31 DAYS OF HORROR-DAY 27: DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE (1980)

"Fucked up," thy name is DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE. Shot a year before the "slasher" boom of the 1980's kicked off with FRIDAY THE 13th (1980), so it can't be considered as having been influenced by that explosion of cinematic carnage, DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE is permanently set in time thanks to its end-of-the-disco-era elements and its lack of blood showering everywhere (that kind of thing didn't become common until after FRIDAY THE 13th's sanguinary excesses). But don't think its lack of blood makes it any less nasty than its more cutlery-fetishizing brethren...

Somehow managing to be even more simple/sparse in the plot department than most films in the sub-genre while simultaneously containing more genuine character development/motivation than nearly all other slasher films combined, DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE follows the sad and twisted path of Donny Kohler (Dan Grimaldi), a twitchy loner who works at an industrial incinerator plant. The adult product of horrible abuse by stovetop fire at the hands of his sadistic mother who punished him for every perceived "sinful" thought, Donny's in his thirties and still lives at home with the now-aged harridan, a pitiful case of having been emotionally crushed and stunted into a state of arrested adolescence. While witnessing a co-worker nearly get fatally immolated during an on-the-job accident, Donny's utter lack of reaction or concern about the incident gives us our first real indication that something's seriously wrong with the guy. (Thanks to his failure to help his co-worker, we also see that Donny is not exactly well-liked by his fellow employees, most of whom regard him as a freak.) Upon arriving home after the incident, Donny discovers his mother dead in her favorite chair and at last, free of her domineering physical presence and perpetual verbal abuse, his mind snaps and his first act of rebellion is to play his (crappy made-for-the-movie) disco music at top volume. Thus empowered by disco — long known to be the soundtrack of rebellion — and fueled by the hectoring voice of his mother in his head, Donny skips work, builds a large fireproof room in his house (or maybe it was always there and merely hidden), buys an asbestos-worker's head-to-toe fireproof suit from an army surplus store (???) and embarks on a joyless spree of picking up young, attractive women, taking them to his house, rendering them unconscious and then chaining them naked from the ceiling of the fireproof room. Then he breaks out the flamethrower.

Once his screaming victims have been torched, Donny dresses their charred bodies in his dead mother's clothes and arranges them in the living room, all the while conflicted by clashing childlike emotions of providing the corpses with "love and comfort" and a violent hatred and distrust of women engendered by his treatment by his mother. Basically, it's PSYCHO's Norman Bates taken to a particularly savage extreme, so it's only a matter of time until Donny's towering dysfunction, utter inability to function outside of his house of horrors, and a series of hallucinations collapse his fucked-up world around him, and its a fall that's agonizing to watch.

There's a fine line between horror and the "psychological thriller" but DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE gets my vote as a horror flick due to its theme of the endless cycle of abuse coupled with its hideous death-by-flamethrower hook and charred zombie hallucinations. Who doesn't find immolation to be possibly the most excruciating of possible death scenarios? It's bad enough to be caught in a house fire or a flaming car wreck with no chance of escape but to have some faceless maniac chain you naked from a ceiling and incinerate you alive as part of a premeditated course of psychotic intent? Jesus fucking Christ... If that doesn't count as straight-up horror, I don't know what does.

As or the movie itself and its overall tone, I don't know quite what to think. I found it far too bleak and depressing to be even remotely entertaining, which is not to say that it is at all badly made, and it's so dark and dour from its opening moments that it's a complete and total bring-down that doesn't thrill with the frisson (Ooh! Fancy film-fuck word!) one experiences with most horror films. It's just a miserable, hate and sadness-filled well of despair and I'm not sure I can recommend it to anyone unless they dig been terminally depressed. You thought SOPHIE'S CHOICE made you want to slit your wrists or jump off the nearest bridge? That film has nothing on DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE's low-budget grimy atmosphere. I've seen DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE twice, once when first encountered on DVD and a second time a couple of days ago when watching it to refresh my memory for purposes of this review, and I assure you I will never return to it.

