Bay of Blood (1971)

Director: Mario Bava
Writer(s): Bava, Filippo Ottoni, and Giuseppe Zaccariello, from a story by Franco Barberi and Dardano Sacchetti
Starring: Claudine Auger, Luigi Pistilli, Claudio Camaso, and Anna Maria Rosati

Why is this movie better known as Bay of Blood, and not Twitch of the Death Nerve, one of its many alternate titles, and one of the best horror movie names in cinema history? Image Entertainment's 2001 DVD version is the only major release to use that title, but the DVD itself, which is long out-of-print, was maligned for its terrible sound quality (an issue that continues to be a problem, though subsequent releases have gradually improved upon it.)

The lackluster Bay of Blood moniker insists it's nothing more than a tired slasher cliché, a notion that couldn't be further from the truth, if only for two specific reasons: 1.) it's the film that arguably laid the groundwork for the American slasher film, and 2.) it's better than almost all of them that would follow. While the 45 years since its release has eroded away some of the effectiveness of Bay of Blood's gore effects, the focus on its story (as thin as it is), along with director Mario Bava's fiendishly inventive cinematography and unforecasted death scenes, still makes this riveting, required viewing, even today.

The plot is threadbare, but somehow more advanced than most films of its ilk: Countess Federica is an old, wheelchair-bound woman, who owns a large amount of valuable bayfront property. As the film opens, she is sullenly wheeling through her bedroom, stopping only to stare sorrowfully out her rainy window, before she is confronted by an unseen killer, who wraps a rope around her neck, and kicks her wheelchair out from under her, leaving her to asphyxiate under her own weight. The camera pans up, revealing the killer, an older mustachioed man who takes off his gloves, and leaves a suicide note explaining that she can't take it any more. He is about to move the corpse, when he himself is dispatched, stabbed several times by a different unseen killer.

With this one scene, we can tell we are watching a master of his craft once again reinventing the wheel: Director Mario Bava is said to have “invented” the Italian giallo, with films like The Evil Eye (aka The Girl Who Knew Too Much) and Blood and Black Lace. With Bay of Blood, he not only created the American slasher, but has somehow managed to avoid the future cliches that would plague the slasher, while simultaneously leaving enough of them intact to leave DNA evidence all over the subgenre. We have nude women skinny-dipping, and having sex before getting killed; there's a random car full of partying young adults that merely show up with the sole purpose of adding to the body count; there are graphic, violent deaths that would later become a staple of horror cinema; all of the common things we have come to expect from watching horror franchises like Friday the 13th, and the Halloween series, is here in full force (Friday the 13th Part II even went so far as to directly lift two deaths from this film).

But it's not necessarily what's here, but what's missing that makes Bay of Blood such a fascinating 84 minutes: the deaths are rarely foreshadowed with tacky soundtrack cues, meaning they are often sudden, and shocking; Bava foregoes the typical atmosphere by having a majority of the action take place during the day; and there isn't a single masked killer, but rather a series of killers, all trying to off the competition to become rightful heir to “the bay”. There's even a baffling “twist” ending that manages to be both moronic, and fitting, paving the way for a startlingly upbeat final theme song.

Speaking of themes, the soundtrack was composed by prolific Italian composer Stelvio Cipriani who hits on some fantastic themes here, while avoiding the cliches of most similar releases: The cue leading to the opening murder is jarringly beautiful, foreshadowing none of the dark events to come; likewise, some of the violent aftermaths of the murders feature orchestral sections that work in direct contrast to the violence, making them more haunting than they should be. There is, of course, the camp typical of Italian horror soundtracks (there always seems to be at least one cheesy track in all of them), but none of them feel out of place; at its best, it's an outstanding score, while in lesser moments, it's merely a good one.

Following the intro, we meet the bizarre residents living in “the bay”, who all either stand to gain or lose something from the sudden death of the Countess: There's Simon, a man who lives off the creatures he catches in the bay, and who may be hiding a family secret; Frank Venture, a real estate agent who notices the demand such property could fetch; his secretary/lover Laura, who feels abandoned by his sudden leaving for the bay; Paolo, an entomologist who spends his days catching bugs and torturing them in the name of science; and his wife, Anna, who puts too much of her stock in Tarot cards and mysticism. Rounding out the cast of would-be killers is Renata, the estranged daughter of the mustachioed man killed in the opening scene, and her husband, Albert; the two of them arrive later to claim the bay for themselves, where they find—like everyone else—that it won't be that easy.

