A Bay of Blood
A Bay of Blood is a 1971 Italian giallo film directed and co-written by Mario Bava and starring Claudine Auger, Luigi Pistilli, Claudio Camaso, Laura Betti, Leopoldo Trieste, Anna Maria Rosati, Brigitte Skay, Chris Avram and Isa Miranda. The story details a string of mysterious murders that occur around the titular bay.
Widely considered Bava's most violent film, its emphasis on bloody murder set pieces, created by effects artist Carlo Rambaldi, was hugely influential on the slasher film subgenre that followed a decade later. In 2005, the magazine Total Film named A Bay of Blood one of the 50 greatest horror films of all time.
Plot
One night at her bayside mansion, Countess Federica Donati is attacked and strangled to death by her husband, Filippo, who stages the murder as a suicide. Shortly afterward, Filippo is stabbed to death by an assailant, who removes his corpse from the scene. Police find what they believe to be a suicide note written by the countess but fail to locate Filippo. Architect Franco Ventura travels to the property in order to have Filippo sign over ownership of the bay, unaware that Filippo has been killed. Filippo's daughter, Renata, and her husband, Alberto, travel to the bay with their two children to determine Filippo's whereabouts.Four gallivanting friends—Luca, Roberto, Sylvie, and Louise—trespass on the property and break into the seemingly deserted mansion. Louise goes skinny-dipping alone and encounters Filippo's corpse in the bay. While seeking the rest of the group, Louise is pursued and murdered by an assailant with a billhook. The assailant also uses the billhook to murder Roberto, then impales Luca and Sylvie with a spear while they have sex.
Alberto and Renata meet with eccentric entomologist Paolo Fossati and his fortune teller wife Anna and learn about Simone, the countess's illegitimate son, who lives by the bay as a fisherman. Alberto and Renata question Simone about Filippo and discover Fillipo's corpse in Simone's boat, though Simone says that he found the body in the bay. Alberto leaves Renata at Ventura's cottage while he gets their car. Renata discovers the bodies of Luca, Roberto, Sylvie, and Louise in Ventura's bathroom. Ventura attacks Renata with an axe, but Renata stabs him with scissors and leaves him for dead. Paolo and Anna separately discover the bodies at Ventura's cottage and are killed by Alberto and Renata before they can alert the police.
Ventura's secretary and lover, Laura, arrives at Ventura's cottage. She discovers that Ventura is wounded, and he tells her to bring Simone. At his cabin, Simone accuses Laura of conspiring with Ventura and Filippo to kill the countess. Laura confesses that Ventura had her seduce Filippo but falsely claims that she did not know that Filippo would kill the countess. Simone strangles her to death. It is revealed that Simone killed Filippo, Louise, Roberto, Luca, and Sylvie, and that Ventura convinced him to sign away the property for a payoff, airline tickets, and a fake passport. Alberto and Renata follow Simone from his cabin, and Alberto kills him as part of the couple's plan to obtain the property. The couple return to Ventura's cottage, where the still-alive Ventura attacks Alberto, who kills him after a struggle. Alberto burns the documents signed by Simone and Ventura.
Alberto and Renata prepare to return home to await the announcement of their inheritance when they are shot dead by their son, who has mistaken their shotgun for a toy. The son and daughter think their parents are playing dead and rush outside to play along the bay.
Cast
Production
Development and writing
The genesis of A Bay of Blood was when producer Dino De Laurentiis heard that Dardano Sacchetti, screenwriter of the popular The Cat o' Nine Tails, had fallen out with the film's director Dario Argento. He contacted Sacchetti and persuaded him to collaborate with director Mario Bava on a giallo film. Sacchetti and Bava got along well, and together came up with a story in which two parents commit murder to secure a better future for their children. In this early version of the story, the parents are driven to commit one murder after another in a chain reaction, becoming so caught up in their plan that they abandon their children for several days. When they return home, the starving and terrified children kill them. The 13 murders were conceived as isolated sequences, with no initial idea of how they would fit into the story; Sacchetti credits Bava with the idea of two people being killed with a spear while making love and himself with the idea of a woman being killed in her wheelchair.Sacchetti wrote the first draft of the script, titled Cosi imparano a fare i cattivi after a line spoken by the children after killing their parents, with his writing partner Franco Barbieri. However, spectacular arguments with Bava and the production team led to Barbieri being fired, and Sacchetti quit as an act of solidarity with his partner. De Laurentiis, disenchanted when The Cat o' Nine Tails failed to recreate its domestic popularity when released abroad, also abandoned the project.
