Movies
Kill of the Week: Double Penetration in ‘Bay of Blood’
Every week, we spotlight a kill that we just can’t get enough of. This is Kill of the Week.
Masterpieces like Halloween and Friday the 13th may have popularized the slasher sub-genre, but the origin tale of the body count film dates back many years prior. Bob Clark’s Black Christmas directly paved the way for Halloween, for example, while many consider Hitchcock’s Psycho to be the first true slasher film.
And then there’s Italian filmmaker Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood (aka Twitch of the Death Nerve), unquestionably one of the earliest and most influential slashers of them all.
In the 1971 film, which predates Friday the 13th by nine years, the body count rises in the wake of a rich countess being murdered, setting off a race to see who’ll inherit her estate. The gory mayhem found in the movie was very uncommon at the time; watching it back today, it’s clear that it laid down the blueprint for the American slasher film.
Of particular note, Bay of Blood was completely ripped off ten years after its release by 1981’s Friday the 13th Part 2. Two of the standout moments of brutality in Bava’s film were directly copied by the second installment of the Friday franchise, including one wherein the killer whacks a machete directly into the face of an unlucky man.
And then there’s the double slaying of a young man and woman who are speared in bed while having sex. The killer slams the spear into the woman’s back, driving it straight through both of their bodies and into the floor below. They both briefly writhe in pain before dying, spending their final moments cruelly joined together by the spear.
The kill in Friday Part 2 plays out almost exactly the same way (though the man is on top this time around), right down to the tip of the spear slamming into the floor.
Bava passed away in 1980, never knowing just how influential Bay of Blood was.
Movies
‘Abigail’ on Track for a Better Opening Weekend Than Universal’s Previous Two Vampire Attempts
In the wake of Leigh Whannell’s Invisible Man back in 2020, Universal has been struggling to achieve further box office success with their Universal Monsters brand. Even in the early days of the pandemic, Invisible Man scared up $144 million at the worldwide box office, while last year’s Universal Monsters: Dracula movies The Last Voyage of the Demeter and Renfield didn’t even approach that number when you COMBINE their individual box office hauls.
The horror-comedy Renfield came along first in April 2023, ending its run with just $26 million. The period piece Last Voyage of the Demeter ended its own run with a mere $21 million.
But Universal is trying again with their ballerina vampire movie Abigail this weekend, the latest bloodbath directed by the filmmakers known as Radio Silence (Ready or Not, Scream).
Unlike Demeter and Renfield, the early reviews for Abigail are incredibly strong, with our own Meagan Navarro calling the film “savagely inventive in terms of its vampiric gore,” ultimately “offering a thrill ride with sharp, pointy teeth.” Read her full review here.
That early buzz – coupled with some excellent trailers – should drive Abigail to moderate box office success, the film already scaring up $1 million in Thursday previews last night. Variety notes that Abigail is currently on track to enjoy a $12 million – $15 million opening weekend, which would smash Renfield ($8 million) and Demeter’s ($6 million) opening weekends.
Working to Abigail‘s advantage is the film’s reported $28 million production budget, making it a more affordable box office bet for Universal than the two aforementioned movies.
Stay tuned for more box office reporting in the coming days.
In Abigail, “After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.”
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