A Masterpiece!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Generally credited as the inspiration for most of the slasher and serial killer movies in the next 70's and 80's, Bava's "A Bay Of Blood" isn't perfect by any means, but is well worth your time to take it in at least once, if you can.Whereas most of the films it inspired keep things simple (one killer, a bunch of nubile young victims, various gimmicky shocks and inventive ways to skewer and maim them), "Bay" distinguishes itself by having multiple killers, bright, crisp photography, and a whole lot of off-putting or unlikable characters who each get a brief moment of "stage time" before they dispatch each other in various jarring and startling ways. Mostly I think what makes Bava better than his imitators is his timing and setups - he knows just how long to focus in on his characters and just how much "humanity" to imbue them with before they get shuffled off this mortal coil. Saw it once, don't feel the need to ever see it again, but I thought it was pretty darned good.

Whereas Black Sunday may be one of the most influential films for the discerning Gothic horror artiste, Bava's 1971 'tour de snuff', Twitch of the Death Nerve, is unarguably the most influential toward the genre's eventual turn to bloodlust. Whether you like it or not, the definition of a horror film hasn't been the same since Twitch, and chances of its influence ever completely receding are next to nil. The first film to exploit its body-count as the main reason for viewing, Twitch of the Death Nerve even hits the ground running (or wheeling rather), with the first two of its thirteen ghastly murders occurring in the first scene alone. Besides the high mortality rate of the characters, and Bava's diabolical tunnel vision of the carnage, another not so easily noticeable (yet perhaps most lasting) influence of Twitch is the complete reliance on set pieces to reach its sadistic goal. Every murder is methodically, systematically designed for optimum shock, and the film's cameraman (Bava himself), art director, actors, writers, editors, FX men, etc., all play their crucial and individual parts to perfection each time, thereby making each piece stand alone like masochistic movements in a sadistic symphony.Said actors run the gamut from fallen icons of World Cinema (like Isa Miranda), and ex-Bond Girls (Thunderball's Claudine Auger), to Laura Betti, and a Brechtian spaghetti western star (Luigi Pistilli). The writers include none other than Dardano Sacchetti, who had just recently penned Argento's Cat O' Nine Tails, and would go on to give Lucio Fulci one of the finest scripts of his career – The Beyond. Carlo Rambaldi, who would go on to win two Oscars for Alien and E.T., created the then-state-of-the-art special effects. I suppose I should mention the story line, which is often attacked for being inconsequential, illogical, irrational, impossible to sort out, or simply the odious ex machina to simply get from one murder to another. I find it all pretty simple to explain myself – I don't see what's so difficult to understand. Bava's penchant for cynicism and his fascination with humanity's dark side has never been more apparent than in Twitch of the Death Nerve, whose plot concerns greed, real estate, the raping of the environment, and revenge.All the action transpires around a beautiful, undeveloped bay and its surrounding picturesque landscape/acreage, whose owner (Isa Miranda) has been murdered. Those who wish to convert the entire area into a fashionable resort now threaten the forests and natural life. But just who is the real heir to this potential fortune now? And who won't stop at nothing to own it all, or to preserve the land's natural state. Throw in some sex-crazed teenagers who stumble and wander where they shouldn't belong, and you've got the makings for wholesale slaughter. Beheadings, faces cleaved in two, necks gouged apart, bodies run through with spears & tridents, flying pots of boiling water, hangings, strangulations, bodies being blown to shotgun bits – Twitch of the Death Nerve's got it all! Video Watchdog's Tim Lucas said it best, "…the horror genre had seen nothing quite like it before – and it's seen very little unlike it ever since." Touché. As with his work on I Vampiri and Black Sunday, Bava likely had no idea that what he was making would change the course of horror film history. Twitch of the Death Nerve was a film for which Bava was especially proud – the body count, the blatantly offensive amorality, the over-indulgent carnality, and the ludicrous lump of unlikable characters.All these things were purposeful commentary on Bava's part – to take a stab at the industry, the genre; to see what he could do with a little bit of money; to push the envelope; to push the buttons and watch people's reactions. Such are valid and fun reasons for doing what he did. Little did Bava know that Twitch's genius would be singularly responsible for a whole bevy of '80s crap, including Friday the 13th, Part II's blatant theft of two of Twitch's death scenes. Argento's Bird and Bava's Twitch were the nails in the coffin for the first half of Italian Horror's heyday. The dark, alluring fantasies were now gone. No longer would the plots be semi-innocent, or quasi-Victorian. No more wandering through fogged graveyards and abandoned castles. Though Bava continued to make some work of merit in the '70s (Baron Blood, Lisa and the Devil), never again would he find himself at the forefront of the genre he almost single-handedly created. The future belonged to perversion, degeneracy, gore, hysteria, cannibalism, Teutonic witches, zombies and Goblins…lots and lots of Goblins.

The film begins with a rich lady being murdered in a rather grisly fashion. Moments later, the next victim dies. Then, throughout the film lots of people die. They might be heirs to the money--at least some of them. But really it's just a film about a guy who likes hacking people to pieces.I noticed that quite a few reviewers liked "A Bay of Blood" and the film is reportedly the first slasher picture. I just thought the film lacked plot and was an excuse to show lots of grisly murders (a few of which look awfully real) and some nudity. To me, this makes this one of director Mario Bava's weakest films--one with little in the way of subtlety and story. As for me, I value story much more than just random people lining up to be ripped to pieces.

A beautifully shot proto-slasher that's vividly coloured and is rich in meticulously composed dramatic shots. That alone convinces me that Bava didn't create this for a cheap cash grab like so many of the 80s movies that it influenced were. The gore shown is ahead of its time in terms of realism and it really catapulted the idea that violence that ends in a bloody mess (and not just nodding to the idea of brutality) could be enticing to watch. The ending is hilariously sinister, and it certainly undone everything the movie was building on for the last ninety or so minutes, but the spontaneity is perhaps the point of it.The only major problem is that there are too many characters to keep track of which causes the plot to be loose and hard to follow. A synopsis is really required to get more than the gist of it and that signifies quite poor storytelling. Otherwise, endearingly entertaining.