Now that that's over, I feel the urge to take a long, thoroughly-scrubbed shower and watch something like THE SECRET OF MAGIC ISLAND (1956, France/Italy; released in the U.S. in 1964), a movie entirely populated by cute little puppies and kitties and all sorts of other adorable critters having happy adventures. Anything to wash the charbroiled stink of DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE from my consciousness.

31 DAYS OF HORROR-DAY 26: THE DEVIL RIDES OUT (1968)

Perhaps the most Satanic title card ever, which is only appropriate for this particular movie.

Often unfairly overlooked in the post-EXORCIST era, this Hammer offering about Satanism is one of their more compelling non-series gems that fairly cries out for a modern re-discovery.

With a screenplay by Richard Matheson — author of THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN and the original I AM LEGEND, as well as several classic episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE — based upon the novel by British horror master Dennis Wheatley (TO THE DEVIL-A DAUGHTER and UNCHARTED SEAS, among numerous others), this is a true tour de force of the occult.

Duc Nicholas de Richeleau (Christopher Lee): taking no shit from Satan-worshiping scum.

In 1930's England, the Duc Nicholas de Richleau (Christopher Lee) and his friend Rex Van Ryn (Leon Greene) look into the sudden mysterious disappearance of their friend, young Simon Aron (Patrick Mower), who has not been seen or heard from by friends or relatives or several months, though it's known he recently and suddenly bought a large house. The Duc and Rex make their way to Simon's house and find an elegant party filled with assorted classy and exotic types in full swing, which a nervous-acting Simon explains away as "a meeting of a little astronomical society" led by the suave and sinister Mocata (Charles Gray at his slimiest, and that's really saying something), who clearly holds some sort of power over Simon. Also present is the equally on-edge Tanith Carlisle (Nike Arrighi), whom Rex is sure he recognizes from somewhere (which she denies, though it's obvious she's lying) and who storms off when she discovers the Duc and Rex are not members of the society, and as the Duc cases the room for information it becomes apparent that the society's members are discussing matters of the occult involving planetary conjunction and such. Noting the presence of the outsiders, Mocata takes Simon aside and bids him to throw out the Duc and Rex, which he politely does, but not before the Duc begs five minutes in which to look through a telescope that's upstairs. Simon obliges but the Duc uses the time to check out the upstairs and finds a mostly empty room, decorated with parchments claimed by Simon to be "just decoration, relics," and the room's floor bears a large and ornate diagram...

Just another day for that wacky Mocata (Charles Gray).

Hearing strange sounds, the Duc bursts into a closet and discovers live chickens in a basket, thus leading him to correctly and irately deduce that Simon is now a dabbler in the black arts. With Simon being the son of a deceased dear friend, the Duc looks upon Simon as a son and he would rather see the young man dead than messing about with the occult. Though having known Simon for over ten years, the Duc never before spoke of certain aspects of his life but now that his friend's son is involved in all this devil-junk, the Duc reveals that his studies into assorted esoteric practices has given him a rather serious working knowledge of things most dark, and when the terrified Simon refuses to let the Duc and Rex stay, the Duc knocks the young man out and he and Rex haul his unconscious body out of the house and speed away in the Duc's chauffer-driven sedan. Once at the Duc's home, the Duc uses hypnosis to free Simon from the society's spell and place a "symbol of protection," a silver crucifix on a chain, about his neck, along with an order not to remove it. When Simon is asleep, the Duc informs the dubious Rex that Evil — note the capital "E" — and the powers of darkness are "a living force which can be tapped at any given moment of the night," an act proven when the still-under-hypnosis Simon practically strangles himself in an unsuccessful bid to remove the crucifix from around his neck. When the Duc's butler walks in and sees Simon choking, he removes the crucifix, after which Simon promptly escapes out the nearest window. Breaking into Simon's house in hope of finding him, the Duc and Rex instead run into an eerie spirit — that looks like nothing so much as a creepily-smiling West Indian dude in a red diaper — that materializes from the symbol on the ritual room's floor. After breaking free of its controlling gaze, the Duc realizes that Mocata is some sort of high-level, Crowley-esque Satanic adept with actual black magic powers and from that moment on embarks on a crusade to save Simon from the arch-fiend's diabolical clutches before he can be re-baptized into the the way of the Left-Hand Path, and the only key to finding Simon lies in locating the mysterious Tanith. What ensues is a battle of the so-called rational world colliding head-on with seemingly impossible things that the ancients knew only too well to be both very real and very, very deadly shit that nobody should mess with. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but Satan himself even shows up in the horned form of the Goat of Mendes (look it up), so these are not your garden variety burnout Satanists that the Duc must reckon with. These guys are no goddamned joke, and you'd better believe that.

