A Bay of Blood

Import Blu-ray/Region All pressing. A family's murderous battle over some bayfront property is the subject of director Mario Bava's bloody horror-thriller, which many have cited as the grandfather of the modern slasher film. Claudine Auger is the scheming daughter of a murdered Countess; her staged suicide forms the basis of the film's plot. In a seemingly unrelated subplot, four hippies arrive in a dune buggy led by Brigitte Skay, who dances the Shake and swims naked before having her throat hacked open with a machete. Skay's boyfriend has his face chopped with the same machete and the other couple has a spear thrust through their bodies as they make love. All of these murder scenes were imitated in Steve Miner's Friday the 13th, Part 2 and the film's style influenced countless American slasher films of the 1970s and '80s. Bava also includes a strangulation by telephone cord, a gory axe decapitation, a man speared to a wall, and five other murders.