Rating: 
Summary: EXCELLENT movie, but...
Review: ...be warned.
You have NEVER heard audio so bad on a DVD.
Trust me. This is the most incredibly BAD audio experience you'll ever have. Dialogue is near-impossible to hear. Music suddenly swells and threatens the life of your speakers. Shrill sounds fade away into near-silence, as you lean-in to the screen/stereo, hoping to catch a word or two.....It's brain-numbingly bad. I've never heard anything so awful in my life before, and hope never to again. I'm not trying to steer anyone away from the film, it's a wonderful black comedy, and certainly one of the most influential horror films of all time (setting the stage for the now-common 'slasher film'). As well, the picture on this DVD is excellent, nice and crisp, wonderful colours, and a few great trailers which are icing on the cake. Just... be warned about the audio.
Hopefully
Rating: 
Summary: THE MASTERPIECE OF MARIO BAVA
Review: A shocking movie, probably the most original and bloody italian "giallo". Friday the 13th copied it. Sex, nudity, incredible murders, you must absolutely see it!
Rating:
Summary: The sickle of death is about to strike
Review: And it does so many times in this movie. A double-murder within the first ten minutes of a movie gets the pace going in what has been called the utmost in Mario Bava's ouvre of horror movies. Minutes after Countess Federica is murdered by her husband Filippo Donati, he himself is killed by an unknown person and his body dragged away. Many people then come down to the bay. There's Albert and his wife Renata, the latter being Donati's daughter. Frank Ventura is the scheming architect who wants to turn the bay and the area into some unspecified development project. There are also some teenagers who arrive in a yellow dune buggy and carouse in the abandoned night club by the bay. They are murdered most foully. It is the scene involving these people that served as the guiding inspiration for the Friday The 13th series, you know, brainless teens getting chopped up. But they are quick and brutal, or surprising in one case. Brunhilda, a German girl who looks like Penny Irving (House of Whipcord, Are You Being Served?) has a nice nude swim and a shocking surprise before her demise. She's actually one of the more decent of the four. Of the residents, entomologist Paolo Fosatti, who is too involved in his Coleoptera (that's the taxonomic order of beetles, BTW) than in his complaining, wine-bipping, fortune-telling wife Anna, and when she was alive, Countess Federica, are opposed to turning the bay "into a sea of cement," the former for the insect life, the latter for its natural beauty and serenity. Simon, the Countess's illegitimate son, hunts squid and lives by the bay. This movie is also known as Bay Of Blood, Carnage, The Last House On The Left Part II, Ecology Of A Crime, Reazione a Catena, and Antefatto, so take your pick, but Twitch Of The Death Nerve is the official English title. Whatever the title, this film sports a very high body count and brutal blood flow. Despite the cover boasting it being the uncut version, running 84 minutes, I read in one of my film books that the running time was 90 minutes, so a discrepancy there. The only face I recognized here was Claudine Auger (Renata), who played vivacious Domino in the Bond movie Thunderball. Here though, there is not a shred of decency or compassion in this Lady Macbeth of a woman. Mario Bava's stylish technique on lingering on victims and blood plays a large part here, as does Stelvio Cipriani's piano score, which resembles that of the Rachmaninoff-like love theme in his first movie, Black Sunday. It's difficult to filter out the message of human greed and also that of preserving the environment. Simon says it best: "Man should live and let live and without any interference." When Fosatti points out that the squid he was eating was alive, Simon retorts, "At least I eat my squid. I don't kill as a hobby like you do. If you kill for killing's sake, you become a monster."
Rating:
Summary: Great movie. Unforgivably poor sound.
Review: And its a real shame, because Stelvio Cipriani's score is one of the prime delights here. This is probably Bava at his most playful. Some have criticized the ending's willful outrageousness as dashing all credibility to bits, but (as is the case with Takashi Miike's "Dead or Alive") one has to wonder about anyone who could possibly take seriously what has come before. "Bay of Blood" knows from the get-go that "reality" doesn't even enter the equation. Most conventional narrative constructions prove to be pretty flimsy upon even cursory examination. They only make sense within the context of a hundred years of cinema taking gross liberties with common sense. It's especially true here, where the story exists only as a wispy, emaciated twig of a X-mas tree upon which to string an impressive collection of grisly and gaudy but imaginative baubles (the famous set pieces). Bava's propensity for showing us the apparatus from time to time demonstrates that he, wisely, didn't take his work too seriously. (Who on earth would?) And this is an important part of his charm. After all, movies aren't even remotely about reality - are, as a rule, even less so the harder they try to be. A single "Twitch of the Death Nerve" is worth a hundred "Schindler's List"s, "Titanic"s, "Pearl Harbor"s or whatever else Hollywood is trying to pass off as a "true" story these days. Bava knew, and we all should, once it passes through the camera lens it's all so much B.S. This pile smells especially sweet. Finally, it has been stated a million times how influential this movie has been - but, as praise, this is dubious. Basically this very watchable movie has inspired a mountain of others that AREN'T worth watching. But the sheer joy of cinema that informs this breezy, bloody romp makes that easy to forgive.