"Hi, kids! It's me, your old pal Satan! And I brought Pop Rocks!!!"

Though its thrills are comparatively low key by today's standards, THE DEVIL RIDES OUT offers very fantastical occult goings-on in a recognizably mundane setting that would fit right in with the events seen in stories like NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957) and ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968), and the end result feels like some oddball installment of either MASTERPIECE THEATER or MYSTERY. Drenched in Britishness from head to cloven hoof, this one's definitely something to add to your Netflix queue, and it stands proudly among the pantheon of Hammer's very finest.

Poster from the original U.K. theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR-DAY 25: HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM (1959)

In the late 1950's, the horror films generated by Hammer Studios upped the level of violence/gore and sex/gratuitous female flesh by degrees that only increased with each passing year, especially as the Fifties gave way to the Sixties, and with that popular acceptance and box office success came films that took advantage of that new leniency. The most infamous from that early wave of British responses to the trend is this nasty little shocker that possesses several moments that everyone who's seen it has permanently burned into their memories, especially if they encountered HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM during their impressionable childhoods. That's when I first saw it — I was around eight years old — and look at what happened to me...

The horror begins in London when a pretty young woman receives a package containing a pair of binoculars. Intrigued, she puts the binoculars to her eyes, which are suddenly penetrated by pressure-sensitive spring-loaded six-inch spikes, causing her agonized death.

One of the most shocking moments of 1950's horror cinema (or any other era, for that matter).

As the detectives of Scotland Yard begin to investigate this crime, the third horrific murder in two weeks, creepy, sensationalistic true crime author Edmond Bancroft (Michael Gough, aka Alfred in four of the Batman films) arrives to pump them for information, an enthusiastic gleam in his shifty eyes. Quite familiar to the police due to his constant sniffing about for gruesome case details to use in his books and magazine articles, Bancroft lives and breathes crime and to all observers, he is unhealthily obsessed with crime in general and with the current murders in particular, resulting in his health being endangered from his alarmingly high blood pressure. Needless to say, Bancroft's obsession is so intense because he's the vicious maniac the police are searching for but he's beyond suspicion due to his ubiquity at the station and also thanks to his pronounced limp. But despite his frail physicality, Bancroft is one sick, sick motherfucker who orchestrates the murders so he'll have new material to write about, and also keeps a "black museum" in the basement of his house, a sanctum decorated with classic instruments of torture and accented with life-size manikins demonstrating what happens to those who endure the wielding of such contraptions in the hands of sadistic torturers. Bancroft also employs a young assistant named Rick (Graham Curnow), to whom he administers mind-controlling drugs that turn the lad into a programmable killer that Bancroft dispatches to commit a series of ever-escalating slayings. (When under Bancroft's murderous influence, Rick's complexion turns green and wrinkly for no apparent reason.)

