Plenty of ink has been spilled about how Mario Bava’s second great body-count movie (the first, of course, being 1964’s Blood and Black Lace) is so gleefully cynical, and indeed, its clockwork faux-And Then There Were None mechanism, concocted by Dardano Sachhetti, Franco Barberi, Giuseppe Zaccariello, Filippo Ottoni and Bava is a droll piece of no-one-is-innocent snark venom (even the phony flower people who heedlessly fall to one of the many killers’ many hacking weapons are reasonably distasteful characters when you get right down to cases). The most pertinently fun feature of the 1971 picture for me is Bava’s ceaseless visual inventiveness within the even tighter budgetary constraints than the famously frugal filmmaker was accustomed to; it’s nifty to see him almost manically working effects via lens variation, focus tricks, composition, editing, and/or some combination of the above. His modern-baroque compulsion drove him to add visual “interest” to even the most ostensibly routine shots, as in the above view of plotter Laura (Anna Maria Rosati) engaged in…plotting. That’s a neat peripheral manifestation of lens variation—to place a bunch of actual lenses, more or less, within the composition itself. Who else thinks of that anymore, or maybe the question should be, who else has the brass to just put it out there because it suits one’s filmmaking desire. There still walk among us people who hold that noticeable film technique is bad film technique, because it takes you out of the story. Or something. As someone whose “appreciation” of film began with the horror genre, wherein film technique is often noticeable even when it’s “not,” I’ve never had much truck with this view, which I tend to associate with people who wanna shove second-rate politically sensitive “naturalism” down one’s throat, or some such. The thing with Bava is that it’s ALWAYS noticeable, that’s what it is and who he his, and a shot like the one above exemplifies that as much as shot of any of his much-vaunted shock effects would.
The new Arrow Video Blu-ray of Bay of Blood, which was playing on my plasma when I took the above snapshot, is really delightful and region-free (it’s a U.K. import) and highly recommended to cinephiles who get their kicks on this particular route. Watching it was one highlight of last weekend.
Of the Bava films I’ve seen, this is my favorite. That ending, man…crazy!
Glenn, I enjoy Bava, but when you or Tim Lucas talk about a film like BAY OF BLOOD I always find myself hypnotized against my rational judgement into thinking he’s a great director.
I can’t wait to see this thing. The exuberance of the Italian Cinema! Especially when dealing with the lurid and perhaps exploitative. I think the charge of “too much attention to itself” gets misused more often than not and, like most, falls to, “If you know how to do it, then do it, and if you don’t just point the camera and leave it be” because going for that and failing can be a pretty uncomfortable thing to watch. Then there usually follows a cry for naturalism! Movies for adults! And such. But really its about the feeling, what best gets the emotion out there or rather you into it. The more I think about the horror genre and what is capable in it the more I long for radical mash-ups of deeply felt emotion with crazy over the top visuals. Things to do, things to do!
You can’t have a moment of Bava appreciation on the web without at least on back-handed swipe disguised as a compliment in the comments. He was a great director, period!
Even though I wish we had gotten the Italian version remastered as well, at least it’s there as an extra, and Arrow did great work on this disc. It looks fabulous – more Bava on blu-ray, please!
I was watching that excellent UK DVD set of trailers for Video Nasties that recently came out, of which one Bay of Blood was one that was prosecuted under the title Bloodbath, and was quite amused at the comment Kim Newman made in his introduction to the film that Bay of Blood is really La Ronde with murders instead of love affairs!
It seemed to be quite a strange mix of references at first, but then I remembered that Four Times That Night is a sex comedy version of Rashomon, and suddenly the La Ronde linkage did not seem so strange!
“Who else thinks of that anymore, or maybe the question should be, who else has the brass to just put it out there because it suits one’s filmmaking desire.”
Luca Guadagnino, perhaps? This kind of thing seemed to be all throughout I AM LOVE.
The very idea of Bava on blu makes me positively giddy. If Arrow gets around to BLACK SABBATH, I may not leave the house for a week. I really need to commit to saving up for the Lucas book.
Save up for two, would you, otherbill? I’d like a copy also.
Wait, isn’t that shot from Twitch of the Death Nerve?
Or are they one and the same?
Any love for Rabid Dogs?
So much love for Rabid Dogs. That was my gateway Bava, despite it being completely different from anything else he’s done. What a delightfully nihilistic ending.
And as far as overlooked late period Bava goes, has anyone here seen Shock, aka Beyond the Door II, in which he’s operating in a sort of Fulci, House By the Cemetary mode? Few films have given me the creeps as thoroughly.
To answer Lex’s question, Twitch of the Death Nerve and Bay of Blood are in fact one and the same. It’s also gone by various other names through the years, including Last House on the Left Part II. And Rabid Dogs is pretty terrific.
I can’t help but think it’s kind of interesting that when Anna Maria Rosati turns up later in the film dressed all in white she bears a certain resemblance to Angie Dickinson in Dressed to Kill, but maybe I’m overthinking things.
Yes, Shock is excellent – although the boy taking on the qualities of his father, along with a less than innocent infatuation with his mother, was quite queasy. Probably Daria Nicolodi’s other great role along with Deep Red (I’d also through in Tenebrae, as that’s my favourite Argento film, but Nicolodi’s role is smaller there).
I’ve just had the chance to watch the excellent Planet of the Vampires. Cheesy in places, but wonderfully creepy – like a more upsettingly violent version of the original Star Trek series. I can tell why people talk about its influence on Alien – I think the creators of Alien must have used Planet of the Vampires for the first half of their film as the creepy planet and the exploration of an alien spaceship seems extremely familiar; and then used the premise of It! The Terror From Beyond Space as the template for the second half of the monster running amok on the spaceship.
This is not to denigrate Alien, as it is a wonderfully effective film in its own right, but it is fascinating to see some of these ideas already present and working effectively within those earlier films.