BAY OF BLOOD

Opening with an incredible, stylish double murder, this film zips along at a frantic pace as greedy and (intentionally) unlikeable characters meet their demise in several creative ways. Axe hackings, machete facials, impalings, scaldings, throat slashings-the gore content is head and shoulders above what anyone, outside of H.G Lewis, was doing at the time.

The script, written by Bava and prolific script writter Dardano Sachetti, (this was his second following Argento's Cat O' Nine Tails) is mechanical yet intelligent. The viewer is not given a character to root for, evryone deserves to die for some reason or other. And don't try to guess the killer's identity, because there's mutiple murderers.

Bava here not only re-invents the giallo, but invents the slasher. The bay side location, an unseen killer, a machete or axe, skinny dipping, abnoxious teenagers, high body count, all things that would latter turn up in American slasher films of the 1980's. The most blatent crib is in Steve Miner's Friday The 13th part 2, youngsters are speared while making love, the spear peircing through both of there bodies. The same scene, and almost the exact same camera angles can be found first 10 years earlier in Bay Of Blood.

The photography, also by Bava is beautiful. Full of strange angles, focus pulls, his trademark zooms and color gels, and an incredible rack focus from one side of a bay to the other. The music by Stelvio Cipriani, who also worked on Bava's mean spirited Rabid Dogs, is great as usual, and thankfully was not rescored by Lex Baxter like most of Bava's other films that made it to the states.

Highly reccomended, and a good place to start if you're not familiar with Bava's work.