By TESS HENSEN

Before Jason…before Camp Crystal Lake…there was…Bay Of Blood…

Mario Bava's Bay Of Blood (a.k.a Twitch Of The Death Nerve) is a classic "who-dunnit" with a slasher twist. However, Bava's excursion into this sub-genre of the horror film is not relegated to the tepid teen slasher romps of the early eighties. Instead, this predecessor presents us with an intelligent, somewhat original storyline, and characters with real motivations with whom it is easy to relate.

Surely, this film was an inspiration to Sean Cunningham, director of Friday The 13th, from it's plethora of various ways to kill and maim, to the somewhat poignant love a son has for his murdered mother.

Made in the early Seventies (it was, in fact, 1971), this film breaks the mold that was made for earlier slasher-type films, like Psycho for instance, as it boldly made forays into stylized violence and gore that would make later films like Argento's Suspiria and Carpenter's Halloween wildly popular cult favorites.

From the chilling opening double murder, to the hilariously unexpected ending, we are kept on the edge of our seats in the throes of quality slasher ecstasy. Just when you think you know who the murderer is...bam!...they are offed in what was, in 1972 I'm sure, a totally shocking and original way.

Oh, and there are suspects a-plenty, be sure. Basically, the plot revolves around a double murder (one presented as a suicide) of a rich Countess and her husband who own a considerable amount of land on a posh island. One of the suspects is an architect who would like to get his hands on the land so he can develop it to his hearts' content. He may not be above murder to get what he wants.

Another suspect is the dead Countess's illegitimate son, who surprisingly has a rather endearing attachment to his mother, but who has rather strange taste in seafood. Yet another is the resident island bug-collector and his alcoholic, fortune-telling wife. She is rather harmless, although it seems she can truly see the future in her cards, even through her drunken stupor, but it is her husband who manifests his distaste for the idea of development on his pristine insect sanctuary menacingly, and perhaps even murderously.

And, finally, there is the Countess's legitimate daughter and husband who stand to gain everything in the will...as long as they can get the illegitimate, squid-eating son out of the way. Mayhem and murder ensue…in graphic bloody detail…

Oh, and remember. I mentioned that the film is more intelligent than the teen slasher fare of the Eighties? Well, it is. However, Bava and the writers were not above offering up the obligatory teens, just for sheer body count. At one point a group of young people...two girls and two guys...stumble upon an old resort part of the island that was to be developed as a nightclub by the Countess's husband. The project was obviously given up, and what is left is just a partially developed shell of a building...but in a funny little twist, it has a kickin' sound system.

The bohemian party ensues, and the young people dance and swim naked in the bay, and have the obligatory sex of course...and they all die in various bloody ways. At this point we want to give a big "yell up" to the writers and Bava for providing us with the gratuitous sex and violence us slasher film lovers live for. (One of the films double murders was stolen was the makers of Friday The 13th, Part 2.)

We certainly can see from whom the great giallo director Dario Argento learned his use of colors in film. Bava uses red, blues and greens to great effect in this offering. If you've seen another of Bava's classics, Black Sabbath, you'll see what I mean when you viddy this film. The killings are presented to us in close-up, with copious amount of glorious, red blood. Sundry methods of murder are used...hangings, stabbings, garrotings, stranglings, hatchet to the head and spearings.

Geez, I sound like Joe-Bob listing his body count on his Drive-Inn Theater or something. And of course, all are presented in beautifully filmed graphic violence. A friend of mine once said of Dario Argento that he made murder beautiful...well my friends, it is from Bava that he learned.

One gets the sense, while watching Bay Of Blood that Bava had a sort of premonition of the way things would go in the horror genre...ten years into the future! While Hitchcock's Psycho certainly is the grandpappy of slasher films, this sub-genre was largely ignored during the rest of the 1960's, unless, of course, you want to include the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis. I wouldn't categorize his films as slasher films however, they were more shock and gore for gore's sake presentations. So, if we bear that in mind...it was over ten years and Mario Bava's Bay Of Blood that attempted to get that niche of the horror genre going again. After that, it seems the slasher sub-genre started a slow roll into the future that, by the time the early eighties hit, had become a fast and furious pace that had spawned the wonderful Halloween, Friday The 13th, and other more obscure slasher offerings like Prom Night, When A Stranger Calls, and Black Christmas.

If it weren't for Bava's keen insight into the future of slasher films, we may not even have these gems that have now become almost legendary. One might say these films have even overshadowed the films of the one who most certainly kick-started the sub-genre back in 1971. That's why I'm pleased to edify you, the reader, about this little blood-red gem.

In closing, I'd like to say thank you to the many people who recommended this gem to me. I was at first hesitant, being familiar only with Bava's earlier, more classic work. I was very pleasantly surprised with this film. I was never bored, I was always wondering who the murderer was, and, in the film's closing sequence, I was also greatly amused at the blackly humorous, totally unexpected ending.

Thanks for knocking me completely and wonderfully off my feet Mr. Bava...wherever you are...

And thank you, Tess, for setting the filmic record straight on who did the "slasher" film first and best.  Although such films are not to everyone's taste, at least Mario Bava handled gore with grace and splatter with style.

Article copyright © Tess Hensen