Bay of Blood
(Reazione a catena, 1971)

Mario Bava

Italy

90 min, color, Italian (English subtitles)

Review © 2006 Branislav L. Slantchev

I saw this years ago on an atrocious VHS bootleg and walked away underwhelmed. Then I saw it again on the Simitar R1 DVD, which is almost as bad as a VHS, and walked away annoyed. Finally, I saw it yet again (yes, there's no explanation for repeated acts of masochism) on the Italian Raro Video DVD and, finally, I found out what this film was supposed to look and feel like. And you know what? It's actually pretty decent when all is said and done. Let this serve as a warning to seeing Bava films in subpar releases (that's why I am still holding out on Kill, Baby, Kill... there's absolutely no way I am going to prejudice myself with the horrendous Brentwood R1).

Elaborate assisted suicide	These love birds crack me up

The story is, well one does not usually summarize what is essentially a slasher film. Still, perhaps some synopsis is in order. There's a lake (hence the "bay" in the title) and lots of people die around it (hence the "blood"). When people are not dying, they are killing, and some murders naturally provoke others (hence the Italian title, which means "chain reaction"). Basically, Countess Federica Donati (Isa Miranda) is a rich old woman who has consistently refused to sell her rights to prime lakeside property to a real estate developer by the name of Frank (Cristea Avram). As all real estate developers in real life, Frank is sleazy beyond belief: I mean, he's banging a lush young woman with the sensuous name of Laura (Anna Maria Rosati), and in the first few minutes of the film, to boot. You don't get any sleazier than this.

Typical Bava play with images	I see your points...

Now, I am getting ahead of myself here. You see, the film opens with the classic double-murder sequence in which the Countess's brief cameo is rudely terminated when the paralyzed poor old woman is brutally hanged in her own doorway. The soon-seen assailant turns out to be her current hubby (Giovanni Nuvoletti) who himself gets hacked to death upon returning to inspect the fruits of his labor. (This time the assailant remains unseen.) Now we have a critical mass, so the chain reaction will become self-sustaining until it runs out of things to consume.

"Personal space." Look it up.	Damn hippies and their stupid yellow buggies

As any slasher flick worth its salt in the amount of blood that will be gratuitously (and somewhat incredulously) spilled, Bay of Blood proceeds to attract numerous morons (how else would one characterize usually young people who do the most inexplicable things) so that they can part with their undeserved lives in an ever escalating orgy of the director's fertile imagination. As usual, there's the obligatory group of oversexed adolescents who show up without any discernible purpose whatsoever and are quickly made to remain forever young albeit somewhat less attractive.

Creepy entomologist: don't leave a horror film without him	Stray atmospheric shot

Things to watch out for. Brigitte Skay shows up as the German tourist Brunhilda (They don't actually use that name in Germany, do they? They do? Please, tell me it ain't so!) In Four Times That Night she managed to lose her clothes faster than she could say "I am too shy to pose nude," so her romping around in Eve mode is precisely what I expected to see. And romp around she does, with Bava throwing some nekkid swimming to have an excuse to film her body that would have given Rubens many a sleepless night. Of course, it all goes to hell when the unseen psycho mistakes her for a rare species of a small elephant and offs her for her tusks.

Sic transit gloria Germanica	Richly deserved

The other pretty impressive display of inspired editing occurs when her buddy Robert (Roberto Bonani) is brutally hacked (is there a gentle, non-brutal, way of hacking someone?) because of his atrocious hairdo, his nerve of inflicting it on viewers, and his generally irritating persona (I mean, how pathetically whiny can you get by hitting on your friend's score?) This is one murder I actually applauded. No doubt it was intended that way: with the quick zoom toward his face when he opens the door to face the killer, and then the pretty neat tumbling to the ground, with a lovingly lingering shot to make sure we know this dude won't be giving Afros their bad name anymore.

Don't make Cupid angry	Gypsy shortage

The other really cool murder is when the other two love-birds get speared while having sex. Now, a scene in which your torso is penetrated by the ultimate phallic symbol should be enough to give any film critic worth his salt a minor orgasm. Bava, in his usual wink-wink nudge-nudge way, actually turns the scene in what said critics would probably call "transgressing" some boundary or other. In this case, it's the boundary of good taste, which we not only boldly cross with the director but actually cannot even see with binoculars by the time the scene ends, long gyrations of the two dying bodies later. It's as if Bava is saying that the difference between sex and death is not as noticeable as we would like to pretend, a theme explored to the full depths of its shallowness in Dellamorte, Dellamore. I, for one, would rather have sex without dying, thank you very much.

Male chauvinism gone the way of the dodo	Gratuitous shot of Claudine Auger

When all those stylish killing are not getting in the way, the script plows ahead with the ponderous inevitability of the icebreaker V.I. Lenin. Since the tension can only be sustained for so long by dispatching inconsequential extras, Bava cranks up the tempo by bringing in some people who actually have something to do with the property over which the killings apparently started. There's the heiress Renata (Claudine Auger who everyone will forever remember as the Bond girl Domino in Tunderball) and her incompetent down-trodden hen-pecked feminism poster-boy Albert (Luigi Pistilli who normally wears a full set of two balls in his films). Renata's claim to the property is a bit shaky seeing that the lewd Countess has managed to bear a son out of wedlock.

This squid is so disgusting	Claudine admires neatly stacked corpses

And it all finally gets together when the heiress, the bastard, the developer, the horny woman, along with the inexplicable amateur entomologist and his delightfully over-the-top tarot-wielding wife (Laura Betti), all gather to celebrate Christmas. Oh well, maybe not. Suffice to say that by the time the film is over, you'd wish that somebody just shot someone, anyone really, for comic relief. Incidentally, the ending is absolutely hilarious in the "guns don't kill people, children kill people" sort of way. Who needs Michael Moore when Bava simply skewers the gun lobby with that final scene! Oh wait, let's not forget that it's not guns that kill most people in this film. Maybe we should ban cutlery, hatches, ropes, and hands while we're at it. Now this will make us all perfectly safe. And we'll live forever.

How evil schemes are hatched in style	Another pretty girl gasps for air

Now, let's not pretend that this is anything more than a slasher film. But then again, let's not pretend it's an ordinary slasher film. First, it's probably the first one in that genre. Whether this is good or bad depends entirely on the audience. I think there have been some entries here that are worth scaring your girlfriend with. Second, and more importantly, it's a Bava film and as such has plenty of eye candy that is simply missing from the remorseless successors. The creative scene framing (destroyed in the butchered cropped releases) and the flawless use of color (not even noticeable in all previous releases, including the widescreen ones) are things on which this film stands and falls. In this case, it clearly stands, even if the composition is much tamer than Bava's usual outlandish tricks. Still, a worthy effort.

Here, killer, killer, killer...	Guns don't kill people, children kill people

The Italian Raro Video DVD is the way to go here, hands down. It boasts an anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen video transfer which looks gorgeous compared to the other versions I have seen. It's the best, mind you, with all the heavily boosted contrast and occasional murkiness, but it's miles ahead of the alternatives. The audio is presented in English and Italian monoaural tracks, with the Italian one allowing optional English subtitles. With these multinationally cast films, it's hard to decide what the "original" language is supposed to be, so I opted for English. It's very nice and crisp. The extras include a documentary in which the story author Dardano Sacchetti gives some useful info, plus talent files, and trailers. A decent presentation all around, and definitely worth having for Bava fans.

June 19, 2006