Dis­cov­er the sor­did plea­sures of this late-career Mario Bava slasher

Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood opens with a shad­owy fig­ure plac­ing a low-hang­ing noose around the neck of elder­ly Count­ess Fed­er­i­ca Donati (Isa Miran­da) and kick­ing the wheel­chair out from under her. This would appear to be a gial­lo – the Ital­ian sub­genre of stylised who­dun­nits that Bava helped invent with his influ­en­tial films The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Blood and Black Lace – yet there are also signs that Bava is head­ing in a new direction.

The killer may, like the vil­lain in a clas­sic gial­lo, appear in shad­ow, with face out of shot and hands cov­ered in black gloves. But then the cam­era pulls up to reveal his face, much as Bava’s Hatch­et for the Hon­ey­moon, from the pre­vi­ous year, had made no attempt to con­ceal the iden­ti­ty of its killer – who was also its pro­tag­o­nist. Then, in anoth­er twist of the knife, as the Count­ess’ killer, who we lat­er learn is her play­boy hus­band Fil­ip­po (Gio­van­ni Nuv­o­let­ti), lays out a fal­si­fied sui­cide note for the Count­ess, he too is killed by an unseen assailant.

That is a dou­ble mur­der (and a pair of mur­der­ers) in just the open­ing few min­utes of A Bay of Blood – and there will be many more of both, as the film’s baroque body count is near­ly matched by the sheer num­ber of its killers, in a pass-the-par­cel clus­ter­fuck of con­flict­ing inter­ests and crossed pur­pos­es that would have done the Coen broth­ers proud had they been old enough to watch this in 1971.

This sor­did tale of mul­ti­ple mur­ders also comes with mul­ti­ple titles. It was announced in Italy as Ante­fat­to (‘Before the Fact’), but released as Ecolo­gia del delit­to (‘Ecol­o­gy of Crime’), then with­drawn and rere­leased under the new title Reazione a Cate­na (‘Chain Reac­tion’), and final­ly as Bahia de San­gre (Span­ish for ​‘Bay of Blood’) – all titles which res­onate in dif­fer­ent ways with the film’s themes.

In Amer­i­ca it was released as A Bay of Blood, then Twitch of the Death Nerve (a fan­tas­tic, if not entire­ly rel­e­vant, title), and final­ly, in an absurd attempt to cap­i­talise on the recent suc­cess of Wes Craven’s 1972 debut fea­ture, var­i­ous­ly as Last House on the Left – Part II, Last House – Part II and New House on the Left.

Bava’s film may share with Craven’s a vague inter­est in the shal­low veneer of human civil­i­sa­tion, and in how lit­tle it takes to push us into sav­agery, but far from being a sto­ry of rape-revenge, it tracks dis­putes between the Count­ess’ extend­ed fam­i­ly over the her lega­cy (her house, and the wood­land and bay beyond), and between local res­i­dents over the future of these nat­ur­al environs.

When in hor­ror mode, Bava has always been a film­mak­er of eyes, and here there are eyes every­where. The Count­ess’ manor house, the neigh­bour­ing home of eccen­tric ento­mol­o­gist Pao­lo Fos­sati (Leopol­do Tri­este) and his tarot-read­ing wife Anna (Lau­ra Bet­ti), the near­by res­i­dence of ambi­tious archi­tect Fran­co Ven­tu­ra (Chris Avram) and the hut of the Countess’s ille­git­i­mate son Simon (Clau­dio Volon­té) are all with­in sight of one another.

And every­one is watch­ing and being watched, while those who are not scop­ing out their next vic­tims are com­pro­mis­ing them­selves as poten­tial eye­wit­ness­es in need of elim­i­na­tion, like the four doomed co-eds (Brigitte Skay, Pao­la Mon­ten­ero, Gui­do Boc­cac­ci­ni, Rober­to Bonan­ni) who wan­der into this area look­ing for fun, with­out real­is­ing that they have entered an elab­o­rate crime scene.

The focus on a gori­ly grotesque body­count (lis­ten care­ful­ly, and you will hear the exact num­ber of dead in the film being pre­dict­ed by one of Anna’s tarot cards) would have a pro­found influ­ence on the future slash­er genre, while those ear­ly scenes of young peo­ple being stalked and slaugh­tered in a water­side set­ting would par­tic­u­lar­ly fore­shad­ow the Fri­day the 13^th fran­chise (for exam­ple, 1981’s Fri­day the 13^th Part 2 also fea­tured a machete in the face, and two sex­u­al­ly entan­gled lovers skew­ered by a sin­gle weapon).

Bava, though, dis­pens­es with this quar­tet of inter­lop­ers quick­ly, pre­fer­ring to focus on the com­pli­cat­ed machi­na­tions of the locals, and of the Count­ess’ estranged step­daugh­ter Rena­ta (Clau­dine Auger) return­ing with hus­band Albert (Lui­gi Pis­til­li) to claim her branch on the fam­i­ly tree. With back­sto­ries revealed in flash­back, and dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters’ plots col­lid­ing mess­i­ly to con­found one anoth­er and leave a trail of corpses, the nar­ra­tive of A Bay of Blood is cer­tain­ly con­vo­lut­ed, but what emerges from the chaos is a cyn­i­cal vision of peo­ple undone by their own baser instincts of greed and violence.

“Chil­dren should stay with their par­ents,” says Albert, sur­prised at how will­ing his wife Rena­ta is to leave their young son and daugh­ter alone while pur­su­ing her own lega­cy and its asso­ci­at­ed mon­e­tary reward. As the film’s shock­ing final scenes will show, these chil­dren too have been watch­ing as much as every­one else, and learn­ing from the aber­rant con­duct of the adults around them. This cycle of mal­ice and mur­der is their inher­i­tance, far more than any prop­er­ty left by the Count­ess. This is a bru­tal, blud­geon­ing film, utter­ly mis­an­throp­ic in its out­look, and all the bet­ter for its refusal to com­pro­mise in expos­ing human nature at its ugly, imitable worst.

A Bay of Blood is out now on Blu-ray by Arrow Films as part of their Macabre Visions: The Films of Mario Bava boxset (also includ­ing Black Sun­day, The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Black Sab­bath, Kill, Baby… Kill!, Five Dolls For An August Moon, Baron Blood, Lisa and the Dev­il and Rabid Dogs).