Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 9786304857311 Format: Color, NTSC ISBN: 6304857314 Label: Mpi Home Video Manufacturer: Mpi Home Video Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Mpi Home Video Release Date: January 26, 1998 Running Time: 84 minutes Sales Rank: 102316 Studio: Mpi Home Video Theatrical Release Date: May 03, 1972
Amazon.com: This late entry in Italian horror auteur Mario Bava's catalog is in keeping with much of his other work: a rather murky plot, inventive camera work and editing, gauzy lighting using red and blue gels, and an atmospheric, dreamlike feel throughout. Where it parts ways with many of his films is in the high body count--so high that many feel Bay of Blood was a likely influence on American slasher films such as Friday the l3th. The killing centers on a list of potential heirs to a piece of lakefront property ripe for development (a subplot involves camping teenagers who are also being slaughtered--sound familiar?). The slayings come fast and furious, with gunshots, chokings, stabbings, decapitations, and a two-for-the-price-of-one impalement, to name a few. Bava creates an off-kilter mood of melancholia for the film that makes it somewhat less fun than the mindless slasher flicks of the 1980s, but also renders it a more thought-provoking, cynical sort of movie. --Jerry Renshaw
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - bloody effects help boring movie
The beautiful colors, camera angles, and bloody effects are what kept me watching this movie. The actors in this have to be some of the most un-charismatic ever! it was fun to see them dispatched before they could say another word and put me to sleep! This is the english version and unfortunately the dubbing is not funny, something that would have helped the entertainment value. Like most european horror this is shocking because of the violence and not scary, with very little suspense(see "let's scare jesica to death" if you want all that). DVD picture is very good, bright and colorful. Audio ... Read More
Rating: - Bloody, but one of Bava's best
This movie is very violent - one of the first mad slasher, body count films. We are shown several violent murders in gruesome detail, causing some to consider this film a useless excuse for on-screen violence. Others, myself included, see quite a bit more in the film. I will try to minimize spoilers, but it is difficult to describe a film where eleven murders occur in less than one day without giving something away.
The film centers around the efforts of several greedy, unscrupulous people to gain control of a secluded bay owned by an elderly (and recently-deceased) contessa. There ... Read More
Rating: - Stylistic but disjointed.
Bay of Blood single-handedly invented the slasher sub-genre with it's use of a high body count (around a dozen), ton's of gratuitius nudity, and it is the first movie to use the first person camera from the murderers' point of view. Some of special effect's are a little dated now, but they are pulled off very well for their time (70), and this is a very stylistic murder mystery. The only reason I gave this four star's is because there are a lot of character's in the story, because of that it becomes a little disjointed and hard to follow. Also, sometime's the cinematography is a little too experimental ... Read More
Rating: - Solid, but flawed Giallo
In many ways Bay of Blood can be seen as the first slasher movie, while the years prior to the release of Bay of Blood there were other movies that inspired many slasher movies and you can even see the influence in Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace, but here with Bay of Blood there are a lot more slasher elements than most Giallos, which already have some to begin with. A lot of the clichés that would later become very common with slasher flicks are seen in Bay of Blood.
This is a very interesting Giallo where pretty much every character is some how involved with murder. There really aren't ... Read More
Rating: - Murky plot, silly dialog, vague motives, creepy fun and the birth of
[...]While parts of this are beyond belief the camera work is fluid and the murders are very interesting.
A piece of prime property will be inherited by someone in this large circle of people and someone wants that circle just a little tighter and starts to bump the others off. There is also something about Campers on the land. It's all delightfully surreal with murders that top each successive murder.
Watching this one you will be struck at how much "Friday The 13th" owes to this movie. Some scenes were lifted wholesale from this into the story of Jason and his blood fetish. Not for all taste ... Read More
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