2/10/2014

Blood and Black Lace/Sei Donne per l'Assissino/Six Women for the Murderer (1964) or, The Fashionista Killer



One of the irresistible posters for Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace

QUICK REVIEW:

The masked, leather-glove-wearing serial killer, who wreaks havoc in a Roman fashion house in Blood and Black Lace could be just about anyone of the characters in the film, and he gets characterized by the police commissioner as a "sex maniac in a homicidal fury!"
Italian horror master Mario Bava (The Mask of Satan (1960)) had a real knack for atmospheric lighting in grotesque, flamboyant set-ups in often extravagant environments, - a knack that proves a 'recipe for success' in Lace. The film is said to be the first so-called 'body-count' horror movie, a great inspiration for the American horror films, and the slashers in particular, of the 80s. It is also regarded as the first Italian giallo film. Giallo is an Italian pulp crime whodunit genre with explicit murders, countless shady characters and first person atrocities.
The dialog and acting  in Lace (which is dubbed) is uneven, often making the film involuntarily funny, and logic is pretty hard to come by in this largely stylistic film that also features several beautiful and often scantily clad models.
A fun trivia: The Danish title for Lace can be translated to 'The Iron Hand in the Night of Terror', a truly ludicrous title in itself, but especially enigmatic for people who have seen the film, which doesn't involve any 'iron hand' nor happens during one night of terror, but over the course of several.
Bava died nearly 34 years ago, and Italian cinema, and the Italian horror scene especially, is today far from the creativity and flourish of past decades, alas.

Here are some more pictures of Bava's remarkable light work and compositions, and two more posters for this eye candy, gritty horror. Click to enlarge






Related review:

Mario Bava, cinematographer: Hercules Unchained (1959) - Spaghetti decadence never fades

Watch the sensationalist trailer here

Budget: 0.15 mil. $
Box office: 123 mil. ITA (only Italy)
= Uncertainty

What do you think of Blood and Black Lace?
What is Bava's best film/s?

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