Rating: 
Summary: What Happened to the Sound???? Hello????????????
Review: Bava's "Twitch" was the first "body count" horror film and it's release on DVD by Image has long been awaited. Unfortunately, there are serious problems with the sound. The audio is extremely tinny and much of the dialog is incomprehensible. Many dialog scenes are so low that I needed to raise the volume up ALL the way (something I have never had to do on viewing over 500 DVD's) while some scenes are so loud and overmodulated that they crackle and reverberate. You will need to have remote in hand throughout the whole film because it's either way too low or way too loud and you'll be hitting that volume button constantly. And none of the sound feels "real"...it all sounds like it has been run through some kind of electronic filter. This is not just a "minor" sound glitch - it's truly bad ...I don't need 5.1 or surround sound - I just want to be able to hear and understand the film! I have not viewed the prior DVD released by Simitar, but from what I've heard, the audio was fine (although the picture apparently was not). And the audio on the old VHS release from Gorgon Video was fine as well. It's truly a shame that this important DVD release has been blotched by haphazard mastering by Image. The film itself is a lot of fun (part giallo, part gore flick) and was the first to introduce the now common "body count"....if you though "Friday the 13th" was the first, think again. There are so many plot twists in this one as well that new viewers may need to have a scorecard to keep up with it. The complexity of the narrative is also hampered by the atrocious sound. Keep that rewind and volume button because you'll want to hear all of the muffled dialog. And the dialog is critical. The DVD also has a couple of radio spots, a bizarre trailer for the film (under it's "Carnage" title), a menu to access the 13 murders directly, and trailers for other Bava DVD's from Image. Wish they would have spent more energy on the film itself. The image is fine and crisp, and although there are scratches and other defects sporadically throughout, it is still very satisfying. The audio, however, is unforgivable. Is there no quality control during mastering? This is not a source problem...it was obviously a mastering error. Hello Image - what gives? Can you hear me??????
Rating:
Summary: Well, it could have been worse. Really.
Review: Bay of Blood (Mario Bava, 1971)
It amuses me that Mario Bava himself hated this movie. The first thing I thought after it was over was "man, that was miles better than Black Sunday." It's still not worth rewatching, but if you've steered clear of Bava after watching the borefest that was Black Sunday, this may entice you to at least give him another try.
The plot, what little of it there is, is this; a husband kills his wife in order to get his hands on some land that includes a private lake (the bay of the title). Her daughter stages a suicide, so she can run around uninhibited by family obligations trying to get said bay back with a couple of hired hands with less than pristine motives themselves. A bunch of partying kids happens on the scene completely by accident. Complications ensue.
It's hopelessly entangled in its own plot, despite that plot not being in any way complex. It throws in a good deal of gratuitous violence and not nearly enough gratuitous nudity (but some, at least, courtesy the lovely softcore actress Brigitte Skay), foreshadowing just about every silly slasher film to come. Basically, it's mindless fun. Dario Argento did it far better a few years later with Profondo Rosso; see that instead. **
Rating:
Summary: YUCK....
Review: Definitely not my favorite Bava film. I waited years for this to come available and was stunned at it. ... The shoestring plot that threads the film together is only a mad scramble over some valuable lake property. What the film actually consists of are some incredibly violent murders that some say coined the phrase "body count". Bay of Blood indeed. Just when you begin to understand and care for a character---splat!---they're slaughtered. When the murderer is finally revealed it's hard to believe. ...And the ending---talk about your Poetic Justice! ...
Rating:
Summary: Great picture terrible sound
Review: First let me say I love this movie and have been waiting for a good dvd release forever. First I bought Simitars dvd and was disappointed with the video. It looked like it was dubbed off a bad vcr tape but the sound was ok. I was excited to see Image release this. I bought it and was very disappointed when I first played it. The video was beautiful about 10 times better than Simitars. But the sound was 10 times worse. The dialogue was either way too low or way overmodulated. You couldn't understand what the people were saying because youy had to either turn the volume to maximum then hurry and turn it back down before the overmodulation in the actors voices blew your speakers. I am not kidding when their voices raise it may damage your speakers. I love the movie but am warning you not to buy this or you may be very disappointed or angry.
Rating:
Summary: Very strange film
Review: First, I must say that this film has its own place in history of horror film,but I was expecting something another.First half hour is excellent with bloody murders of the teenagers,but then you dont expects so many killers,motives,and strange music.
I dont say that this film is SO bad,but there is so much better Italian horrors out there.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Bava, lousy sound
Review: I don't really consider myself a really big fan of Italian horror, seeing as how, for an example, I feel Lucio Fulci is supremely overrated. But this one has a special place in my heart simply because it's so different plot-wise. Sure, everyone dies a grisly death (it's gory even by today's standards, and this was 1971!), but it's all driven by greed, as people knock others off to try to get the rights to a bayside mansion. We get to learn about each character and why they might be a killer (save for the prerequisite doomed teens) and Bava peppers the film with neat cut-aways and lead-ins that intersperse perfectly with the next scene. Very fun, and very different. Too bad we can't get any decent sound on the DVD, and the picture isn't that good either. Pick it up anyway!!
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