Bay of Blood
by Mario Bava
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: Anna Maria Rosati, Chris Avram, Claudine Auger, Claudio Camaso, Luigi PistilliDirector: Mario Bava
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 80 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-10-19
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Simitar Ent.
Movie Reviews of Bay of Blood
Movie Review: Bygone Beauty
Summary: 5 Stars
Bava plays a Hitchcock like trick at the beginning of BAY OF BLOOD, using Isa Miranda precisely as Hitchcock used Janet Leigh in the first reels of PSYCHO. Surely once you had secured the services of one of the greatest international stars of all time, you weren't going to kill her off--and so quickly! But that is precisely Bava's strategy, and that's precisely what he does. The gesture of this shock effect is largely lost to contemporary audiences who don't remember Isa Miranda properly, but she was still a potent force in 1971 when BAY OF BLOOD (also known as TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE) was produced. When you kill off your biggest star within the first fifteen minutes of the movie, in an especially brutal way, you are signalling your audience that all bets are off, no one is safe, and check your preconceptions about cinema and narrative structure at the door.
A shame in a way, because the movie sure could use a lot more of Miranda, though talented actors pop up every ten minutes or so like ducks in a shooting gallery. Isa Miranda was the great international sensation of Mussolini's Italy; even MGM got wind of her and imported her a la Garbo for a few unsuccessful American films right before the outbreak of World War II put a kibosh to her career in the States. Back in Italy she continued in her reign as a sort of Dolores Del Rio slash Naximva tragedy Queen, with huge dollops of sex thrown in for mass appeal. Thus in LA RONDE (1950) Max Ophuls saves her perhaps the most delectable sequence of all, larding her into a sex sandwich between boyish Gerard Philipe (the Ryan Philippe of his day!) and stalwart Jean-Louis Barrault from CHILDREN OF PARADISE. David Lean made her the earthy manageress of the Pensione spinstery Katharine Hepburn stays at in Venice in SUMMER MADNESS (aka SUMMERTIME, 1955), using her magnificent, somewhat ravaged sensuality as a contrapuntal force, much as plain Deborah Kerr is confronted by wild Ava Gardner in John Huston's later film of NIGHT OF THE IGUANA. In BAY OF BLOOD, which begins with Miranda's countess rolling her wheelchair moodily past window after curtained window in her chateau over the bay, a mood of desolate and painful memory is instantly set up. It's as if she's thinking of all the "white telephone" movies she's ever played in, and rueing the day when her great beauty came to an end. Bava's photography is always topnotch, but in the opening sequence of BAY OF BLOOD he puts it to memorial use; the color shimmers, the light radiates off of Miranda's hair, eyes, profile, and the wheels creak in protest as she forces them across the long gallery for one last look at her bay.
Summary of Bay of Blood
This late entry in Italian horror auteur Mario Bava's catalog is in keeping with much of his other work: a rather murky plot, inventive camera work and editing, gauzy lighting using red and blue gels, and an atmospheric, dreamlike feel throughout. Where it parts ways with many of his films is in the high body count--so high that many feel Bay of Blood was a likely influence on American slasher films such as Friday the l3th. The killing centers on a list of potential heirs to a piece of lakefront property ripe for development (a subplot involves camping teenagers who are also being slaughtered--sound familiar?). The slayings come fast and furious, with gunshots, chokings, stabbings, decapitations, and a two-for-the-price-of-one impalement, to name a few. Bava creates an off-kilter mood of melancholia for the film that makes it somewhat less fun than the mindless slasher flicks of the 1980s, but also renders it a more thought-provoking, cynical sort of movie. --Jerry RenshawSimilar DVD Movies
Deep Red (Uncensored English Version)E1E; Release date: 2011-05-17; DVD
Best price: $7.17
Price in other shops:
Phenomena (Special Edition)Fox; Release date: 2008-05-27; DVD
Best price: $8.91
Price in other shops:
The Bird With the Crystal PlumageRelease date: 1999-11-16; DVD
Best price: $7.82
Price in other shops:
Nightmare: 30th Anniversary EditionCODE RED ENT.; Release date: 2011-07-26; DVD
Best price: $14.49
Price in other shops:
StagefrightKoch; Release date: 2007-10-30; DVD
Best price: $4.24
Price in other shops:
OperaRYK; Release date: 2007-09-25; DVD
Best price: $6.55
Price in other shops:
The BurningSony; Release date: 2007-09-11; DVD
Best price: $7.17
Price in other shops:
City of the Living DeadWEA DES Moines Video; Release date: 2007-02-27; DVD
Best price: $49.40
The House with Laughing WindowsImage Entertainment; Release date: 2003-03-11; DVD
Best price: $9.79
Price in other shops:
Suspiria (Two-Disc Special Edition)WEA DES Moines Video; Release date: 2007-09-25; DVD
Best price: $9.59
Price in other shops: