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Rating: The initial murder-suicide, an unspoiled bay, which is the main reason why everyone is at each other's throats, kids spending the weekend right there, in short, a tangle of facts and misdeeds that can't even be summarized. If we really want to make sense of the non-existent plot, we might say: "A bay of inestimable commercial value, the countess owner, and a whole group of 'land sharks' willing to do anything to become owners of the green and unspoiled property." That's what you need to know; everything else follows, but beware, a hallucinated and almost grotesque consequence.
We are between 1970 and 1971, Mario Bava, director and practically the inventor of the horror film as we now understand it, brought to life this disturbing creature: already with previous films, he had made a name for himself for the cruelty of the scenes and certain directorial virtuosity (I don't know if you are familiar with his framing, his lighting, his special effects,...), but with this film, he officially enters the legend. The film, an evident cult, is a compendium of cinema lessons, from which practically all horror directors have drawn (Wikipedia points out the brazen resemblance to "Friday the 13th," from 1980), but mind you, I say this without any malice.
Even from the plot, you begin to notice elements that will form the backbone of future horrors, but the merit of the work lies in another characteristic: violence. Yes, exactly, it is a film so violent and anarchic, that in its being almost punk, it could belong to another cinematic era: you can't tell who the victim is, who the murderer is, the title already summarizes everything, and with the title, we are already able to know the plot and the solution of the film. Every small action of any character, consciously or unconsciously triggers the murderous reaction of some protagonist (another great gimmick: everyone in the film turns out to be, in their big or small way, protagonists). And so the film pushes forward, between sudden plot changes and spectacularly gruesome deaths.
The murders, which at the end of the film turn out to be 13, are almost all unforgettable; among the best, we remember, the one of the blonde girl chased and slashed (note how, after being fatally hit, the body falls back onto the lawn and continues to writhe before dwindling down in movements and dying, scenes so realistic they seem real) and the scene where two lovers are skewered like shish kebabs while lying on a bed, covering themselves in foul lust.
In "Reazione a catena," Bava abandons his usual dense and gothic atmospheres, for a film with more muted and natural tones (no wonder the events take place in the middle of unspoiled woods, etc.), almost as if wanting to leave even more contrast between these soft colors, and the red of the blood, which as mentioned flows like rivers. The acting, of average level, due to the modest abilities of the actors, is compensated by the rhythm and dynamism of the scenes: here the film speaks, here movements and action matter more than dialogues (as in the first films of Dario Argento, in a certain sense, Bava’s disciple).
With this film, Mario Bava inaugurates another phase of horror, the more extreme and less poetic one, which in the future will take on the name of splatter. The director, once again, reveals himself to be a forerunner, well ahead of his time, and once again, his work is clumsily plundered by many American directors (especially in the '80s), who, however, did not possess the genius of the artist from Sanremo.
Bava, with his usual humility, always joked about his films, yet the contribution he made to cinema was a fundamental "block" for the development and expansion of an entire genre, such that if one asks when horror films really started to be frightening, the answer inevitably falls on the beginnings of the craftsman from Liguria.
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