BAY OF BLOOD (1973) (a.k.a. TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE)
Starring Claudine Auger and Luigi Pistilli
Hailed by many as the film that inspired high-body-count slasher pics such as "Friday the 13th," Mario Bava's gory, early 1970s mystery has nice atmosphere and plenty of gore. In fact, this is probably the most explicit film Bava ever made.
Feuds over who has the rights to a bay, following the murder of a town matriarch who controls most of the property, results in a massacre of almost every character in the story. But the real "guts" of the movie may be its first third, when four fun-loving teens happen to show up to skinny dip and party at the bay. They're dispatched in gruesome ways that would be emulated by the Friday series: One gets a hatchet in the face, a couple are speared one on top of the other on a bed. Like the slasher films that would follow this, the kids all seem to be targeted because of their sexuality. While plenty of Italian horror films featured gore and slashers in the 1970s, very few seemed to target teens in this way. "Bay of Blood" was way ahead of its time.
But after the teens are wiped out, the film devolves into standard '70s Italian murder mystery territory and loses a lot of its punch. This is not one of Bava's best movies, but it does have style and a particularly well-done double homicide to open the movie and build its mystery. Not as colorful as Bava's "Blood and Black Lace" and the excellent "Lisa and the Devil," "Bay of Blood" is still a must for Bava fans and a must for lovers of the "Friday" series. It was also released on DVD under the title "Twitch of the Death Nerve" and to theaters as "Last House on the Left Part 2" (even though it has no relation to that film).