‘Twitch of the Death Nerve’ (or ‘A Bay of Blood’) & its messy slasher aesthetic

Slasher films are beautifully cathartic. There’s a particular adrenaline rush, a high that runs your cheeks blood red and gets your heart throbbing in your ribcage, that you can’t get anywhere else. Sure, horror films of any type can elicit the same response, and as a new study indicated, from research out of the University of Turku (in Finland), we are very curious creatures with a deep hunger for terrible chills and thrills.

I’ve always had a predilection for the macabre, particularly of the hack ‘n slash variety. From Halloween II (1981) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) to Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985) and Child’s Play 2 (1990), such mainstream affairs were my primary gateway into the genre ⏤ and pepper in films like Poltergiest, all recorded on my dad’s grainy VHS tapes, of course, and you’ve got the makings of a horror fiend. To this day, slashers hold a special place in my heart.

So, you may guess my surprise when I finally watched Mario Bava’s Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971), or A Bay of Blood as it was marketed here in the states, a film that many have reassessed as the very first slasher. Eyes transfixed to the screen, its tantalizing imagery ⏤ fueled with steamy sex scenes, perverse and graphic imagery (including a decapitation and an agonizing hanging), and the classic whodunnit giallo template ⏤ satisfied both my fear and excitement.

Many argue 1963’s Blood Feast, a grimey and perhaps barbaric attempt at filmmaking, is the cornerstone of the slasher genre. That’s certainly a valid argument, and there are essential puzzle pieces that would later be used throughout the ’80s boom, as well. But there’s something far more elegant, mysterious, and altogether entrancing about Bava’s film, as he combs various sub-genres to craft a film as convuluted as it is bloody.

When Countess Federica Donati (played by Isa Miranda), the propietor of a much-coveted bayside estate, is murdered in her home, her death sparks a slew of unspeakably grisly murders on the bay’s shores. Creativity abounds with some of the most terrifying and gory kills I’ve ever seen, and the nearby villagers harbor no qualims in wrecking havoc and leaving blood, limbs, and mid-coitus corpses in their wake. There’s even your classic Friday the 13th cast of 20-somethings whose sole purpose is to inflate the body count ⏤ and would later come to great use in many Jason Voorhees installments, including Part II, lifting a standout death-by-impalement sex scene.

In true giallo fashion, the third act is absolutely bonkers. More bodies hit the floor, and things get terribly complicated when Renata (Claudine Auger), whose father Filippo Donati (Giovanni Nuvoletti) has gone missing, shows up to stake her claim on the property. Neighbors Paolo Fossati, an entymologist, and his boozy, card-reading, and totally wonderful wife Anna (who’s a psychic by trade, with flowy shawls and an aloof sensibility) supply not only necessary exposition about Renata’s father’s wherabouts but some charming levity to the picture.

Meanwhile: a grounds keeper of sorts, the scruffy loner Simon (Claudio Volonté) attempts to impede anyone and everyone from snatching the manor’s acreage from his grasp. When things really begin to spiral, and they spiral quite devilishly like a hypnosis wheel, it all culminates in one of the best, most bizarro, and totally satisfying endings in horror I’ve ever witnessed. Like you’ll never see it coming in a million years.

Twitch of the Death Nerve has been criticized for its jagged brutality, but therein lies its charm. Jarring skin-crawling imagery, like when one of the youths is pulverized with a sickle-shaped weapon to the face, adorns the giallo frill with its graceful shot composition and slow-burning murder/mystery storyline. Plenty of sequences feel choppy or out of place, yet I couldn’t get enough of it.

If you’ve see as many slashers as I have, you’ll surely appreciate Nerve‘s nerve (pun intended) for the unsettling and the gruesome. And it’s easy to see why it’s had such a lasting impact on horror films, especially those set at camp, by a lake, or anywhere in seclusion, really. Boy, is it a ride.

Even the trailer (below) is something else.

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