Bava, owing a massive amount in back taxes, felt he needed to complete a film soon, and turned to Giuseppe Zaccariello to take over as producer. Zaccariello insisted that the shooting script be written by Filippo Ottoni, who was reluctant to take the job since he did not like exploitation films. Numerous other writers, including Zaccariello himself, had their hands involved in devising the final screenplay.
Casting
The cast included Laura Betti, who had got along well with Bava on Hatchet for the Honeymoon. At the time De Laurentiis approached Bava about working with Sacchetti, Bava and Betti had been toying with the idea of making a movie called "Odore di carne" about cannibalism on Los Angeles colleges.Filming
The film began production in early 1971, still under the shooting title Cosi imparano a fare i cattivi, which was soon changed to Reazione a catena. Yet another title used during shooting was La baia d'argento, discarded for fear that the movie would be perceived as a parody of Dario Argento's works as a result. The final title of Ecologia del delitto was suggested by Zaccariello because the word "ecologia" was in vogue at the time. The film's budget was extremely low, and it had to be shot very quickly and cheaply. Due to the severe budgetary restrictions, Bava not only acted as his own cinematographer, but also utilized a simple child's wagon for the film's many tracking shots.Unusually for an Italian film of the time, Bava shot alternate dialogue takes in both Italian and in English for ease of dubbing. Aside from some different character names, the two versions differ in runtime by approximately one minute.
The location shooting was mostly completed at Zaccariello's Sabaudia beach house and its outlying property. Bava had to resort to various camera tricks to convince the audience that an entire forest existed when in fact, only a few scattered trees were at the location. Betti recalled: "All of this had to occur in a forest. But where was it? Bava said, 'Don't worry. I will do the forest'. And he found a florist who was selling these little stupid branches with little bits of foliage on them, and he began to make them dance in front of the camera! We had to act the scenes strictly in front of those branches—if we moved even an inch either way, the 'woods' would disappear!"
As a favor to his friend Bava, Roberto Rossellini filmed uncredited second unit footage.
Special effects
To ensure the utmost realism in depicting the thirteen different murders, Carlo Rambaldi was hired to provide the special make-up effects. To create the deaths of Anna, Louise, and Sylvie, wax effigies of the actresses' throats and backs were constructed and rigged to expulse brightly colored blood when cut. The illusion of Roberto being stabbed in the face with a billhook was achieved with a prop blade which was swiftly pulled out of frame to hide the fact that it was sculpted to conform exactly to actor Roberto Bonanni's profile.Release
A Bay of Blood was promoted with multiple different titles in Italy. The film was announced as Antefatto, but when finally released to theatres, the title had changed to Ecologia del delitto. When the film did poorly on its initial release, it was pulled from Italian theaters and retitled Reazione a Catena, and was later re-released as Bahia de Sangre.A Bay of Blood was acquired up for US distribution in 1972 by Steve Minasian's Hallmark Releasing, which specialized in exploitation films. Premiering the film under its original English title, Carnage, Hallmark copied their successful advertising campaign for Mark of the Devil by proclaiming that Bava's film was "The Second Film Rated 'V' for Violence!". This campaign prompted a lawsuit from the Motion Picture Association of America on the grounds that it intruded on their exclusive right to rate motion pictures, and the film was withdrawn and re-released under the now common title Twitch of the Death Nerve with an R rating appearing in advertisements. Thanks to Hallmark's distribution partnership with Bava's former employer American International Pictures, the film played for years under this title in drive-ins and grindhouses throughout the country as part of a double or triple bill with other Hallmark/AIP films, most notably Wes Craven's equally-influential The Last House on the Left and Fernando Di Leo's Slaughter Hotel, but it has since been re-released theatrically and on home video under a variety of titles. In the US alone, its later titles include A Bay of Blood, Last House on the Left Part II, Last House Part II and New House on the Left.