Rating: 
Summary: One Star Off For Cruddy Audio
Review: Italian director Mario Bava (1914-1980) is one of the giants of the horror film genre. Bava's big break into came with his 1960 black and white classic "Black Sunday" starring Barbara Steele. This was only the beginning, as Bava churned out a series of gruesome shockers over the next seventeen years. His films always promised great style mixed with scenes of murder and mayhem. The Bava legacy continued with son Lamberto, one of the guiding lights behind "Demons," an instant cult favorite with gorehounds worldwide. Perhaps Mario's biggest contribution to horror movies was his 1972 picture "Twitch of the Death Nerve," also known as "Bay of Blood." It doesn't take too long to realize "Friday the 13th" shamelessly cribbed from Bava's bloodbath. At least two of the murders in this film appear almost unchanged in the first installment of the Jason Voorhees franchise. That's right: Mario Bava gave birth to the modern slasher film.The Countess Frederica Donati is a wealthy woman who owns most of the land around a beautiful bay. It is quite unfortunate for her that there are many people interested in gaining control of the land in order to build shopping malls or a resort then in keeping the bay in pristine condition. Donati refuses to sell out her interest, however, and this sparks a jealousy and greed with tragic consequences for anyone in the area. Someone will have Donati's land, even if they have to murder anyone who gets in their way. The first murder (there are ultimately thirteen of them'ring any bells? Remember the trailer to the original "Friday the 13th" trailer that counted up the murders?) claims the countess herself, strung up with a noose in a particularly cruel way. Throw in a greedy lawyer and his secretary, an illegimate son who fishes for squid in the bay, a nature lover and his loony, tarot card reading wife, a quartet of kids looking for some fun, and a family of four with a personal stake in the disposition of the bay's land and you have the makings for a non-stop blitz of murder and mayhem. Just when you think you know who the murderer is, Bava throws a curveball and reveals a little more of the background concerning the struggle over Donati's inheritance. By the time you get to the conclusion you have no idea where this thing is going to end up. I am still shaking my head over the last minute of the film, trying to decide if what I saw is the most ridiculous ending in film history or one of the most brilliant. "Twitch of the Death Nerve" may have loads of graphic killings, but it also has one of the most convoluted plots in horror film history. The secondary elements of the film, namely gore, atmosphere, and acting, are all well done for this type of movie. You don't often expect great acting with Italian horror films, and you don't exactly get that here, but it is above average. The atmosphere is spectacular, with lots of fade-ins and outs, excellent use of colors, and an oppressive sense of doom hanging over the entire movie. "Twitch of the Death Nerve" is definitely not made by some yuck with a video camera looking to make a few bucks on the straight to video market. Mario Bava knows how to craft atmosphere and scenery, and he does a great job here. The gore is slightly more problematic, with some scenes really working while others looking decidedly cheesy. Still, the intention is here, as the film possesses a streak of cruelty not seen in many horror films. The biggest difficulty in watching "Twitch of the Death Nerve" falls squarely in the lap of Image Entertainment, the company that released this DVD version of the film. The extras aren't the problem, as there are enough goodies here to satiate every horror aficionado. Image throws in a "murder menu" where you can go straight to the grue, a funky trailer for the film under the title "Carnage" that is one of the most inventive movie trailers I have ever seen, two cheesy radio spots, a biography and filmography of Mario Bava, and trailers for SIX other Bava films released under the Image banner. How can it all go wrong after such a bonanza? It's the sound, my friend. The audio for the film is the worst I've ever heard on a DVD. Dialogue is tinny, drops out with cringing regularity, and then swells up so much I feared my system would explode. In fact, I thought my sound system wasn't working correctly until I saw other reviewers complaining about the sound on the DVD. I cannot imagine any company releasing a product with audio this bad. There is a "Bay of Blood" DVD released under the Scimitar label that supposedly has good audio, but the picture quality on that disc is reportedly mediocre. If we can find a way to transfer that audio track to this disc's picture quality (which is pretty good with a minimum of grain), maybe "Twitch of the Death Nerve" would be the total package. Yes, the audio is THAT bad! What a shame, too. The soundtrack for this film is excellent, with lots of drums and orchestral movements that really add a suspenseful element to the movie. I'm looking forward to seeing other Mario Bava films in the future, hopefully with better sound quality than this. Mario was quite the technician with his films, not only sitting in the director's chair but working on the special effects and scripts as well. He's probably rolling in his grave right now over Image's mutilation of his movie.
Rating:
Summary: Great Horror Film
Review: Mario Bava brings us a classic horror film, that almost every horror buff has studied, and every director at that...Friday the 13th ripped this film off in many ways, but it still stands head above the rest as being a great horror film.
