**SPOILERS** Probably the most influential of Mario Bava's Giallo thrillers "Bay of Blood" set the stage form the mid 1970's and beyond for scores of slasher movies that copied many of the scenes that Brava put into that film. Wheel-chair bound Countess Donari Fedenica is suddenly grabbed by the neck by a shadowy figure and pushed off her wheelchair where she's left suspended in the air to be garroted to death! The camera slowly moves upwards from the killers shoes to where we finally she his face who turns out to be the Contess' husband Count Donai Filippo! Before you can catch your breath the Count is run through from behind with a blade leaving him to bleed to death as his dead wife whom he just murdered is hanging suspended over him. This all happens in the first ten minutes of the film without a single world of dialog! The movie continues on it's gory way that when it's finally over practically everyone in it ends up brutally murdered. <br /><br />The plot, if you can call it one, of "Bay of Blood" has to do with a valuable piece of land on a bay that a number of people what to convert into a vacation resort with the owner Countess Fedenica refusing to sell it to them. This is what leads to the orgy of murder in the movie with everyone trying to get a hold of the land and not at all caring just what they have to do to get it.<br /><br />It's hard enough to follow the conniving and killing of those involved with the lake property but we have thrown into the mix, for what just seems to be a reason to jack-up the body count, a quartet of young people going down to the lake to have some fun. The first couple Brunhida and her boyfriend Robert separate from each other with Brunhida going skinny-dipping in the lake only to run, or bump, into the squid-eaten body of the murdered Count Filippo! Running buff naked to the cabin where the other couple, Denise & Duke, and Robert are staying Brunhida is hacked to death by an unknown killer who pops out of nowhere. Robert is then quickly chopped in half by the off-camera psycho as he opens the cabin door expecting to see Brunhilda. Later both Denise and Duke totally oblivious to what's happening, as their both in bed doing it, get run through like a shish kebab with a spear by the same unknown killer.<br /><br />Everyone that were introduced to in the film get's brutally murdered in some of the most grizzly scenes even put into a movie, American or foreign, up until that time. There's scenes of strangling impaling knifing slashing and decapitating that by the time the final act of murder happens, a good old fashion shot-gun massacre, your just left too numb and dazed to even react to it! The film "Bay of Blood" is so blood-splattered and off-the-wall that there's not even a mysterious killer that the audience could try to identify and figure out who he, or she, is. In that the killer finally reveals himself, due to process of elimination, since almost everyone who were murdered in the film had earlier ended up murdering somebody else making the point of the film being a whodunit totally moot.<br /><br />You really have to have both a strong ,as well as empty, stomach to be able to sit through and watch "Bay of Blood". The movie that more then any other horror film opened up the door to the wave of horror/slashers and Giallo horror/thrillers like "Deep Red" and "Tenabre" in Italy and "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th". As well as their many sequels and imitations that were soon to follow and are still with up even today.