Twitch Of The Death Nerve (1971) I suppose that you could say that this movie is important in the grand scheme
of things because of all the elements that movies since its release back in
1971 have emulated, borrowed from, and just downright ripped off. I think it's
equally likely that you could say this movie is completely forgettable and
utterly pointless and that it's precisely the things that later movies ripped
off that make this movie the regrettably useless exercise this film was.
You see, Twitch of the Death Nerve is a forerunner to the modern-day slasher movie. Now, there have been movies
before and after that many people go on and on about the influence such and
such movie had on that most dubious of genres, but this one isn't really so
much a precursor or antecedent to all those movies, so much as it's just a
regular old generic slasher movie that would fit right in with the Friday the 13ths, Halloweens and the rest of their ilk. All the elements are here: a secluded, woodsy location, point-of-view shots
from the killer's perspective, a confusing ending, and of course a group of
utterly retarded youths that were born merely to be cannon fodder for whatever
freak is hiding behind the shrubs with a machete. In fact, and the liner notes
included with the DVD will confirm this, you will witness heinous killings that
seem oddly familiar. Right off the bat, I can think of one scene involving two
people copulating on a bed and getting run through with a metal stake that was
lifted completely by the Friday the 13th series (Part II I think, but I'm not about to slog through Jason's eleven adventures to
confirm it).
The story begins promisingly enough with some old hag in a wheelchair getting
hanged, presumably by her husband. Director Mario Bava follows that murder up
quickly with the stabbing death of the killer. What sort of town is this where
even murderers aren't safe in their own homes? But the most shocking scene is
yet to come! We flash forward to the swinging bachelor pad of happening real
estate developer Frank Ventura. The pad has all these irregularly shaped lights
and furniture and I seem to recall a fair amount of shag, but I could just be
stereotyping.  Frank is rolling around in bed with some naked chick, like those Italians are
prone to do when they ain't out slicing and dicing naked chicks. He tells her
he has to go off to this Bay where the old hag was murdered. He's going to look
up the illegitimate son (see Bastard in the white pages) and try and trick him
into signing away the rights to the Bay so that Frank and his client can
develop the property into a tourist trap. The lady doesn't want him to go and
makes some noise about coming up to the Bay later, thus alerting the viewer to
the fact that this clingy broad will be meeting the sort of death that a
suffocating boyfriend can usually only dream about.
Meanwhile we go back to the Bay where we see a guy biting into a raw octopus.
This is the illegitimate (and apparently moronic) son of the Countess. His name
is unsurprisingly Simon as most of us know that people named Simon are almost
never normal and almost always suffer from psychoses (probably involving sharp
blades). Simon runs into Paolo who is the local entomologist. I looked that up
and it means that he studies bugs, not that he likes people to pee on him (not
that I thought that or anything).
The meeting between these two is marked by an idiotic conversation about
killing and who is a monster for doing so and all that. Simon thinks he's
better than Paolo because Paolo kills bugs for no reason other than to tack
them up on his walls at home, while Simon kills marine life so that he can eat.
Of course Paolo can counter by saying that at least he would cook an octopus
before snarfing it down. I suppose this is to try and drive home the idea that we are all killers in our
own way and that anyone could be the killer who is at large nearby. What it
actually drives home is the fact that this is just a slasher movie and all the
pretense that it was anything else should have been checked at the title screen
(which mysteriously had The Bay of Blood title instead of the more poetic Twitch of the Death Nerve title which was featured on the DVD packaging.). We also get our first glimpse of a couple that would later turn out to be the
Countess's daughter and her wuss husband (Renata and Albert). They're lurking
around in the woods peeping on Paolo who's chasing after a bug with a net. The
movie then switches into full crap mode. We are introduced to four youths who are cruising around through the
countryside looking for fun or something and decide to stop off at the Bay for
some R&R. These are your typical slasher movie groupies. You've got two yucky
guys looking to get lucky and two skanky girls who have little or no
self-respect. The only redeeming quality these dopes have is that the vehicle
they're driving around in looks exactly like cartoon superstar Speed Buggy.
Man, did I like that show! Just like Scooby-Doo but with a talking car!  These four start tromping around the Bay and find an old abandoned nightclub
(huh?) where they go in and start dancing and stuff. Then one of the girls
decides to leave the group and goes skinny dipping in that dirty, cold, nasty
bay. It has octopuses in it for crying out loud! The other three end up at this
deserted house that I think was one of the real estate guy's homes. Two of them
go into a bedroom to get it on, while the other dude goes and gets fire wood.
This is about 30 or 35 minutes in and the viewer is beginning to wonder where
the rest of the killings are.
It's not that having people killed in a movie is something to look forward to
or anything, but these "characters" were very dull and had nothing to do with
any Countess or her dang bay, plus the box did say I could expect 13 murders.
Finally though, the four kids are offed - the couple gets the previously
mentioned spear through the both of them while they were knowing each other
biblically, the dude getting firewood takes a machete in the face and the
skinny dipping hussy gets her throat cut after being chased down by the killer.
Now that the movie is back on its murderous track, we get back to interacting
with the rest of the previously introduced cast. Paolo is at home talking to
his pal Ferdinand. Paolo's wife, who is a fortune teller, is pissed because he
won't listen to her. I assume that since she periodically flips over scary
looking tarot cards, she is making gloom and doom pronouncements about life at
the Bay, but since the audio in this movie leaves a lot to be desired I
couldn't understand a frigging thing she said. Oh, did I mention that Paolo's friend Ferdinand is a cockroach? I really don't
know why your wife would get mad at you for confiding in an insect, after all
there's not all that emotional baggage involved like when you talk to your
loved ones. Mario Bava would like us to suspect Paolo because he mysteriously has a wound
on his hand that could have happened when he chopped those stupid kids up. You
don't get a lot of time to worry about that though, because shorty thereafter,
Renata and Albert show up and talk to Paolo about where to find Simon. Things
kind of blur at this point since everything seemed calculated to draw various
combinations of characters together so that someone could be offed and throw
suspicion on someone else.  Everything in this movie is just an excuse to build a body count. There isn't
anything particularly shocking here and no one in this movie is worth worrying
about so when they get snuffed, you just turn to your friends and say, "was
that six or seven?" The sheer gimmickry of the proceedings dictates all the
twists and turns of the story, whether they make any sense or not. Never is
this more apparent than in the final scene that was so inexplicable and out of
left field that it left me laughing in disbelief.
Yeah, I suppose it was a bit of a surprise ending, but only in the sense that
it would have been surprising if Godzilla had suddenly showed up and leveled
the place. It was surprising because it made no sense and considering what had
transpired (there wasn't any foreshadowing of any of this) had no rightful
place in the story. I didn't notice that this movie had any particular stylistic attributes that
might allow you to recommend what is otherwise an unremarkable series of
murders committed to celluloid and in fact, I would say that some of the
slasher movies that took its cues from this one are actually more entertaining
to watch. At least most of them are smart enough to focus on a single killer
and provide him with a reason (however flimsy) for his rampage. This one is all over the map, with its multiple killers and their various
agendas, somehow related, but never made perfectly clear. It doesn't challenge
the viewer to keep up with the twists and turns, it turns us off precisely
because we know those plot twists, red herrings and the like are just made up
and don't follow from one another. The awkward use of the flashbacks at the end of the movie don't help as they
just slow things up at a time when it would be best to wrap things up in a rush
of blood, revelations and resolution. Bava has managed to create the
stereotypical slasher movie here years before most of his competitors, but that
accomplishment is greatly diminished by the actual product and perhaps Mario's
biggest contribution with this movie was to show us the inherent limitations of
the genre.
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