Rating:
Summary: Classic Italian stalk n' slash
Review: Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood (aka: Twitch of the Death Nerve and Last House on The Left 2) is a very gory splatter movie in which various people are murdered by various killers all after possession of a small bay. A number of people see this as the inspiration for Halloween or Friday the 13th because the abrupt, ultra- bloody killings, wide-angle lenses and point-of-view killer tracking shots are all very similar. Personally I think this is unlikely since the film was pretty obscure and heavily cut in a lot of places (banned outright in the UK) until the advent of video. However, the similarities must be acknowledged. Where Bay of Blood is completely different to American splatter movies is in its tone and point of view. Almost all of the characters are nasty and motivated entirely by greed to kill people with little hesitation - there are at least 5 murderers in action. It's a case of "I want, I kill to get with the machete". American stalk n slash movies tend to identify with the victims. Here you identify with no-one. This is deliberate and similar to Bava's earlier Blood and Black Lace although carried out in a more extreme fashion. In a way it's almost a Brechtian movie with a distracted alienated view -everything reduced to its fundamentals (the original Italian title translates as "ecology of death"). For their time, the killings are very explicit and include a couple skewered with a spear whilst having sex on a bed, a machete in the face, a decapitation, a impalment against a wall (compare this to the ending of Argento's Tenebrae) and garottings and knifings. On the minus side the dubbing and dialogue leave something to be desired and some explanatory flashbacks towards the end serve no purpose other than to delay the climax (though they may have been inserted to pad out the short running time). The rental video I saw was of pretty poor picture quality and some comments have also been made about the DVD so this may apply to all copies.
Rating: 
Summary: YOU MAY NOT WALK AWAY FROM THIS ONE!
Review: Mario Bava's movies are like songs by The Beatles: every one of them is a mini-masterpiece that in one way or another changed the way music was made (or in this case, horror movies). With BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, Bava singlehandedly created the giallo, probably THE greatest facet in Italian horror next to the Zombie Holocaust subgenre. But TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE (aka A BAY OF BLOOD, CARNAGE, LAST HOUSE-PART 2, REAZIONE A CATENA (CHAIN REACTION), ECOLOGIA DEL DELITTO (THE ECOLOGY OF MURDER) and ANTEFATTO (BEFORE THE FACT)) is by far the most revolutionary of Mario Bava's horror films. Made in 1972, a banner year for the giallo (Fulci's excellent DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING and Argento's FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET, just to name a few), TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE was the blueprint for the tidal wave of slasher movies in the late '70s and early '80s (e.g., the FRIDAY THE 13TH series, THE PROWLER, MADMAN, THE BURNING). In fact, FRIDAY THE 13TH producer/director Sean S. Cunningham even confirms the fact that all these slasher movies owe a debt to Bava (according to Tim Lucas, the leading expert on Bava, in his commentary for BLOOD AND BLACK LACE)! But on its own, TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE is a darkly funny commentary on greed and the preservation of nature and mostly murder!
There are no likeable characters in TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE. Everybody, from Countess Frederica to those four teenagers, is so dire and self-centered that it's damn near impossible to identify with any of them. But that's what makes it so damn good. Their eventual killings are not so much fueled by greed as by karma. As with a good EC Comic, those who refuse to play nice are gonna get what's coming to them, and boy do these people have it coming to them! Those awesome gore effects, like the spearing and the decapitation, come from none other than Carlo Rambaldi, who did the effects for E.T., ALIEN, POSSESSION, and Argento's DEEP RED, just to name a few. I like the humorously ironic ending; that ending makes TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE the DR. STRANGELOVE of horror movies, but I wouldn't dream of giving away the joke.
Yes, TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE is so evocative and scary (what else would you expect from Bava?) that I can forgive the sound quality for being a little off. I hope Bill Lustig's Blue Underground can secure the rights to Mario Bava's work because this company always does such an excellent job with their DVD releases. I bet that they can clean up and remaster the soundtrack with at least a 2.0 stereo surround mix (or maybe an EX surround and a DTS mix), maybe add a commentary from Lucas among a few extras. They could even give anamorphic enhancement to BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, THE WHIP AND THE BODY, LISA AND THE DEVIL, and HOUSE OF EXORCISM; I'm speculating but I sure hope this will happen in the foreseeable future. But for now, Image Entertainment's DVD, with a glorious anamorphic transfer and trailers for this and other Bava goodies like the aforementioned LISA and EXORCISM, does the trick. In any case, TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE, the most influential movie from the founding father of Italian horror, is a definite must-watch for slasher buffs!
