A BAY OF BLOOD (1971)

 

(a.k.a. TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE; a.k.a. CARNAGE; a.k.a. THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, PART II; a.k.a. ECOLOGY OF A CRIME. Director/co-screenwriter: Mario Bava. Co-screenwriters: Fillipo Ottoni and Giuseppe Zaccariello, billed as Joseph McLee, their work based on Dardano Sacchetti and Gianfranco Barberi’s story and four other writers’ ideas.)

Storyline

The supposed suicide of a rich countess─shown as a murder─kicks off a spiral cycle of murders along a small shoreline over the course of several days.

 

Review

After a wealthy, wheelchair-bound woman, Countess Federica Donati (Isa Miranda, THE NIGHT PORTER, 1974) is killed by her husband─a crime made to look like a suicide─it sets into motion twelve more violent murders on the Countess’s privately owned island.

Her death is ruled a suicide, and it’s not long before other people come to the island, some to party (four young adults), some to kill and claim the old woman’s property.

BAY is credited with being a proto-slasher flick, a bleak, dark-filtered work that heavily influenced (possibly began) the slasher genre, along with Bob Clark’s 1974 grim-humored masterpiece, BLACK CHRISTMAS. Bava’s last giallo is an atmospheric, hazy, nightmarish succession of clever and cruel deaths, including the simultaneous spearing of two lovers, and a machete to another character’s face (both would later be used in FRIDAY THE 13^th PART 2, 1981─this recycling of these kills, according to FRIDAY producer/director Steve Miner, is because of Phil Scuderi, who co-produced and helped distribute both films. (Miner made these comments in Calum Waddell’s article “Steve Miner Talks About the ‘Friday the 13^th’ Franchise,” The Dark Side magazine, issue 210.)

For viewers trying to follow BAY’s wild storyline, good luck. Few clues are provided for much of the film, and the deaths─in their execution styles and order of dispatch─have a random feel until near the end, when certain facts come to light (via an exposition scene or two), and there’s only so many people left to off. Fans of bright red splatter may delight in Carlo Rambaldi and Bava’s FX, which were graphic, even for a Bava film.

What makes BAY distinctive from other stalk-and-slay gialli is its blending of distinctive quietness between kills (during locale shots of flora, buildings, and water), its spare-use soundtrack (courtesy of Stelvio Cipriani), and its mostly greed-based character motivations and palpable sense of mystery (giving it an almost traditional crime thriller feel).

There’s not a lot of backstory given about the twisty characters, but the actors are effective in their roles.

Claudio Camaso, billed as Claudio Volonté, played Simone, the fisherman. Chris Avram (THE KILLER RESERVED NINE SEATS, 1974) played Franco Ventura. Anna Maria Rosati, billed as Anna M. Rosati, played Laura, Ventura’s lover. Claudine Auger (BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA, 1971) played Renata Donati, Filipo’s estranged daughter. Luigi Pistilli (YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY, 1972) played Alberto, Renata Donati’s husband.

Leopaldo Trieste (DON’T LOOK NOW, 1973) played Paolo Fosatti, one of the Donatis’ neighbors. Laura Betti played Anna Fosatti, Paolo’s wife.

An uncredited Renato Cestiè played Renato and Alberto’s tween son. His same-age sister was played by Nicoletta Elmi (DEEP RED, 1975).

BAY is a standout flick for many reasons, among them its stylistic choices, many of them made because of its ultra-limited budget─only a master filmmaker like Bava could turn serious monetary constraints into a spooky, dreamlike, shocking (for its era) and influential virtue, something he and his crew pull off with relative aplomb. It’s not perfect, but given the conditions it was made under, it’s nothing less than a nasty-minded and miasmic miracle, one that viewers seem to love or hate.

BLACK SABBATH (1963)

 

(Director/co-screenwriter: Mario Bava. Co-screenwriters: Marcello Fondato and Alberto Bevilacqua).

Storyline

Boris Karloff hosts three terror tales revolving around a stalked call girl, a thieving nurse and a familial vampire.

Review

BLACK, a visually lush trilogy-tale film, is mostly excellent, an effectively spooky, giallo- and tradition-influenced hybrid flick that remains a high mark work in the genre.

The first segment, “A Drop of Water,” is set in London, England in 1910. It is loosely adapted from an Anton Chekhov story (billed here as Checov). In “Drop,” a thieving nurse steals her recently deceased employer’s ring, only to be haunted by the old woman’s yowling black cat, a pestiferous fly, and the eerie sound of dripping water. This segment is creepy and unsettling─excellent.

In “The Telephone,” possibly loosely based on Franco Luncentini’s story “Three and Thirty-three,” a beautiful French call girl (Rosy, played by Michèle Mercier) is stalked by an unseen man who seems to know her every move as she gets ready for bed. Initially a ghost-story giallo segment, it becomes a straight-up thriller in its twisty second half. Like “Drop” before it, the color-rich cinematography (provided by Ubaldo Terzano and an uncredited Bava) is wow-worthy. It doesn’t hurt that Mercier is gorgeous, like many of Bava’s actresses in this period of his career.

Screen credit for “Telephone” is given to F.G. Snyder. According to Wikipedia, Bava claimed he was “Telephone”’s original writer─two film critics later (supposedly) tracked down Luncentini as its source author.

When AIP (American International Pictures) and Titra Sound Corporation bought the US rights for the film and edited BLACK for its stateside audience, they trimmed scenes in “Telephone” that showed graphic violence and non-explicit lesbianism and prostitution. A supernatural element was also inserted in the US version of BLACK. Not only that, AIP also replaced Roberto Nicolosi’s score with Les Baxter’s.