But Bancroft's dark path is not without its obstacles. He pays rent for and gives cash to his sleazy, gold-digging blonde bombshell girlfriend, Joan (the lusciously curvaceous June Cunningham), but she's tired of being a kept woman in an isolated flat who's never taken anywhere and only used as a sex toy (strongly implied but not explicitly stated). Joan also viciously insults him as being "less than a man" (we know what that means) and makes fun of him being a "cripple," but the real problem lies in her knowledge of the dark deeds Bancroft gloats about while drunk and her intention to leave him, possibly to spill what she knows, all of which only adds fuel to the fire of Bancroft's oft-stated hatred and distrust of women. (He may be a misogynistic pig but at least he's up front about it.) Bancroft also buys the signature weapons used in the killing spree from an aged antique dealer who's smarter than she initially lets on, and once she realizes that the goods she sold to Bancroft are the same ones used in the murders, she seeks to cushion her retirement with cash extorted from her customer. (She doesn't go to Scotland Yard to rat Bancroft out because she fears guilt by association for selling the items to him.) Bancroft's personal physician is also no slouch in the reasoning department and after a recent examination of his patient, he begins to suspect the writer of being involved in activities that are considerably less than savory. Then there's Rick's burgeoning romance with a pretty young thing that threatens to upset his boss' control over him and possibly expose Bancroft's twisted activities. With all of that mishegoss threatening to boil over, it's only a matter of time until it all ends very, very badly.

Marvelously and unashamedly lurid, HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM is like the cinematic cousin to the gory horror and crime comics that led to U.S. Senate sub-committee hearings in the early 1950's, only much better written than those often hacked-out efforts (pun most definitely intended), so check it out if you've never seen it. I promise you won't be disappointed, and how could you not be hooked after that hideous opening scene?

31 DAYS OF HORROR-DAY 24 : HOMICIDAL (1961)

"A WORD OF WARNING! Please don't reveal the ending of this picture or your friends will kill you - IF THEY DON'T, I WILL!" - William Castle

How many movies can you name where the director makes that kind of threat at the flick's end?

Easily the best of the many ripoffs to come in the wake of Alfred Hitchcock's epochal PSYCHO (1960), I had the pleasure of going in cold and seeing HOMICIDAL at Manhattan's Film Forum when it ran there a little over a year ago, and I gotta say it's tough to discuss gimmick-meister William Castle's HOMICIDAL without giving away its surprises but I'll give it a shot. Perhaps the simplest way to describe it is to state that it's an over-the-top, played straight but campy parody of the Hitchcock proto-slasher classic (an aspect I did not expect going in).

Ventura, California, September 5th: sinister blonde Emily (Joan Marshall, billed as Jean Arless) purchases a gold wedding band, checks into a hotel as "Miriam Webster" and cryptically offers a handsome bellboy two-thousand bucks to marry her on September 6th, after which the marriage will be immediately annulled. The bellboy accepts the deal and the pair set off to the house of a certain justice of the peace at midnight on the 6th, where they awaken the justice to perform the wedding in the wee hours. When the ultra-short ceremony concludes and the justice moves to cop a kiss from the bride, "Miriam" produces a long knife from her clutch and repeatedly stabs the justice in the stomach, in full view of the man's wife and the horrified bellboy, after which she flees the scene, stealing the bellboy's car to make her getaway. Abandoning the stolen car and switching to her own ride, Emily tears down the highway while hearing on a radio news report that the justice she stabbed has died, thus making the assault an outright murder. Arriving at the home she shares with the aged wheelchair-bound and mute family nurse, Helga (Eugenie Loentovich), Emily cleans the murder weapon and creepily announces the savage killing she committed to the old woman, gleefully noting that the justice "died screeeeeeeeaming!!!" The following morning, Emily fixes breakfast for the fearful and helpless Helga when the real Miriam Webster (Patricia Breslin), a florist, arrives, bearing flowers for the aged nurse...

Emily (Jean Arless) in Miriam's florist shop, moments before trashing the place in a fit of rage.

As the story unfolds, we discover that Emily has recently returned from Denmark, where years before she met Warren, the real Miriam's half-brother, who visits Emily and Helga every Thursday. Warren's already rather flush but is on the verge of inheriting a huge sum of money, and as his mysterious backstory unfolds, an avalanche of bizarre family secrets deluges the audience. It's also seen that Emily has the hots for Karl (Glenn Corbett), a young swain who runs a soda shop/pharmacy, and she will stop at nothing to make him hers, despite the fact that Karl and Miriam are an item. So what we have here is a love triangle with a genuine maniac at its center, twisted family history and secrets, (of much interest, especially in the climate of fifty years ago), a police investigation into the murder that dredges up all kinds sordid shit, and when the stunning final truth as to the whys and wherefores regarding Emily are finally revealed, it's a climax that nearly rivals that of PSYCHO in terms of material that must have been truly mind-blowing or its era's audience. My advice to you is to check this one out and try to put yourself in the place of a viewer watching it in 1961.

