Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.
Mario Bava more or less invented the slasher. Bay of Blood is typically thought of as the prototypical slasher film, Bava was starting to build up the style years before. That’s evidenced by 1964’s Blood and Black Lace (Sei Donne per L’Assassino, which translates to “Six Women for the Murderess”), which is also one of the earliest films in the giallo style. This is all about the style and far less about the actual plot, which is also pretty common for films made by Mario Bava.
The sell here is that the murders that are committed, and there are a bunch of them, happen in the context of a fashion house. That might not sound interesting, but it does make for a very interesting visual style. Since Bava spent a good deal of his professional life as a director of photography/cinematographer, this isn’t too surprising. What this means for us is that we get beautiful women in high fashion being brutally slaughtered by a maniac wearing a faceless mask. So, if nothing else, this is a movie that doesn’t look like anything else out there.
