A Bay of Blood

Part of Dundead Film Festival 2025 - see the full programme and book a Festival Pass. 

While director Mario Bava is perhaps considered the most ‘respectable’ of the major Italian horror directors, here he ushers in the slasher era, three years before Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre and a good seven years before Carpenter’s Halloween. But there’s much more going on in A Bay of Blood – it is at once a proto-slasher, an intriguing Agatha Christie-esque whodunnit and something altogether stranger. 

The plot is a somewhat convoluted tale of scheming and ulterior motives, but Bava shoots everything with the creativity and boundless imagination that he is known for. His eye for striking compositions elevates this film to something truly special; the camera is constantly on the move, searching for the most interesting way to frame any given scene. And it is almost certainly the director’s most violent film – absolutely no character is safe, and the murder scenes here are as memorable and inventive as they are plentiful (future slasher franchises would mine A Bay of Blood’s numerous death scenes for inspiration.)

Then there is the gorgeous, under-rated score by composer Stelvio Cipriani. Italian horror scores are a veritable treasure trove of phenomenal music and Cipriani’s soundtrack really deserves to be counted among the very best of them.

A Bay of Blood is testament to the kind of horror cinema that is possible when there is a true master behind the camera.