New 4K restoration by Severin Films! After establishing the giallo genre with BLOOD AND BLACK LACE in ’64, Mario Bava revolutionized horror again with ’71’s A BAY OF BLOOD. This primal scream of a film doesn’t merely hint at what’s to come with TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and HALLOWEEN. Rather, it bursts onto the scene as the first slasher, fully formed, no “proto-” prefix needed. It delivers the goods in the slasher thrills department, and was the source material for two of the greatest kills in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2. Whether you’re a first-time or repeat viewer of A BAY OF BLOOD, you owe it to yourself to luxuriate in this newly-restored masterpiece of Italian horror.

A. S. Hamrah is the author of  Algorithm of the Night: Film Writing, 2019-2025 and The Earth Dies Streaming: Film Writing, 2002-2018. He is the film critic for n+1 and writes for a number of other publications, including Harper’s, Bookforum, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Fast Company, The Baffler, and the Criterion Collection. He has worked as a movie theater projectionist, a semiotic brand analyst in the television industry, a political pollster, a football cinematographer, and for the film director Raúl Ruiz. He produced the feature-length documentary Bunker, directed by Jenny Perlin, which was the opening night film at the Museum of Modern Art’s Doc Fortnight in 2022. He lives in New York.