A family's murderous battle over some bayfront property is the subject of director Mario Bava's bloody horror-thriller, which many have cited as the grandfather of the modern slasher film. Claudine Auger is the scheming daughter of a murdered Countess; her staged suicide forms the basis of the film's plot. From there a complex tale of violence and revenge are woven outward, with the bodycount growing exponentially.

Four hippies then arrive in a dune buggy to have some fun and get slaughtered one by one, in several creative ways. One redhead swims naked before being throat-hacked with a machete, and another couple are skewered on a spear while copulating. I mention some examples because most the kills were later imitated in Friday the 13th Part 2. This is one reason many consider this the father of the slasher genre.

I disagree with that, however, I don't think it falls definitively enough into the genre to be called that. There are several movies that inspired and were imitated in the early slashers, and this is clearly one of them, but I don't think it's more than that.

For one thing it's got a complex and slightly bizarre plot, it's really a graphically violent whodunit, or even a giallo, depending on your point of view. Gratuitous and gory, Twitch of the Death Nerve is interesting to watch, but I can't gush over it as so many horror fans do. I found the convoluted plot annoying and hard to swallow. The main weakness of the movie was that I didn't care even a little about anyone in it. If I don't care, the movie is lost on me. I just want to see them naked and/or slaughtered, because the story isn't going to get me.

I was bored and it's hard for me to like a movie just because of a name connected to it. I've disliked Fulci's and Argento's, I can damn sure dislike Bava's. In fact after watching two in a row, I'm going to say that in general I do. I can see how people would embrace them, there's style and most these Italian filmmakers were original and groundbreaking in ways that we may never see again. Just the same, I'm reviewing a movie, not a horror-movement.

2.5 out of 10