Having been a fan of 80's slasher movies since I was a teenager and embracing Friday the 13th (1980), Halloween (1978) and all the other low budget rip-offs that followed A Bay of Blood is a revelation after finally catching up with it some 50 years after it's initial release.
Mario Bava's controversial and ground breaking classic is often cited as the beginning of the modern slasher with unflinching graphic imagery, violence and blood letting however I hadn't appreciated just how much the Friday the 13th franchise owes to this cult film. Sean S Cunningham was obviously greatly influenced by the Italian filmmaker and even recreates some of Bava's scenes in the first couple of Friday the 13th movies, notably the spear going through a couple making love on the bed, the girl getting undressed and going for a skinny dip in the lake only to be watched and hunted down by the killer, the beheading of a woman and a machete embedded into a victim's face.
Having established himself as a horror filmmaker, firstly with Hammer style Gothic horror movies in the early 1960's then creating the much lauded Italian 'giallo' genre that combined film noir, murder mystery, eroticism and graphic imagery that inspired the likes of Dario Argento, Bava made a further shift in the horror genre with a totally unrestrained, uncompromising and visceral approach to shock audiences with extreme violence, gore and realism that set the template for the American slasher that followed having influenced the likes of John Carpenter, Wes Craven and many others.
The opening murder of a Countess sparks a number of unscrupulous characters, including her daughter played by Bond girl Claudine Auger, to go after her large estate on the bay with a series of brutal killings. People get slashed and slaughtered, including four unsuspecting teenagers (sound familiar), and it's Carlo Rambaldi's impressive makeup effects that help Bava achieve the level of realism not seen before with such brutal killings.
A Bay of Blood is a stylish, intense, visceral, nicely paced and well made film that influenced several generations of filmmakers and although prosecuted by the DPP under the Video Recordings Act of 1984 by people who didn't know what they were talking about, this is nowhere near as amateurish, exploitative or low rent as some of the titles that made it onto the list.
Mario Bava's controversial and ground breaking classic is often cited as the beginning of the modern slasher with unflinching graphic imagery, violence and blood letting however I hadn't appreciated just how much the Friday the 13th franchise owes to this cult film. Sean S Cunningham was obviously greatly influenced by the Italian filmmaker and even recreates some of Bava's scenes in the first couple of Friday the 13th movies, notably the spear going through a couple making love on the bed, the girl getting undressed and going for a skinny dip in the lake only to be watched and hunted down by the killer, the beheading of a woman and a machete embedded into a victim's face.
Having established himself as a horror filmmaker, firstly with Hammer style Gothic horror movies in the early 1960's then creating the much lauded Italian 'giallo' genre that combined film noir, murder mystery, eroticism and graphic imagery that inspired the likes of Dario Argento, Bava made a further shift in the horror genre with a totally unrestrained, uncompromising and visceral approach to shock audiences with extreme violence, gore and realism that set the template for the American slasher that followed having influenced the likes of John Carpenter, Wes Craven and many others.
The opening murder of a Countess sparks a number of unscrupulous characters, including her daughter played by Bond girl Claudine Auger, to go after her large estate on the bay with a series of brutal killings. People get slashed and slaughtered, including four unsuspecting teenagers (sound familiar), and it's Carlo Rambaldi's impressive makeup effects that help Bava achieve the level of realism not seen before with such brutal killings.
A Bay of Blood is a stylish, intense, visceral, nicely paced and well made film that influenced several generations of filmmakers and although prosecuted by the DPP under the Video Recordings Act of 1984 by people who didn't know what they were talking about, this is nowhere near as amateurish, exploitative or low rent as some of the titles that made it onto the list.