Blood Bath | 1972 | Italy | Mario Bava

Long considered the progenitor of the slasher genre, Mario Bava’s pseudo-giallo splatter film is often known as A Bay of Blood or Twitch of the Death Nerve. The complicated plot follows a countess who is murdered, her death covered up as a suicide. When her assailant is also killed by a mysterious killer, a group of hopefuls arrive at the lakeside property, hoping to be the lucky one to inherit the goods whilst multiple murderers prowl the premises with their own intentions. One of Bava’s most violent pieces and a ground-breaker in terms of dispensing with traditional murder mystery tropes, the VHS release from Hokushin was banned for its intensely graphic but stylish murder sequences.