(1970)
Overall: MEH
Following up the pretty lame giallo Five Dolls for an August Moon released the same year, Mario Bava's Hatchet for the Honeymoon, (Il rosso segno della follia), is yet another subpar affair from the usually excellent director. While there is no mystery at all as to who the killer is this time, (this is explained in the opening narration by the main antagonist), the one we are presented with instead involving a childhood trauma never picks up any much-needed momentum. We are shown slight, ghostly flashbacks at random times, but the bizarre and very specific type of madness that inflicts the dashingly handsome Stephen Forsyth is not given enough screen time to really become enthralling. This leaves only a handful of murder scenes that come off as too mundane, despite Bava utilizing his trusted and true, nifty camera tricks here or there. The added element of a murdered spouse who stubbornly insists on haunting him is clever yes, but her motivation for doing so is glossed over, ending up being just another somewhat messy ingredient to the whole. There is certainly some merit to Hatchet, but it is still more on the unremarkable side for Bava who would often take such thriller cliches to much more exciting terrain than here.
(1971)
Overall: MEH
What essentially amounts to "Everybody is horrible, the end", Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood, (Ecologia del delitto, Reazione a catena, Twitch of the Death Nerve, Carnage, and Blood Bath), was another giallo that wound up being wildly influential on the slasher genre. Motifs such as the murder of young, carefree attractive people being naked and having sex plus the overall brutality of the killings themselves would be routinely adapted later on and for that reason, one could argue that this is the goriest overall Bava film. It is also one of the more convoluted and frustratingly paced. While it is certainly an interesting and odd choice to have virtually no music accompany any scene, Bava ultimately spends TOO much time building suspense and especially by the last act when random characters are showing up while it becomes almost impossible to keep anyone's purpose let alone identity straight, it is downright aggravating to watch people very, very slowly walk around in the dark when we know they are just going to get a big hunk of something sliced into their head at any second. Then with the actual ending being positively ridiculous as if to convey that the entire movie was one big joke, the film is more of a curious entry into Bava's catalog than a good one
(1974)
Overall: MEH
For his penultimate film released during his lifetime, Mario Bava was rewarded free reign by producer Alfredo Leone, but the result Lisa and the Devil, (El diablo se lleva a los muertos), is only partially successful. Telly Savalas is a joy as a fiendishly conniving butler, confidently going about most of his scenes either talking to himself, singing, or sucking on a lollipop while all sorts of supernatural shenanigans are taking place around, (and most likely because of), him. Bava could not make a movie of his look bad if he tried and the ideally sprawling, Gothic mansion where most of the movie takes place is eye popping in nearly every scene. There are also some great, macabre visuals such as an entire dinner table adorned with almost comically creepy corpses. The "huh?" story line is where things really fall apart though. There are sinister reveals and enough appropriately cliche melodrama for such fare, but good luck trying to piece everything together as the plot is steadily perplexing. Add a rather uncomfortable rape scene, (are any such scenes ever not uncomfortable?), and there are assuredly some elements that could have been improved upon if not removed all together. The film was later re-cut with new footage for a more explicit, Exorcist cash-in called The House of Exorcism, but the version here is confusing enough as it is without all of the awkwardly forced nudity and gore.
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