April Ghouls Drive-In Monster-Rama is back at The Riverside Drive-In Theatre in Vandergrift, PA on April 24 and 25, 2026. Admission is still only $15 per person each night (children 12 and under free with adult) and overnight camping is available (breakfast included). You can buy tickets at the show, but get there early and learn more here.
The features for Friday, April 24 are Prince of Darkness, Popcorn, Fade to Black and Evilspeak.
Saturday, April 25 has Halloween 4, Halloween 5, A Bay of Blood and Funeral Home.
Also known as Ecology of Crime, Chain Reaction, Carnage, Twitch of the Death Nerve, Blood Bath, Last House on the Left – Part II and New House on the Left, this is the most violent and nihilistic of all of Mario Bava’s films. It started as a story idea so that Bava could work with Laura Betti (Hatchet for the Honeymoon) again, with the original titles of Stench of Flesh and Thus We Do Live to Be Evil, but had a virtual litany of writers get involved, including producer Giuseppe Zaccariello, Filippo Ottoni, Sergio Canevari, Dardano Sacchetti and Franco Barberi.
Bava was devoted to the film, and its low budget meant he would also serve as his own cinematographer, often creating innovative tracking shots with a toy wagon and relying on in-camera tricks to make the location seem much more expansive than it was. In fact, most of the lush forest was actually just Bava moving a few branches in front of the lens to hide the fact that they were filming in someone’s backyard.
There are thirteen murders in the film, many of which are incredibly gory, thanks to the skill of Carlo Rambaldi, as several characters vie to inherit the titular bay. Rambaldi, who would go on to create the lovable E.T., was clearly in a much darker headspace here, crafting throat-slashes and decapitations that look painfully wet even fifty years later.
The film divides critics and fans: some see it as pure gore, while others see it as the nuanced films Bava is known for. For example, Christopher Lee went on record saying he found the movie revolting. This from a guy who played Dracula ten times! If the Count thinks you’ve gone too far, you’re doing something right.
It also gave rise to the slasher genre, as every film that follows owes it a debt of gory gratitude. And some owe it plenty more, in particular Friday the 13th Part 2, which copies two of the kills in this film shot-for-shot. Steve Miner didn’t just take notes; he took the whole damn blueprint.
The story is all over the place and has a mix of dark humor and pure meanness at its core, starting with Filippo Donati strangling his wife, Countess Federica, before being stabbed and killed scant seconds later. His corpse is dragged to the bay, where his murder goes undiscovered as detectives begin their investigation into the death of the Countess.
That’s when we meet Frank (Chris Avram, Enter the Devil), a real estate agent, and his girlfriend Laura (Anna Maria Rosati), who plot to take over the bay. They were working with Donati to kill his wife and now need his signature, but don’t realize that he is already fish food.
Meanwhile, four teenagers hear about the murders and break into the mansion. One of them, Brunhilda, skinny dips in the bay until the dead corpse of Donati surfaces and touches her. She screams and runs toward the mansion, only to be killed by an unseen murderer holding a billhook. That killer uses that same weapon to kill her boyfriend, Bobby, then he impales Duke and Denise together with a spear while they’re having sex. Here’s a good lesson that I constantly yell: don’t fuck in the woods, don’t fuck in a haunted house, don’t fuck when a killer is about.
The killer turns out to be the Countess’s illegitimate son, Simon (Claudio Volonté, brother of Gian Maria Volonté), who is wiping out everyone under Frank’s orders. Renata (Claudine Auger, Domino from Thunderball) shows up to throw a wrench in the work, as she’s the Countess’ real daughter. Along with her husband, Albert (Luigi Pistilli, who Western fans will recognize from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), she begins to make plans to kill her half-brother.
What follows is a near Grand Guignol of back-and-forth murder: Frank attacks Renata, who turns the tables and stabs him with a knife. Paolo, the entomologist who lives on the estate grounds (played by Leopoldo Trieste, whom Bava fans know from The Girl Who Knew Too Much), sees the killing but is strangled by Albert before he can call the police, and his wife is decapitated with an axe. Laura shows up, but Simon strangles her to death before Albert kills him. Frank shows up again, but Albert takes him out, leaving Renata as the sole heir.
They return home to await being awarded the money, but as they get to the front door, their children shoot them with a shotgun, thinking they are playing with their parents. Bored with the game and how long their parents have been playing dead, the kids run out to play another game. It’s an ending that can be viewed as pure comedy or a sad comment on humanity. Maybe both. It’s the ultimate “fuck you” to the audience, suggesting that greed and violence are literally in our DNA.
Bay of Blood isn’t the Gothic art of past Bava films like Black Sunday, but it’s not trash. It’s a mean-spirited and brilliantly executed exercise in style. It’s also been claimed to have been Bava’s favorite film that he directed, perhaps because he finally got to strip away the romance and show the world for the meat grinder it is. Dario Argento adores the movie so much that he literally stole a print of it from a theater! If you ever find yourself in Rome and see Dario running down the street with a film canister, now you know why.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.