Director William Castle's movies were notorious for the cheesy/fun gimmicks employed in promoting them, and in the case of HOMICIDAL there was a moment toward the film's end where the house lights come up and "fright break" clock counting down forty-five seconds appears onscreen, signaling how much time the audience has in which to follow a yellow stripe out of the auditorium into the lobby if they're too scared to handle what's about to happen at the ending. Once in the lobby, chickenshit audience members can get their money back, provided they stand in the "coward's corner" and allow those who sat through the whole film to file past and bear witness to their shameful cowardice. (That was back in 1961; the Film Forum's manager told the audience up front that there would be no refunds.)

The "fright break" timer, as seen from where I sat in the audience.

In the audience when I saw the film, a guy and his wife — obvious plants — freaked out when the timer appeared, screaming that they just couldn't take the sheer horror onscreen and, as the guy showered himself with popcorn, they swiftly fled the theater. There was a smattering of applause.

The yellow stripe leading out of the auditorium to...

...the "Coward's Corner." This is the couple that "freaked out."

Reserved seating.

Me and the lovely Sukihoshi simulate being a pair of complete and utter pussies. (Hey, in my case you are what you eat!)

Yer Bunche, forever traumatized by the horrors witnessed onscreen.

31 DAYS OF HORROR-DAY 23: GINGER SNAPS (2000)

Excellent in just about every way, GINGER SNAPS is one of the few werewolf movies to look at matters lycanthropic from a female point of view and also, significantly, link that aspect to matters menstrual. It's not the first time that's been done in horror — Peter S. Beagle's "Lila the Werewolf" and Alan Moore's "The Curse" immediately spring to mind — but the handling of it here involves the universal horror of adolescence writ large and the result is glorious.

This Canadian entry is proof of what can be done with a low budget and a hell of a lot of talent and intelligence. Drawing once more upon the lycanthropy/horrors of puberty theme, GINGER SNAPS deals with two uber-morbid and very close high school-age sisters, a pair of creepy misfits who, like good old Carrie White, have yet to have their first periods. The older of the two, Ginger (Katharine Isabelle), finally starts her menstrual cycle but has the misfortune of that event coinciding with local animal attacks that turn out to be the work of a particularly savage werewolf. The monster catches her newly bloody scent and, in a scene intended to look and feel like a rape (according to the film’s co-scriptwriter), mauls the living shit out of her.

The newly wolfy and hyper-sexualized Ginger (Katharine Isabelle): on the prowl for some meat...

Ginger survives and in no time flat begins to exhibit a hitherto unseen level of aggression, both socially and sexually — NOTE: keep in mind that lycanthropy is a communicable disease — to say nothing of such undeniable signs of wolfing out as getting furry in odd places, her teeth becoming more suited to tearing flesh, and the tail that she’s sprouted from out of nowhere, all of which happens when the moon isn't even full, so you know it's really bad. Ginger's younger sister, Brigitte (Emily Perkins), realizes what’s happening and sets out to cure her sister, and if that doesn’t work, it'll be time for a more permanent solution…

Sorry, but there are some things Pamprin just ain't made to handle.

One of the rare werewolf movies from a female perspective, GINGER SNAPS is highly recommended for its genuine scares, well-handled lycanthropy/puberty metaphor, and its wicked DeGRASSI HIGH MEETS THE HOWLING sensibility. And the first sequel’s actually pretty good! If you choose only one film from this countdown, this is one of the handful you should seriously consider. (I also strongly favor NIGHT OF THE DEMON and DAGON.)

31 DAYS OF HORROR-DAY 22: DAGON (2001)

Oh, the many squirm-inducing pleasures of DAGON, the horror flick that ranks as my very favorite of the current century.

