A Bay of Blood

A Bay of Blood (1971)

Ecologia del delitto

They came to play, they stayed to die.

An elderly heiress is killed by her husband who wants control of her fortunes. What ensues is an all-out murder spree as relatives and friends attempt to reduce the inheritance playing field, complicated by some teenagers who decide to camp out in a dilapidated building on the estate.

Date of release
1971-09-08
TMDB
6.6 / 10 (452)
Runtime
1h 25m
Genres
Horror, Thriller
Director
Mario Bava

Casting

Interesting facts

A Bay of Blood is a 1971 Italian giallo film co-written and directed by Mario Bava and starring Claudine Auger, Luigi Pistilli, Claudio Volonté, Anna M. Rosati, Laura Betti, Leopoldo Trieste, Brigitte Skay, Chris Avram and Isa Miranda. The story details a string of mysterious murders that occur around the titular bay.

Production

The genesis of A Bay of Blood was when producer Dino De Laurentiis heard that Dardano Sacchetti, screenwriter of the popular The Cat o' Nine Tails, had fallen out with the film's director Dario Argento. He contacted Sacchetti and persuaded him to collaborate with director Mario Bava on a giallo film.

Sacchetti wrote the first draft of the script, titled Cosi imparano a fare i cattivi ("That Will Teach Them to Be Bad") after a line spoken by the children after killing their parents, with his writing partner Franco Barbieri. However, spectacular arguments with Bava and the production team led to Barbieri being fired, and Sacchetti quit as an act of solidarity with his partner.

Bava, owing a massive amount in back taxes, felt he needed to complete a film soon, and turned to Giuseppe Zaccariello (who had silently backed Bava's earlier films Hatchet for the Honeymoon and Five Dolls for an August Moon) to take over as producer. Zaccariello insisted that the shooting script be written by Filippo Ottoni, who was reluctant to take the job since he did not like exploitation films.

The cast included Laura Betti, who had got along well with Bava on Hatchet for the Honeymoon. At the time De Laurentiis approached Bava about working with Sacchetti, Bava and Betti had been toying with the idea of making a film called Odore di carne ("stench of flesh") about cannibalism on Los Angeles colleges.

The film began production in early 1971, still under the shooting title Cosi imparano a fare i cattivi, which was soon changed to Reazione a catena ("chain reaction"). Yet another title used during shooting was La baia d'argento ("the bay of silver"), discarded for fear that the film would be perceived as a parody of Dario Argento's works as a result.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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