Rating: 
Summary: If you don't GET it - You won't like it..........
Review: Seeing 90% of Mario Bava's films and liking 80% of them, I sat there wondering, "WHY would Mario even BOTHER to make a film like this ?!?!" Up until the VERY LAST SCENE, did I FINALLY understand WHY he would make a film like this...Because of THAT - I would recomend this to Bava fans...BUT - BAVA FANS ONLY !! I can't see where ANYONE would enjoy this type of feature, with the cheep acting, not so good dubbing, and a SCRATCHY, TERRIBLE sounding audio track ! For a DVD, this has the WORST audio track I have EVER listened to....THAT alone makes the film tough to watch. Plot ??? Easy enough to follow...Just another mad slasher picture - (which was so popular in the 1980s)...So just WHO is doing all the killing ????? We have seen it all before...Bava was the FIRST, though...You can see the similarities in 'Friday The 13th' FOR SURE, just by looking at the opening shots ! Only THIS is done with more style and suspence. So we have a TERRIBLE audio on the dvd, a passable film transfer on the dvd, pretty bad dubbing, cheap acting, poor dialouge, a nice amount of GORE (for THAT time period), and some BAD 70s characteristics !!! BUT - Its entertaining ! If you don't really 'understand' this picture, I'll give you a HINT on HOW to view "Twitch Of The Death Nerve" : Take it as a very DARK comedy...It works !!!!
Rating:
Summary: If you don't GET it - You won't like it..........
Review: Seeing 90% of Mario Bava's films and liking 80% of them, I sat there wondering, "WHY would Mario even BOTHER to make a film like this ?!?!" Up until the VERY LAST SCENE, did I FINALLY understand WHY he would make a film like this...Because of THAT - I would recomend this to Bava fans...BUT - BAVA FANS ONLY !! I can't see where ANYONE would enjoy this type of feature, with the cheep acting, not so good dubbing, and a SCRATCHY, TERRIBLE sounding audio track ! For a DVD, this has the WORST audio track I have EVER listened to....THAT alone makes the film tough to watch. Plot ??? Easy enough to follow...Just another mad slasher picture - (which was so popular in the 1980s)...So just WHO is doing all the killing ????? We have seen it all before...Bava was the FIRST, though...You can see the similarities in 'Friday The 13th' FOR SURE, just by looking at the opening shots ! Only THIS is done with more style and suspence. So we have a TERRIBLE audio on the dvd, a passable film transfer on the dvd, pretty bad dubbing, cheap acting, poor dialouge, a nice amount of GORE (for THAT time period), and some BAD 70s characteristics !!! BUT - Its entertaining ! If you don't really 'understand' this picture, I'll give you a HINT on HOW to view "Twitch Of The Death Nerve" : Take it as a very DARK comedy...It works !!!!
Rating:
Summary: Bay of Blood (classic film, atrocious print)
Review: Simitar video's transfer to DVD of this classic slasher film is nothing short of an abomination. The picture quality is inferior to my VHS print. Amazon have the aspect ratio as 2.35:1.It is 1.77:1 at best!
Rating: 
Summary: DVD Quality Scarier Than The Film
Review: Terrible picture and audio quality on this DVD mar Bava's pioneering effort. The transfer is just the pits, I'm sorry to say, and takes away from the film's enjoyment. There's rumored to be another release of this coming from the same folks who recently released "Black Sunday", with which they did an excellent job. Wait for that, and pick up "Black Sunday" or "Baron Blood" in the meantime.
Rating: 
Summary: Sound quality makes DVD worthless
Review: The movie is classic Bava and Image's widescreen transfer looks great. HOWEVER! The soundtrack is abominable. As others have said, you have to constantly turn the volume up and down to hear what's going on. But in way too many scenes, the volume doesn't matter because the sound is so choppy and distorted you can't hear it at any level. Image should've eaten the loss and passed on releasing this DVD to its loyal fan base. As a consumer, my faith in Image is now shaken and who knows what crap they may push in the future? I know it's only one disappointment in a history of prestige, but I remember the first time I saw commercials on cable channel AMC. Twas the beginning of the end.
Rating:
Summary: SOUND PROBLEMS
Review: The movie itself I actually give 5 stars... it's totally fantastic! BUT... did anyone else have problems with the SOUND on this DVD? It's unbelievably screwed up and un-adjustable. It literally makes the DVD unwatchale! It's kind of shocking that anyone would let this happen. Is it a mistake? I would love to get my money back but it's too much of a hassle. Otherwise, this is a GREAT Mario Bava film... really great... go fo a DVD from another company or the VHS copy though.
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