7.1 | / 10 |
Users | 3.2 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 3.4 |
An elderly heiress is killed by her husband, that triggers a series of brutal killings in the surrounding bay area.
Starring: Claudine Auger, Luigi Pistilli, Claudio Camaso, Anna Maria Rosati, Chris AvramHorror | 100% |
Foreign | 43% |
Mystery | 15% |
Thriller | 7% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.83:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: LPCM 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
None
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Cinematographer-turned-director Mario Bava is one of the horror genre's great transitional figures, and a particular influence on the development of the slasher. His first feature, 1960's Black Sunday, is a musty gothic chiller in the old-school Hammer Horror mold—foggy graveyards, crumbling castles, supernatural spooks—but by '63 and '64, with The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Blood and Black Lace, he near- singlehandedly set the template for a modern form of distinctly Italian horror: giallo. Characterized by lurid colors, psycho-sexual stories, and black-gloved killers wielding phallic weapons, giallo was horror gone Freudian, and Bava was its key practitioner, inspiring a whole cadre of younger filmmakers like Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, and Umberto Lenzi. In turn, their collective work inspired American filmmakers of the late '70s and early '80s—John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Black Christmas' Bob Clark—who further sexualized the form and doubled down on the limb-hacking, blood-spurting violence. Bava, then, is the progenitor of much of what horror hounds love about Friday the 13th and Halloween; some of his later films practically read like how-to instruction manuals for the future slasher sub-genre. This week, Kino-Lorber is releasing two of those films, 1970's Five Dolls for an August Moon and 1971's A Bay of Blood, both of which belong in any well-curated horror movie collection.
In terms of picture quality, this latest batch of Mario Bava titles is the greatest yet. Both Five Dolls for an August Moon and A Bay of Blood look spectacular in high definition, with the latter taking perhaps a slight edge in clarity and overall cleanliness. Bay of Blood's print has a few minor age-related issues—occasional white specks, two or three scenes with short-lived vertical scratches—but nothing even remotely bothersome. (And compared many of Kino and Redemption's recent Jean Rollin and Jess Franco releases, this film is practically spotless.) The 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer has clearly been treated with care. There are no compression problems, no excessive noise reduction or edge enhancement, no wonky, over-pushed colors; the picture has a natural, filmic look, with a visible grain pattern and a great sense of dimensionality. Next to older DVD releases and Arrow Video's U.K. Blu-ray, the image seems to have undergone some effective color balancing. Contrast is stable, saturation is just where it needs to be—the Arrow version, in particular, was woefully flat—and there are no blown-out highlights or overly crushed shadows. (Check out the included Italian cut in the bonus features, with it's much poorer transfer, to see how bad the film could've looked.) Sharpness is also immediately improved, with a level of detail unseen in the film's prior home video outings. Barring some hypothetical 4K reissue in a few years, this is probably the best A Bay of Blood will look for some time to come.
The film's English version—the most widely distributed cut—is presented via a listenable uncompressed Linear PCM 2.0 mono track. With some mild hissing, pops and crackles, and dubbed dialogue that occasionally has a hollow, echoey quality, there are a few source related concerns here, though none rise to the level of distraction. (If you watch a lot of low-budget Italian cinema, there's nothing out of the ordinary here.) If a little thin in the high end, the mix has good projection and gets to rock out a bit with composer Stelvio Cipriani's score, which goes from groovy to creepy and beyond. For the one or two instances where visible text needs to be translated, there are hard-coded English subtitles, but otherwise, no optional subs are provided.
Mario Bava's most violent film is also arguably his most influential. A Bay of Blood, with its high body count, creepy POV shots, and machete- wielding killer—who takes particular relish in offing a bunch of horny young adults—essentially set the template for what would, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, become the slasher. For anyone interested not only in horror but also the history of the genre, A Bay of Blood—which sometimes goes by the more brutal title, A Twitch of the Death Nerve—is mandatory viewing. Kino's new Blu-ray makes that viewing all the more pleasurable, with a stunning new high definition transfer that solidly outdoes Arrow Video's undersaturated U.K. release, and a must-listen audio commentary from Video Watchdog editor Tim Lucas. Highly recommended!
1980
Sei donne per l'assassino
1964
Standard Edition
1982
Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga
1972
L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo | Remastered
1970
Profondo rosso | Special Edition
1975
Featuring The Girl Who Knew Too Much / La ragazza che sapeva troppo
1963
1977
E tu vivrai nel terrore - L'aldilà | Glow in the Dark Cover | Limited Edition to 3000
1981
Il gatto a nove code | Remastered
1971
AIP Cut | 60th Anniversary
1963
Cosa avete fatto a Solange?
1972
Director's Cut
1963
The Mask of Satan / La maschera del demonio | The Mario Bava Collection
1960
Standard Edition
1985
1963
Operazione paura
1966
Mil gritos tiene la noche | Remastered | Limited Edition Puzzle to 3000
1982
I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale / Carnal Violence
1973
Special Edition | La morte cammina con i tacchi alti
1971