Blood and Black Lace
HORROR-THON 2024 • SEEING RED
9/10
DIRECTOR: Mario Bava
STARRING: Cameron Mitchell, Eva Bartok, Thomas Reiner
RELEASED: 1964
RUNTIME: 1 hour, 28 minutes
WATCH ON: Shudder, Prime Video, Tubi, Plex
SCARE LEVEL: Medium
KEEPING A DIARY: Absolutely not.
A masked killer in a trench coat and hat is working his way through the models at a fashion house in Rome. It’s horror plus fashion, my two favorite things in one movie.
Isabella, a model at an upscale fashion salon, is murdered on her way to work. She left behind a diary, and everyone at the salon is terrified about what’s written in it. It’s full of drugs, affairs, and secrets.
The diary goes missing. Then the faceless killer starts going after every model who might have read it, has it, or knows where it is. The police start interrogating everyone at the salon, and everyone at the salon has something to hide.
MY HUMBLE OPINION
Horror plus fashion. There’s a runway, a showroom full of mannequins, gowns, furs, and a whole staff of models in early-’60s glamour. If Blood and Black Lace were a magazine, I would probably subscribe.
The cinematography is the other star. Mario Bava lights every room in candy colors, with saturated reds, greens, and purples. You can see exactly where Argento got some of his best ideas for Suspiria.
But I still have to ask: all this over a diary? It’s a lot of murder for some gossip.
And the minus: there’s a character named Nicole. It doesn’t go well for Nicole, and I took that personally.
FUN FACT FOR YOUR NEXT DINNER PARTY
The budget was so low that Mario Bava mounted the camera on a children’s wagon to film the tracking shots. A wild fact considering it’s a landmark movie that ushered in giallo, Italy’s longest-running cinematic movement.