The third and final entry in this atmospheric tryptich is “The Wurdulak,” loosely based on Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy’s “The Family of the Vourdalak.”  (Tolstoy is billed as Tolstoi.) According to Wikipedia, “other parts of the story were inspired by the Guy de Maupassant story ‘Fear’ and Bram Stoker’s DRACULA.” (Tolstoy is billed as Tolstoi and Maupassant is billed as his last name only.)

“Wurdulak” takes place in nineteenth-century Russian forest. A traveling nobleman (played by Mark Damon) finds a headless bandit’s corpse with a dagger stuck in his breast and takes the dagger with him. Taking shelter in a nearby house where a large family lives, he is informed that the blade belonged to their father (Gorca, played by Boris Karloff). Seems Gorca disappeared five days before─and, before leaving, told his family that if he disappeared and returned not to let him in. The father returns, and they don’t heed his earlier warning. . .

Karloff is ghoulishly delightful in this film, both as the tale-telling host (playing himself) and Gorca. The rest of the film’s cast is excellent as well. Unfortunately, “Wurdulak” runs long with a meh finish─it does not help that the women in “Wurdulak” choose to cower when they should be staking and beheading.

Despite “Wurdulak”’s excessive length and helpless women (like many in films of this era), BLACK is a superb, sumptuous stylistic and hybrid genre work, one that beguiles.

Beyond the film. . . according to Wikipedia, the English heavy metal band Black Sabbath liked the film and its name so much they changed their band name to it. Originally, they were called Earth, and wanted to avoid being confused with another band, also called Earth.

Quentin Tarantino and fellow filmmaker Roger Avary were also influenced by BLACK. Tarantino has been quoted as saying, “What Mario Bava did for the horror film in BLACK SABBATH, I was going to do with the crime film [PULP FICTION, 1994].”

BLACK SUNDAY (1960)

 

(a.k.a. THE MASK OF SATAN; director/cinematographer/uncredited co-screenwriter: Mario Bava. Co-screenwriters: Ennio De Concini, Mario Serandrei, who based their work on a story by Nicolay Gogol, billed as Nicolaj Gogl. Additional English dialogue written by George Higgins, billed as George Higgins III.)

Storyline

A seventeenth century Maldavian witch and her diabolical servant rise from their graves two hundred years later to get revenge on the descendants of her brother, who condemned the undead to death.

 

Review

This Gothic, black-and-white horror film is a stylized, highly influential work. Many of the scenes are striking in their now-familiar-to-the-genre sets, familiar storyline, scene set-ups and framing, and spooky score (courtesy of Roberto Nicolosi and, in the American version, Les Baxter). SUNDAY is Bava’s first credited feature as a director (known primarily as a cinematographer, he’d helped shoot five other features). Two of the things that set SUNDAY apart from other works is the sexualized vibe (tame by today’s standards) and the for-the-period graphic violence (e.g., when Princess Aja Vadja’s spiked satanic mask is hammered onto her face). It’s still hard-hitting now although more horrific cinema has been created and released since 1960.

Of course, this being an Italian production, there’s the post-production dialogue dubbing that is sometimes obvious. And Bava’s cinematography is superb, striking.

Everything works about SUNDAY, including the actors. Barbara Steele (THE CRIMSON CULT, 1968) is great as Princess Aja Vadja, the vengeful spellcaster, and her two-centuries-later relative, Katia. Arturo Dominici plays her equally frightening servant, Igor Javutich, also bearing the scars of the mask of Satan. Andrea Checchi played Dr. Choma Kruvajan and his descendant, Dr. Thomas Kruvajan. Ivo Garrani played Prince Vadja, the modern-day head of the Vadja castle. An uncredited Nanjo Gazzolo provided SUNDAY‘s narration.

With its themes of witchcraft, Satanism, vampirism and possession, this often fogbound, shadowy film, with its wind-whispery hallways and Vadja family crypt, horrible deaths (whose resulting corpses were revealed in slasher flick-like style) is one of the best films in the terror genre. If the above descriptions sound attractive to you, you might want to check it out.

SHIVERS (1975)

 

(a.k.a. IT CAME FROM WITHIN; a.k.a. THEY CAME FROM WITHIN; director/screenwriter: David Cronenberg).

From IMDb:

“The residents of a high-rise apartment building are being infected by a strain of parasites that turn them into mindless, sex-crazed fiends out to infect others by the slightest sexual contact.”

 

Review

Shot in fifteen days in 1974, Cronenberg’s first feature film is a nasty, blackly humorous piece of occasionally slapstick venereal-horror work, showing the trajectories of an experimental virus that reduces people to animalistic lust as it rapidly spreads throughout a high-rise and beyond its walls. SHIVERS is shocking and boundary-pushing for an R-rated film for its overtly sexual violence (although it’s nowhere near as graphic as Meir Zarchi’s rape-revenge torturerama I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, 1978). SHIVERS was so controversial in Canada that it got Cronenberg kicked out of his apartment in real life.

Despite its gritty, carnal themes and action, there is an underlying antiseptic nature to the film that is often present in Cronenberg’s early-to-mid-career flicks. That hospital-like undertone would come to the fore in his later movies. IMDb.com notes that every scene in SHIVERS contains the colors yellow or gold.

 All the acting is suitably over-the-top, though two actors stand out: the long, raven-haired Barbara Steele (Mario Bava’s BLACK SUNDAY, 1960; PIT AND THE PENDULUM, 1961), who adds a wild card intensity to the cavalcade of messy terror; and Joe Silver, a veteran character actor whose laidback performance in this was later revisited in altered form in Cronenberg’s 1977 non-sequel follow-up RABID.

 SHIVERS is not Cronenberg’s best work, but it is all-around excellent, a bold, raw cinematic announcement of an evolving, distinctive filmmaker unafraid to ruffle a few prudish feathers.