Then there are the four teenagers who show up and make everything even more difficult. They break into Ventura's empty cottage to steal liquor and party, but soon find out that they are victims of circumstance, when they are killed simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. These deaths, which occur in rapid fashion, are probably the most memorable kills contained herein; a couple also stand as being some of my favorite deaths in any movie. The buildup is also fantastic, with one of the teenagers running from a killer that only she can see, while tribal drums set up a frantic tension missing from the rest of the film; it proves that, when inspired, there was nothing that Bava couldn't do.

I'm not sure that I would consider Bay of Blood to be even in the top 5 things Bava ever did—it lacks depth and often becomes repetitive--but it's easily one of my favorite slasher movies. I've stated before that I get bored of the same ol' stuff all the time, so the sight of masked killers stalking oversexed teenagers for 90 minutes gets incredibly old. That's partly where the ingenuity of Bay of Blood lies—it kills its teens in under five minutes—somehow making a four-decade old film one of the more interesting subversions on the very subgenre that it helped to create.

RATING: 7.5/10

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Vanishing Point (1971)

Director: Richard C. Sarafian
Writer(s): Guillermo Cabrera Infante, from a story outline by Malcolm Hart
Starring: Barry Newman, Clevon Little, Dean Jagger, and Victoria Medlin

When it comes to cars, I am not your typical male.  That is to say, I don’t get hard-ons from car magazines, I couldn’t care less about old models and their value, and I wouldn’t know the first thing about fixing one.  I appreciate that they get me from point A to point B, I don’t mind driving them, but that’s the extent of my relationship with vehicles.

With this in mind, a movie like Vanishing Point probably would have never ended up on my radar had it not been the focal point of Audioslave’s music video for “Show Me How To Live”.  While also not a fan of popular music or anything on the radio, I loved Audioslave—created out of three parts Rage Against the Machine and one part Soundgarden (Chris Cornell, one of the best rock vocalists of all time)—and still find them to be an underrated band, with Rage fans scoffing that they weren’t heavy enough, and Soundgarden fans missing the complexity inherent in that band’s work.

But this review isn’t about them—this is about Kowalski, a former police officer and race car driver who bets a drug dealer that he can make a delivery from Denver to San Francisco in 15 hours; if he “wins”, he gets free drugs.  If he loses, then the next bet is “double or nothing”.  This bet occurs about five minutes in, he hits the road, and that is pretty much the entire plot, which then becomes one ridiculously long car chase, as the police desperately try to catch the speeding, reckless Kowalski.

Wisely, the filmmakers do manage to break up the action with little snippets here and there—we flash back to Kowalski’s past as a race car driver, where we get a glimpse of his need for speed, and in a separate and unrelated flashback, also watch him as he stops a fellow police officer from raping a young girl, an event that got him kicked off the force—but for the vast majority of Vanishing Point’s duration, it’s him outrunning cops, or making fools of people that dare to race him.

And honestly, it’s pretty damn brilliant—a refreshingly simple film that provides many genuine scenes of pure excitement.  Of course, the focus is on the car chases and various stunts, which are convincingly pulled off, but the film also succeeds as an ode to hippie culture, with many civilians cheering Kowalski to succeed, and booing the cops that are trying to put him away. The whole film has a pretty strong anti-authority slant, which makes it both an interesting time capsule look into the moment in time in which it was made, and an effective protest film for current times, with the increasing hostility and distrust civilians have of a militarizing police force; one that constantly gets away with the murder of the unarmed.

Vanishing Point was made in the early ‘70s, and it seems to embrace this time period: There’s a topless woman on a motorcycle (with a boyfriend nearby) offering Kowalski sex, a man that trades snakes for sugar, coffee, and “lots and lots of beans”, and a blind radio DJ that monitors police radio frequencies and keeps him one step ahead of the pigs.  This is almost just as much an ode to freewheeling hippie culture as it is an extended car chase.  And you know what?  It works;  I found myself siding with Kowalski as well, and agreeing with most of the citizens in the film—he never hurt anyone, so why such an aggressive campaign to stop him?

Regardless of your thoughts on the underlying politics, Vanishing Point functions as an overlong, yet consistently thrilling, car chase that rarely lets up, and assuming you’re in the vast majority of people that haven’t ever heard of this, one that should shoot toward the top of your list of movies to check out.

