{"id":11488,"date":"2016-10-25T20:00:11","date_gmt":"2016-10-26T01:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=11488"},"modified":"2016-10-25T15:26:11","modified_gmt":"2016-10-25T20:26:11","slug":"a-bay-of-blood-1971-mario-bava","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/11488","title":{"rendered":"A Bay of Blood (1971, Mario Bava)"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are some things you’ve gotta do in SHOCKtober, and one thing is you’ve gotta watch something Italian. As the saying goes, if you haven’t got Argento, a Fulci will do. If you haven’t got a Fulci, woe unto you.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This is one of those giallo things where everyone is knifed to death by unknown black-gloved assailant(s). In this case, I think it’s not a single crazed killer, but everyone killing everyone else in order to gain ownership of the bay that all their houses border. At least it seems that way, but it was really hard to care about any of these generic characters – I barely had their names and\/or relationships sorted out when they’d be hastily murdered. Dialogue was in English on my copy, and reasonably well-synced, a nice surprise (though the words themselves, and the actors speaking them, remain quite poor). And of course Bava’s got enough style – lighting and zooms and focus tricks – to keep things watchable.<\/p>\n

Laura Betti transcends this stupid movie:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Frank and sexy secretary:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Bug Man:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Let’s see if we can piece together what happened. The movie’s only good story idea is staging the death of an elderly landowner (Isa Miranda of The Late Mathias Pascal<\/em> and La Ronde<\/a><\/em>) by using her own diary entry reading “I am tired. My life no longer has meaning” as a suicide note. I guess this is done by her husband Filippo, who is immediately killed by squid fisherman Simon (Claudio Camaso of John the Bastard<\/em>), illegitimate son of the hanged countess. Squid Simon has a rivaly with insect hunter Paolo (Leopoldo Trieste, young husband in The White Sheik<\/a><\/em>), who’s scheming with fortune teller Anna (Laura Betti, the miraculous servant in Teorema<\/a><\/em>). Realty Dude Frank (Chris Avram of Voodoo Sexy<\/em>) and his girlfriend\/secretary are also scheming with various participants somehow. Renata (Claudine Auger of Yoyo<\/a><\/em> and Thunderball<\/em>) is daughter of the count and countess, I think, arriving late with her husband Albert (Luigi Pistilli of Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key<\/em>) to claim the bay. I think these two succeed, then are shot to death by their own young kids in an epilogue, the movie’s final “fuck you” to its characters and\/or viewers.<\/p>\n

Our ignoble heroes, Renata and Albert:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Filippo beneath the Squid Thief’s slimy cargo:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Also, with no apparent connection to anything else, four young partying sex-crazed kids (including a skinny-dipping Brigitte Skay, title star of Isabella, Duchess of the Devils<\/em>) break into a house on the bay and get quickly murdered.<\/p>\n

Duchess of the Devils:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

The Duchess’s boyfriend catches a machete to the face:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

This movie, sometimes known as Twitch of the Death Nerve<\/em>, was a relatively late film from Bava, arriving some years after his early-to-mid-60’s horror heyday. I guess the others didn’t catch on like this one, since it’s credited as one of the most influential slasher\/giallo films (though I’m not sure that’s anything to brag about), with some if its deaths directly ripped off by Friday the 13th<\/em> sequels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are some things you’ve gotta do in SHOCKtober, and one thing is you’ve gotta watch something Italian. As the saying goes, if you haven’t got Argento, a Fulci will do. If you haven’t got a Fulci, woe unto you. This is one of those giallo things where everyone is knifed to death by unknown […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[400,54,225,1869],"class_list":["post-11488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1970s","tag-horror","tag-italy","tag-mario-bava"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11529,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11488\/revisions\/11529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}