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(Note: This is last Friday's review, which is late entirely because I'm a fuck-up. Today's review will be posted this evening)

Twitch of the Death Nerve (aka Bay of Blood). 1971.Directed by Mario Bava. Written by Bava and Felippo Ottoni. Released by Hallmark Releasing Corp in the US.

Since I've already reviewed all the existing Friday the 13th movies, let's spend this special day looking at the movie that was so much of an influence on the first two Friday the 13th movies*. I first saw this movie in the video store under the name Bay of Blood, but I much prefer Twitch of the Death Nerve as a movie name.

For those who aren't familiar with Giallo, a very quick oversimplification: Giallo** is an Italian film genre that began as a variation on Noir, but which very quickly shifted into an extremely gory take on the thriller. Although the modern slasher traces its origins partially to this genre, the "whodunit" overtones of Giallo, as well as the borderline fetishization of some of the murder sequences and the attention paid to color and music, tend to be unique to the Italian genre. The late Mario Bava was one of the masters of Giallo (as well as a few other horror subgenres), and if Twitch of the Death Nerve is far from his masterpiece, it's still an essential film for horror fans on either side of the Atlantic.

That said, plot is the least important element here.

What little plot we get takes place near the beginning, as we see Isa Miranda in a wheelchair! Yes, one of the great Italian actresses of all time appears for just long enough to wander through her house and get hanged! We cut back to see the murderer, who's just some guy, only for someone else to slit his throat! Yes, it's that sort of film, folks.

In fact, the next hour is basically one long kill-fest. See, there's a whole bunch of heirs fighting over the land that Isa left (the titular Bay of Blood), and a few horny teenagers heading out there for a swim. And someone is killing them all off. And, well, that's it. As Giallos go, this isn't exactly Tenebre. In fact, what we pretty much have here is the emergence of the slasher from the Giallo.

And that emergence is pretty damned literal. Consider these two sequences:

In Twitch of the Death Nerve, one teenager, vaguely aware that something is amiss (his girlfriend has just been killed, but he still thinks she's off swimming), opens the door to his cabin, only to receive a machete in the face. The murderer then makes his way into the cabin, where a pair of teens are having sex on the bed. He makes his way up to them and impales them on a spear, shifting their throes of passion to death throes.

In Friday the 13th, Part 2, a teenager, vaguely aware that something's wrong (he's heard some odd noises), opens the door to his cabin, only to receive a machete in the face. The killer then makes his way into the cabin, where a pair of teens are having sex on the bed. He makes his way up to them and impales them on a spear, shifting their throes of passion to death throes.

In fairness, the sequence in Friday the 13th Part 2 is more stylized (the machete-faced teen, Mark, is wheelchair-bound, and when he dies, his chair goes rolling down a long set of outdoor stairs). But there's no doubt that the entire sequence (including the most famous kill in the early Friday the 13th movies) was lifted from Bava's earlier film.

We do get some actual plot along the way, as one possibly motive for the killings is the opposition to unfettered land development shown by a few of the characters. Others, however, are clearly all about the greed, and the money involved really is enough motive to make anyone (other than the dead folks) a possible suspect. Between new heirs popping up, backstabbings and double-crosses, and an apparent complete lack of law enforcement anywhere near the Bay, no one ever has any reason to believe that they're safe.

Most of the rest of the herd gets thinned with the usual set of stabbings and choppings (a phony fortune teller gets her head chopped off in one of the more graphic -- if not realistic -- sequences), with some mild "since you're alive, you must be the killer" paranoia influencing the few survivors. In this case, it's not necessarily paranoia, as almost everyone was planning the death of at least one of the other characters. The twist ending here is that the two survivors, knowing that any and all rival claims to the inheritance have been eliminated, come home and die when their young children shoot them with a shotgun. Ah, irony.

Twitch of the Death Nerve might not be a great film, but it's the inspiration for the entire body count/slasher subgenre. We get gory kill after gory kill, and if the gore itself is rather lame (Tom Savini could do better blood than this with one hand tied behind his back, and I've never seen a faker looking decapitation sequence), it's a lot more graphic than most '70s movies offered.

It's hard to judge the acting, in light of the clearly-poor dubbing we're subjected to, but overacting, confusion, and lack of training translate well enough. It's hard to imagine that anyone here, other than Isa Miranda, had anything of a significant film career. Bava's direction, though, is superb, as we get groundbreaking (at the time) P.O.V. shots (only partially swiped from Peeping Tom), misdirection (swiped from Hitchcock, but given Bava's own unique twist), and some great outdoor imagery.

The slasher genre would go on to lose the complexity of the plotline (even the ones that attempt to provide motives and backstory don't go for anything as complicated as the multi-layered land-grab/inheritance plotline we get here), and also reduce the number of killers. But, along with Psycho and Halloween, pretty much every slasher made in the '80s can trace it roots to Twitch of the Death Nerve***, and any fan of slashers owes it to themselves to see this at least once.

*By which I mean, the first two movies pretty much ripped off every stylish murder.

**Which comes from the Italian for "yellow," (the color of typical pulp paperbacks in Italy), not "Jello."

***At some point, I want to make a horror movie called Twitch of the Dead Nerd. Just because.