieving husband,
a mysterious switchblade is jabbed into is back by person unknown.
Hmm guess this is a lot of dough offhand.
Soon family members, daughter Renata
(Claudine Auger of Thunderball, Yoyo, Black Belly of the
Tarantula, The Devil's Lieutenant, Secret Places, The Repenter and
Love of a Woman) and her husband Albert (Luigi Pistilli
of For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Great
Silence, Illustrious Corpses, Antonio Gramsci: The Days of Prison and
Luigi Ganna detective) start poking around the lakehouse
trying to make heads or tails of Renata's late mother's suicide and
where has her father gone off too. A real estate agent Frank (Chris
Avram of Time to Live, The Rage Within, Sentence of God, So Sweet, So
Dead, Cuore, Enter the Devil, Voodoo Sexy and Emanuelle in Bangkok)
is hoping to charm and swarm his way into Renata's heart for the
signature on the house for some cool breezy cash for land development. He can't miss,
right?
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| And I am told I never put up nudity. Pshaw! |
Two couples zip off around the lake in
what looks like Jon Pertwee's Bessie to frolic and be teens/twenty
somethings...only they seemed to have disappeared...one by one.
With a bit of sleuthing, Renata seems
to feel as though there may be more people involved for the land and
money of her mother's. She even starts questioning whether Albert
didn't have a hand in it. With this amount of dough on the table,
everyone and anyone is a suspect.
Will these murders be solved? Are
there still more to come? Who is to blame?
Worry not readers as Edward Mannix
graces us with his insidious voice as Albert's English dubbing.
Thought I forgot, didn't you? WELL ANSWER ME!!!
A quick bit of trivia, this film has
had an impact on Friday the 13th Part 1 and 2 as two of
the murders in it are lifted and almost shot for shot exact as
homage. Hell even the locations where the murders take place are so
similar it is eerie as hell.
The shooting locations had no woods to
speak of, so Bava waved several different tree branches in front of the
cameras to give the illusion of a run or romp through the woods.
According to Laura Betti, it
looked so silly to view this, the cast and crew had a hard time not
laughing at the simple yet brilliant solution to a lack of woods in
the area. Yeah a dude waving sticks at the camera would have made me
chuckle too. Hell the tracking shots are so steady and smooth, you
would swear they are dolly tracked but no. Turns out Bava with years
experience in cinematography shot these amazing images with...get
this. A frigging kid's wagon. Yeah the little red wagon saved the
day. The camera was mounted on a pole, surrounded by sandbags to
reduce any wiggle and just rolled along. Awesome right?
Because
of its intensity, unearthly vibes, good story presentation and decent
casting a lot of folks consider this a precursor to the slasher genre
and I am inclined to agree. I mean Black Christmas, The Town that
Dreaded Sundown and even Halloween have to tip their hats to their
grandfather of macabre. Still love Last House on the Left Part II
title considering Craven released the original a year after this
flick but who needs nutty things like timelines and consistency?
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| Hold me closer, Tito Fuentes... |
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