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.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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