Picture, if you will, a vast undersea expanse, all sound muted by the water that envelops you as shafts of light from the distant surface provide scant illumination. You swim through this seemingly endless dreamlike environment, your movements slow and clumsy, body leaden with the weight of your scuba gear and aided by the beam of a flashlight. Suddenly, through the murky darkness you encounter an opening in the ocean’s floor that is clearly the skillfully crafted work of hands unknown, a wide portal that is at once ocular, oral and vaginal in its aspect. You swim into its yawning maw and curiously explore this tunnel leading to…where or what you cannot begin to fathom. Your hands explore the eerily striated walls of the portal, and as your fascinated gaze scans what lays before you, the pallid face of a beautiful, raven-tressed mermaid smiles up at you.

She swims into clear view and you marvel at her strange beauty as her thick hair swirls about her, borne by invisible currents and exposing her lovely, buoyant breasts. This nubile vision swims over, unafraid, and removes your facemask and re-breather’s mouthpiece. Your senses reel as she kisses you, deeply and passionately, and you don’t even notice you no longer require your heavy equipment to breathe, so caught up are you in the deep-sea maiden’s unexpected ardor.

Then, with a ravenous shriek, she bares a dental array that would give a piranha pause and you awaken with a start.

It was only a dream, but you have just awakened from a harbinger of an infinitely worse, living nightmare from which there is no hope of escape for you or the companions who accompanied you on what was meant to be a relaxing getaway on a chartered yacht off the coast of Spain. You have just entered the world of the fish-god Dagon, and you’re about to learn some dark and ancient truths that will affect you in ways you would never have expected.

That’s the basic setup for Stuart (RE-ANIMATOR) Gordon’s masterful H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, DAGON (2001), the hands down finest of the many cinematic translations of the author's famously creepy works, and it really took me and my buddy Chris by surprise when we rented it to watch during the Thanksgiving weekend some nine years ago. Things get boring as hell in Connecticut during Thanksgiving (more boring than usual, that is) so Chris and I annually search for some flicks with which to kill the time. We drove all over Fairfield County on the night after this particular Thanksgiving, hitting several DVD rental stores before nearly giving up after not finding anything that piqued our craving for any kind of diversion on film/DVD. Our last stop, at some obscure video store somewhere in Trumbull, yielded gold in the form of DOG SOLDIERS — an incredible werewolf movie that I may add to this list of flicks to discuss — and DAGON, and neither of us knew a damned thing about either film. Both turned out to be exceptional but it's DAGON that really got under my skin and it's the one I immediately suggest when asked for a horror movie recommendation. (That surprises most folks who know me since I'm an out, loud and proud werewolf advocate, but DAGON is so good that it overrules my natural affinity for my beloved lycanthropes.)

The story follows the waking nightmare a group of yachters, two couples, find themselves in when their vessel hits something off the coast of Spain and begins to sink. One couple remains on the boat while the other makes their way to the isolated fishing town of Imboca in search of help, only to discover that the place is populated by hideous human-marine life hybrids, the direct result of generations of human women bearing the children of the ancient fish-god Dagon. I will say no more other than to state that the male protagonist discovers some very dark truths during the course of the story and there's even a very weird climax that, from a certain perspective, could be considered a happy ending.

There's a lot — and I do mean A LOT — going on in the narrative and chief among its many malignant wonders (to my way of thinking, anyway) is Macarena Gomez as Uxia Cambarro, the beautiful large-eyed mermaid from the opening dream sequence.

In the dream she was every man's mermaid fantasy brought to alluring life but in the incredibly creepy reality of the remote fishing village of Imboca, she’s the wheelchair-bound high priestess of the evil oceanic god who gets his condomless hump on with mortal women, thus spawning the aforementioned race of human/sea monster hybrids.

Uxia’s clearly one of those creatures, but even though she boasts a pair of floppy, sucker-laden tentacles in place of a scaly fish tail (which she possessed in the opening dream sequence), to say nothing of the enormous, gasping gills on her ribcage, she’s got that wild-eyed-and-crazy look that I find irresistible. (Yeah, you could say I have some issues...)

