Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

This is a very stylish and dark movie with a lot of striking imagery and some very vicious crimes. It's very intense and the plot is quite a twister. A good piece of very dark cinema.

The first time I saw "Blood and Black Lace," I was a 20-year-old GI getting ready to be shipped out to the Vietnam War. It fascinated me so much that I sat through viewing after viewing of it (movie houses would let you do that in those days without your having to buy another ticket). But my initial viewings as a very young man were to see the displays of female flesh (very tame by today's standards) that the movie offered.
Viewing the DVD now, from the perspective of my retirement years, I can see that there is far, far more to this trend-setting mystery than skin. Mario Bava produced a true whodunit with superb cinematography and set decoration and some fine acting. A number of things jump out at one: In a bevy of young models who are mostly blonde and fair, Claude Dantes is a statuesque, striking brunette whose watery demise hits one like a right cross; the Italian actor who plays one of the suspects is an absolute, dead ringer for Peter Lorre; and Mary Arden dies a horrible death by "taking the heat."
Bava's camera (he did most of the shooting himself) tracks and swoops through the salon, the eerie museum and down moonlit brick lanes with a unique energy of its own. The colors chosen by Bava for the sets tend to the brilliant primary -- the better to match, and contrast with, the blood which often flows in a number of scenes.
Who is the villain killing the models? Bava throws a number of red herrings across the trail before finally, deliberately, giving the game away as the climactic scene approaches.
An excellent "giallo" mystery that has become a cult classic. How little of its brilliance that young GI noticed, 43 years ago!