RECAP: Vanishing Point is basically a car chase elongated to feature length, with a driver named Kowalski betting a drug dealer that he can drive from Denver to San Francisco to make a delivery in 15 hours.  Some of it feels dated now, with some obvious odes to the hippie and drug cultures of the time period, but it’s never less than fascinating, while its freewheeling, anti-authority and anti-establishment attitudes are a breath of fresh air from the norm.  It almost feels like a punk album in coherent video form, and when it sticks to the action sequences, it’s a rousing, adrenaline-pumping success.  For fans of car chases or action films, this has you covered; for fans of both, this should be considered required viewing.

RATING: 7.5/10

(NOTE: For conspiracy theorists, or those just interested in unsolved mysteries, Victoria Medlin, the actress who plays Vera Thornton, supposedly died on February 27th, 1978.  Very little is known about her life and death, and her filmography consists of three movies.  Rumors persist that she dated Paul Stanley from KISS, and that she committed suicide after their breakup in his father's furniture store on the above date, with the band's management desperate to cover it up, but nothing has been corroborated.  It's simultaneously fascinating and sad that, even in the Internet age, with so much information freely available, that someone's life can just completely fall through the cracks.)

Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971)

Director: Aldo Lado
Writer(s): Lado; additional dialogue provided by Ruediger von Spies
Starring: Ingrid Thulin, Jean Sorel, Mario Adorf, and Barbara Bach

What can you say about a film like Aldo Lado’s Short Night of Glass Dolls (original title, Short Night of the Butterflies)?  It was released to DVD as part of Anchor Bay’s Giallo Collection in the early 2000s where I purchased it based entirely on the brief synopsis on the back.  But while it certainly has some elements of the giallo, marketing it in this way does the film a little bit of a disservice; I was expecting at least some blood and gore, a staple of the subgenre, to help keep me entertained, and upon first viewing, was massively disappointed when there was next to none.

Knowing that for this go-around, I went in with a more open mind.  While I still feel it falls short of its potential—it manages to drag very slowly in places, and the plot goes a little too far off the deep end—there are still moments of genuine suspense, with an absolutely pitch-perfect, and pitch black, ending.

Gregory Moore is an American journalist visiting Prague with his beautiful girlfriend Mira.  Shortly after attending a party with Greg, she disappears, and in true giallo style, he teams up with a few friends to look for her himself.  The police don’t take kindly to his attempts at heroics, and when nothing else seems to turn up, start looking at him as a suspect.  Can he get to the bottom of the mystery, before it’s too late?

Sounds like a simple, straightforward little mystery, right?  Well, Short Night has one absolutely brilliant twist:  Gregory Moore is incapacitated from the beginning, discovered lying in bushes by a groundskeeper and believed to be dead.  But while he is physically paralyzed, his brain functions as normal; so the entire story above unfolds in his memories, as he’s trying to piece everything together as his body is prepared for an autopsy.  It essentially plays out like a story-within-a-story; we cut back and forth between his visions, and sequences in a morgue, where he silently pleads for people to realize that he’s still alive.  Despite the film’s tendency to drag in parts, there is a great gradual, raising tension between the mystery of Mira’s whereabouts, and his own fate—as he gets closer to the truth in his mind, it becomes a race against the clock to beat the start of his own autopsy.    

That gives Short Night enough to elevate it above typical mystery fare, but I found the ending to Mira’s story be rather convoluted and…well…stupid.  The internet is rife with conjecture about what happened (well, “rife” is a strong word, considering I don’t think many people have even seen this), but no one seems to know for sure, and even Lado himself seems to sidestep specifics.  It definitely has a feeling of surrealism, but given the relative tameness of the rest of the movie, it really feels out of place.  I can see where that kind of juxtaposition could make it infinitely more shocking, but it felt tacky to me.  The ending to Greg’s story, though, packs a helluva punch.

On a technical front, Short Night is very impressive.  The cinematography is always good, but a couple scenes are memorable.  Ennio Morricone’s score isn’t befitting his best work, but it serves the movie well.  Its biggest downfall are the dubbed voices and English dialogue…I would have much preferred subtitles, but there doesn’t seem to be a version available in its original Italian language.  As it stands, the dubbed voices are pretty bad, and the English dialogue is sometimes atrocious.  But I guess these are small prices to pay for the convenience of having this film available on DVD, so I’m at least gracious in that regard.

RECAP: It drags in some parts, and the English dubbing is frequently awful, but Short Night of Glass Dolls is still a unique entry in the Italian giallo subgenre, helped along by a fascinating, original plot and a brilliant finale that will hit you like a ton of bricks.  Gorehounds will be severely disappointed—there’s nary a drop of blood—but those that enjoy mysteries should really get a kick out of this.

RATING: 7/10

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