Crazed, incestuous, sacrificial dagger-wielding evil half-breed or not, I’d love a taste of her saltwater charms. Plus, unlike a traditional mermaid, with Uxia you’ve got a pretty good idea of where the pussy is. Always a plus.

No bullshit, if you haven't seen DAGON, run out and rent it immediately. It's fairly low on gore and violence but it's got an appropriately high creep factor that translates the crawly, sticky/slimy feel of Lovecraft's tales of cross-species interbreeding to the screen, and getting across the flavor of his works had never been truly successful in the movies until this one. HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION.

As KRS-1 so wisely said back in the days, "You can't trust a big butt and a smile."

31 DAYS OF HORROR-DAY 21: A BAY OF BLOOD (1971)

Initially released in the U.S. as CARNAGE but swiftly withdrawn due to disappointing box office and re-released as TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE, the title under which it played the grindhouse circuit for years, this Italian slaughterhouse of a film is of interest as the root from which the "slasher" genre as we now know it grew. The Ground Zero for that category, if you will.

The massively and needlessly convoluted plot is pretty much beside the point since the whole thing is nothing more than a blatant excuse to cram as many gory murders onto the screen as possible — something it does with unabashed gratuitousness — but it all has to do with several concerned parties vying for the inheritance of a secluded bay and the house on its attendant land. We really don't get to care about any of the characters (who can really only be described as such in the most rudimentary sense of the word), so their gruesome demises have no impact save for their graphic savagery when compared to films of its era, in which respect the movie is almost a decade ahead of its time. The work of famed director/cinematographer Mario Bava (PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES. HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD, DANGER! DIABOLIK, and many others of interest), A BAY OF BLOOD nowadays reads like a textbook "how to" for the films that would imitate this film (and aspects of John Carpenter's far superior HALLOWEEN from 1978) and come to dominate the horror genre of the 1980's and beyond, starting with FRIDAY THE 13th in 1980, and it pretty much invented the following slasher genre tropes:

• Remote location with a lake to facilitate nude swims by the cast's buxom females
• POV shots as the killer stalks their human prey
• A cast of characters who are nothing more than ciphers to be mutilated, dismembered, hanged, immolated, et cetera
• The "creative kill," in which one or more characters are polished off in ways that simultaneously repel and amuse
• A plot that is utterly irrelevant to what this kind of thing's audience wants to see, namely tons of vicious, gory murders
• Few, if any, real scares, just meat for the hacking

With that recipe, innumerable slasher films turned the world's movie theaters into charnel houses and it all got codified right here. Yes, I know Herschel Gordon Lewis was cranking out his signature, revolutionary ultra-gory (and notoriously cheapjack and filmically crude) stomach-churners as far back as 1963's landmark BLOOD FEAST (a steaming pile if ever I saw one, despite its historical importance), but while Lewis' work was pioneering, what Bava achieved here took what Lewis hatched and refined it (somewhat) into the perfect formula for brainless cinematic fare that unapologetically knew exactly what it was, aspired to nothing other than being what it knew its audience was there for, and could be cranked out or peanuts to rake in an assload of money. And, as previously stated, this film was shamelessly imitated, but no film ripped it off to the degree that the first FRIDAY THE 13th and its endless sequels did, in many cases going so far as to outright crib some of A BAY OF BLOOD's signature killings, most notably this one from FRIDAY THE 13th PART II (1981), which stands as perhaps the prime example of the "fuck and die" trope:

A humping couple is memorably run through with a long spear that penetrates the pair and is seen protruding through the underside of the bed, and much the same thing occurs in FRIDAY THE 13th PART II:

So if you're a fan or scholar of the whole slasher phenomenon of the 1980's (and beyond), A BAY OF BLOOD is definitely worth a look for its Rosetta Stone-like status in one of the horror genre's most (often justly) maligned sub-strata. Plus, even with the passing of four decades since its initial release, it's murders are still quite vicious and genuinely shocking, my favorite being a hooked machete to the throat of a fleeing victim that features a nasty closeup of her throat being slit open. Great for the kiddies!