Monday, May 31, 2010

REAZIONE A CATENA - Stelvio Cipriani - "Twist Of The Death Nerve" (1971)

"A Bay Of Blood" reminds me a lot of dominoes, set 'em up in a line, and knock 'em right down!!! The music for this Mario Bava feature was composed by the Maestro Stelvio Cipriani, just one out of over 200 films he has written the soundtrack for. Stelvio is probably one of Italy's most famous composers, if not most prolific, for creating music for awesome titles like "Ski Mistress" and "Invasion By The Atomic Zombies" and "Sex and Black Magic" and one of his most famous outings, "Tentacles!"

Here's the basic storyline. This guy kills his wife, then he gets killed, then the person that killed him gets killed, then somebody else gets killed, and then somebody kills them, and later, more people get killed by other people who get killed too! Something like that!

It had always been my understanding that Mario Bava was a real goremeister, and I never did understand it, I mean like have you ever seen "Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs?" But after watching "Reazione A Catena" the original title of "A Bay Of Blood," I do understand why, because it's a real blood fest!!

Before they kill somebody, they gotta watch 'em real good first! Preferably at a distance and in hiding!

You have to give the producers of "Reazione A Catena" credit, they really tried to sell this film again and again using all kinds of different titles like "Ecology of a Crime" and "The Antecedent" or "The Last House on the Left Part II" or my favorite, "Twitch of the Death Nerve!" People thought Mario Bava made four slasher flicks all at the same time, and those are just some of the English titles!!

Just in case you ever wondered what the President of Iran did before his current gig!!

All right, so pretty much everybody else got killed, so let's bring on the teenagers!!

What a fun looking place, you can just almost hear the children laughing!

Card number 13 is the card of death!! What did you expect, pink bunnies?

Are those knockers on the fortune teller's ring, and what significance do they hold?

Still killing the killers and watching the watchers!!

If you know you're going to get killed anyway, what better time to do a nude swimming scene?

Lost and alone in a barn with more angles than a geometry class!

Try and get a good reflection shot in one of those new ugly spoked mags you see on a lot of cars today, and good luck with that!

I lost track of how many people got murdered. I was counting for a while, but then I got a splitting headache! I read later it was lucky 13!

It's not over yet, there's always time for one more gruesome murder!! A lot of people say that "Black Christmas" made in 1974 made by Bob Clark was the first modern day slasher flick, Bava's "A Bay Of Blood" preceded it by a full 3 years!!!

4 comments:

Prof. Grewbeard said...

some people give Bava's Blood And Black Lace(Cameron Mitchell)credit for the first body counter and that was 1964!

Eegah!! and Tabonga! said...

It's like trying to figure out what Boris Karloff's last flick really was!

MDG14450 said...

A typo in your main headline says "Twist of the Death Nerve"--that would be a great song title.

Eegah!! and Tabonga! said...

That wasn't a typo, let's twitch again like we did last summer!

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