Blood and Black Lace

A haute couture fashion house harbours many secrets: Its owner, the Contessa Como (Eva Bartok) did away with her husband in an accident, while her lover and majordomo Max Marian (Cameron Mitchell) and several of the models and staff are involved with drugs…

One of the models, Isabella, is murdered because she knows too much. Then her diary, sure to contain all manner of juicy secrets, shows up. Everyone wants the book which will grant them power over the others, so the others look on jealously when Nicole volunteers to 'look after' it.

But with someone willing to kill to protect themselves, Nicole has just signed her death warrant…

All the men associated with the fashion house are suspect, so Inspector Silvester takes them into custody. Then, when a third murder is committed, he is forced to let them go.

How many more will die before the killer is unmasked…

Though preceded by The Girl Who Knew Too Much and the 'The Telephone' segment of the anthology piece Black Sabbath, Blood and Black Lace is undoubtedly a more important giallo than its predecessors, combining beautiful colour visuals and violent set pieces with the iconography of the genre such as the trenchcoated, masked, black gloved killer.

Admittedly, the film also also highlights common flaws of the genre, such as uninspired police procedural scenes and frequently poor performances and dialogue (though it's always hard to tell what part of this is down to the hazards of dubbing and translation).

And, while Bava displayed an interested in psychological themes on occasion, such as in Hatchet for the Honeymoon and Schock AKA Shock, his killers' motivations are often quite straightforward by the standards of the genre. Here, as with Bay of Blood and Five Dolls for an August Moon, the motive is simple greed, the well-heeled ruthlessly turning on one another in a way that's delightful for the less salubrious viewer to watch…

Though it would be probably be going too far to call Bava a left-wing film maker, it's nevertheless striking how so many of his films, from I Vampiri to Lisa and the Devil present aristocrats and bourgeois in a broadly negative light, a world of glamour (i.e. illusion) with barely concealed corruptions beneath the surface.

Outwith Italy, the film's influence can also be detected on the American slasher film, whether it be as the first body count movie (a connection made more explicit by the alternate title, Six Women for the Assassin) or in a certain plot device that would later be exploited in Scream.

One word best describes VCI's Region 0 DVD of Blood and Black Lace, released as a centrepiece of their Mario Bava collection: Wow!

While the 40-year-old materials understandably don't match up to contemporary films, the film looks pretty good nonetheless. I was fortunate enough to see Blood and Black Lace on the big screen a few years back, and don't remember the colours being quite this loud and clear.

Perhaps the only thing lacking visually is anamorphic enhancement. But, then again, with the film being shot in a relatively narrow 1.66:1 widescreen, this isn't such an issue as it might have been.

The sound is, in some respects, less impressive. It's pretty quiet and flat, but does give the option of hearing the film in Italian and French as well as English, with English subs also available.

The extras are where the disc really shines.

Tim Lucas, whose decades of research into Bava have recently culminated in a book length study of the maestro, contributes the commentary track and liner notes. While a touch dry, one cannot but be impressed by his encyclopedic knowledge of the film, its director and personnel.

Comprehensive biographies are provided for Cameron Mitchell, Eva Bartok, Luciano Pagozzi, Mary Dawne Arden and Bava. Mitchell and Arden are also represented by interviews. The late Mitchell's is an achive piece, while Arden's is a new one, put together especially for this DVD after Tim Lucas tracked the actress down.

Four cuts from Carlo Rustichelli's elegant jazz/sleaze score are provided as an isolated score.

Along with the usual trailer selection – the US, Italian and French trailers for the film along with bonus trailer for Erik the Conqueror and the The Whip and the Body (both also released within the Mario Bava Collection) – and photo gallery, the package is rounded off by the alternative US and French title sequences.

All told, Blood and Black Lace is Absolutely Fabulous!