Blood and Black Lace Reviews

(MU) Forget the plot, contrived, harsh, not brilliant dialogue; but splendid colour composition, pace, establishing of genre...

Creating a pervasive, pernicious atmosphere within a film should be akin to experiencing a lucid dream that upon recollection, remains visually familiar, but more or less inscrutable. Such an experience is not extremely rare in cinema, but it is largely uncommon. If one returns to the aforementioned dream-like model of film, that initial and subsequent experience is repeated, the plot and outcome becomes secondary, it is the potency of the context that triggers immediate recognition. Even if the narrative and story elements are recognisable, it is the contiguous atmosphere that retains its mesmeric qualities when viewed as a standalone work employing an unsettling ethereal tone. Mario Bava was one of few directors able to attain this intensely meditative, superficial firmament that was easy to return to if one was in the right mindset to do so. "Blood and Black Lace" is Mario Bava's masterpiece, his only directorial effort with enough merit to warrant the term. Despite a long and varied career akin to Dario Argento, Bava's early, hallucinatory work was considered a postmark, modifying the thriller template with pulpy excess, visible nudity and gore, not to mention the now-iconic visual motifs synonymous with the genre. He did not achieve the wider popularity afford to his contemporaries, but "Blood and Black Lace" effectively placed Bava on the map outside of Italy and is more than worthy of extolling. With its highly effective use of colour and lighting to achieve its entrancing illusionary look and ambience, this deeply hyper-visual early giallo exemplifies the genre whilst establishing its own set of codes and stylistic touches. The story is merely a framing device, concerning the search for desperate serial killer in a stocking mask whose victims are the young models of a fashion house in Rome. Commenting perhaps on the commodification and redundancy of models, the script is serviceable, characters two-dimensional and the performances typically wooden, yet all of that is perfectly apt since the emphasis herein is on style, not substance. One must abandon the urge to scrutinise its cinematic weaknesses and focus on the polychromatic flamboyancy of the proceedings and the choreographed, brilliantly staged murders - therein lies the film's high artistry. Garish and prismatic, the film revels in its "moving painting" cinematography, using thick shadows as much as dazzling colours to enhance the prevailing trance-like mood cast by Bava, his camera glissading through a blood-splattered dance of death, entirely responsive and alert to the disconcertingly clinical and glamorous surroundings.

Overlook the film's shortcomings and you will be rewarded with a suspenseful spectacle like no other; the lurid, outmoded aspects integral to its allure, its framed morbid beauty a stunning collision of high and low art, "Blood and Black Lace" is essential viewing for any horror fan, but also as one of the most paradoxically beautiful and preternaturally eerie films of all-time.