The Film Source Collection
Bay of Blood
Horror-Classic
Italy / 1971
/ 100 minutes / Color
Starring:
Claudine Auger • Luigi Pistilli
Claudio Volonté • Anna Maria Rosati
Chris Avram • Leopoldo Trieste
Laura Betti • Brigitte Skay • Isa Miranda
Paola Rubens • Guido Boccaccini
Roberto Bonanni and Giovanni Nuvoletti
Directed
by MARIO BAVA
Produced by Giuseppe Zaccariello
Music by Stelvio Cipriani
Cinematography by Mario Bava
Editing by Carlo Reali
Art Direction: Sergio Canevari
A family's murderous battle over some bayfront property is the subject of this viciously bloody giallo-horror, which may be the first modern slasher film.
Claudine Auger is wonderful as the scheming daughter of a murdered Countess who is behind the whole thing. Just for fun, four hippies show up in a Speed Buggy-type car led by Brigitte Skay, who dances the Shake and swims naked before having her throat hacked open with a machete. Her boyfriend gets the machete in his face and the other couple has a spear thrust through their bodies as they make love.
All of these murders were copied nearly shot-for-shot in Steve Miner's Friday the 13th, Part 2 (1981), and the film's style influenced countless American slasher films of the '70s and '80s. There's also strangulation by phone cord, a gory decapitation by an axe, and a man speared to a wall.
If that's not enough to appease bloodthirsty audiences, Bava throws in five other murders as well.
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