GARFY'S GORETORIUM

WELCOME TO MY NIGHTMARE! Grab your swimming shorts and bikinis and have your wits about you as we take a dip into A BAY OF BLOOD!

Giallo

Ok, so this is a genre that I am unfamiliar with but having recently bought some DVDs I thought it would be fun to explore.

The literal meaning of giallo is yellow, so the name of the genre comes from the yellow covers of the giallo books which were a crime thriller genre of novels written during the Mussolini era but as this is a movie reviewing blog, we will focus on the giallo movies.

To my understanding, in the 1960’s giallo moved into the world of film and turned into a less fixed genre, providing more horror containing gore and more eroticism as well as the usual crime thriller. They normally come with very similar set up to slasher films, using masked or mysterious killers that use sharp objects, rope or black leather gloves to murder their targets as well as the plot involving attractive women in danger and characters full of paranoia.

A BAY OF BLOOD (1971)

Screenplay – Mario Bava, Filippo Ottoni, Giuseppe Zaccariello

 Story –  Franco Barberi, Dardano Sacchetti

Dialogue –    Gene Luotto (English Version)

Director –   Mario Bava

Cast –   Claudine Auger, Luigi Pistilli, Claudio Camaso, Anna Maria Rosario, Chris Avram 

Plot – When a rich countess is murdered, her step-daughter and her partner come looking for the countess’s missing husband, discovering secrets of the bay as their search goes on. The mystery of the murder gets out of control as the body count starts to rise and rise.

 Going into this film I had no idea what to expect as I hadn’t really read up on giallo, my first impression? I was incredibly impressed with what I saw. From start to finish A Bay Of Blood had me enthralled with what I was seeing, it starts almost like a silent movie, very little sound and focusing more on the visual side of things which are done so well you can’t take your eyes away from the screen. Just like the slasher genre we have grown to love, from the start this movies follows the typical rules of the giallo genre as the first kill involves black gloves and rope which I feel can be just as brutal as a knife or an axe, this isn’t a spoiler as it is at the start of the movie. The main thing I was incredibly impressed with was the effects, it feels so ahead of its time and again, makes the visual aspect so much more effective, it also makes up for the lack of quality in the script, but the kill scenes are some of the most impressive kills in horror movies of that time.

The script and the acting do let this down slightly and with the English dubbing it does make it look a bit worse. Instead of feeling sympathy or any other feeling for characters I was just waiting to see who is next to be killed and how gruesome the death will be. Don’t get me wrong, the story is a decent story and a typical “whodunnit”, that gives the audience many red herons and bluffing reveals that did actually keep me hooked and wanting to find out who the killer was but I did find myself being more interested to how they were going to be killed, I mean some kills didn’t really make sense, I didn’t really understand why some of the characters actually got killed but because of the way it happened, it was still entertaining. The ending to A Bay Of Blood is a little bit bizarre but without giving anything away, when you give it some thought, it does kind of make sense.

So for my first giallo movie, I have to say I am impressed and I look forward to watching more from this genre. I’m going to rate A Bay Of Blood 7.5/10 and I would say buy it and add it to your collection or if you prefer to stream, it is available on SHUDDER(UK as far as I know).