Bueno bueno it’s Burl! Ha ha, a funny thing
about ol’ Burl is that I tend to rank Italian horror movie directors according
to the gentility of their work! Essentially my taxonomy is based on what some
may call the tastefulness of their productions, or the lack thereof, but it's not a rating system and has nothing to do with my estimation of their
talent or how much I like their movies! So Mario Bava strolls with quiet
dignity near the top, with Dario Argento somewhere beneath, Lucio Fulci further beneath
that, and Joe D’Amato and Ruggero Deodato lurking on some still lower rung!
Today’s movie, which I’ll refer to as A Bay of Blood though it has many other
titles to choose from, comes from that upper-ranker Bava; but it is, nevertheless,
one of the goriest, meanest movies ever made by any of the pastaland
blood-slingers! I mean, ha ha, it’s no Anthropophagus,
but still! It’s got head choppings, slow strangulations, pokings of all
kind, including a sexual transfixation; face slicings, shotgunnings and squid
bitings! It’ll be no surprise to you that this picture is considered the old
grandpappy of the slasher genre! Certainly it was a hefty influence on Friday the 13th part 2, ha
ha!
The setting is a picturesque little bay
which seems to be populated exclusively by murderers! An old countess is noosed
right off her wheelchair, and the perpetrator of that crime, her husband, is
straightaway poked at with a stabbing knife! We learn that the carnage is all
because of the titular cove, which is, ha ha, coveted by everyone who lives on the bay, and by all of their
relatives too! A quartet of feckless youths fall victim to the monstrous desire
for seaside real estate as well, or at least to the desire others have to keep
the area for themselves!
Bava started as a cinematographer (his
first work was the Rossellini short The
Bullying Turkey, which I hope to see someday just based on that title!),
and he shot many of his own pictures, including this one! So it’s a little
strange that it’s one of his less visually striking works - it’s got some
lovely shots, but movies like Planet of
the Vampires, Hercules in the Haunted
World, Hatchet for the Honeymoon
and Danger: Diabolik all seem
brimming over with striking imagery, whereas this one is a little more fast and
loose! Maybe it was simply a lower-budget picture with a quicker schedule than
he was used to!
As brutal as the killings are, and as
misanthropic the theme, A Bay of Blood
is nevertheless a pretty entertaining satire! Once you realize that everybody
is just killing everybody else, it becomes genuinely uproarious, and the last
few minutes serve as the cherry on top, ha ha! Though future slashers would fail to take this or some equally clever approach, you can't deny the movie's influence on everything from Friday the 13th to The Burning to The Dorm that Dripped Blood to The Mutilator! For its transgressive
jocularity, its historic importance and its full-colour carnage, I give A Bay of Blood two and a half cable knit sweaters!
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