Possibly Bava’s most violent effort and easily his most notorious, A Bay of Blood aka The Ecology of Crime structures itself around violent kill scenes rather than placing them strategically within a mystery-driven euro-crime plot. In doing so, it recoils from familiar giallo conventions and is often argued to be one of the first true slasher films. The films influence on both the slasher genre and gialli, especially those that focused more heavily on horror and stylised violence than detective or crime elements, cannot be overstated.

Dario Argento was reportedly so obsessed with the film that he convinced a projectionist friend to steal a print during its original Italian run so he could study it repeatedly. The Bava dynasty would continue through Mario’s son, Lamberto Bava, who later directed cult horror classics such as Demons and Delirium. Beneath a relatively strait-forward plot lies a gnarly chain of murders to which even the local wildlife partakes.