Blood & Black Lace
by Mario Bava
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DVD details
Actor: Ariana Gorini, Cameron Mitchell, Dante DiPaolo, Eva Bartok, Thomas ReinerDirector: Mario Bava
Cinematographer: Mario Bava
Writer: Mario Bava
Cinematographer: Ubaldo Terzano
Producer: Alfredo Mirabile
Producer: Massimo Patrizi
Writer: Giuseppe Barilla
Writer: Marcello Fondato
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Dubbed); French (Dubbed); Italian (Dubbed)
Format: Collector's Edition, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 84 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-11-08
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Vci Video
DVD Reviews of Blood & Black Lace
DVD Review: Great Movie - Bad Video Transfer
Summary: 5 Stars
If you really want to know why Mario Bava was a genius, you need to view this film. No other director in 1963 could have made this movie. It is a symphony of color, beauty and violence. Bava's use of color in this film was quickly copied by younger directors, most notably Dario Argento in Suspiria and Inferno.
The violence in this movie is shocking - and not just by 1963 standards. Filmed beautifully, of course!
Unfortunately the transfer for this two-disc version is not equal to the movie. Most critics consider the transfer in the earlier, single disc, release to be superior in terms of color balance and image sharpness. I agree - I own both and have compared them. The original release is now out of print, but still available from private sellers on Amazon.
This still-in-print two-disc release does have the advantage of an extended commentary by Tim Lucas, the editor of Video Watchdog. Tim is a dedicated and extremely knowledgeable Bava critic, and his commentary in this version is, quite simply, wonderful.
My solution: buy both versions!
DVD Review: Shocking dark psychodrama
Summary: 5 Stars
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. DVD Review: A more mature view, 43 years later
Summary: 5 Stars
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!
DVD Review: I hope Blue under Ground Re-releases this
Summary: 3 Stars
The sound is terrible you can barely hear the people talk but the music is really loud...so are the screams
The picture quality is ok but I would love to see this come out on blue underground's Blu-Ray
DVD Review: Beautifully Filmed Gothic Horror/Giallo
Summary: 4 Stars
"Blood and Black Lace" is a beautifully filmed gothic horror/giallo. A black garbed killer stalks his victims through stately manors enshrouded with mist. "Blood and Black Lace" definitely served as the blue print for the era of the Italian giallo. The victims are all gorgeous models who meet gruesome deaths. Though the film is over forty years of age, it still continues to horrify audiences. I cringed at some of the murders.
The movie itself deserves five stars; however, I am only giving it four because of the poor English dubbing. Watching the actors' mouths move reminded me of the old Kung Fu movies I watched when I was a child; after the actor's mouth stopped moving, then you heard what they had said. It was almost laughable. In one scene, the killer is holding a girl hostage; not wanting her to identify his voice, he writes in Italian: Where is the diary. The English translation did not appear on the screen. I had to guess from the victim's reply what he had written. (In the Italian language version, the English subtitles reveal what he wrote.) While watching the Italian version, the subtitles did not appear when the victim was reading the diary in her mind. Therefore, the viewer had no idea what she had read. An important plot element would've been missed.
"Blood and Black Lace" is perhaps the first giallo but not the best. I leave that title to Dario Argento`s "Deep Red." However, I strongly recommend buying this DVD to anyone who is a fan of giallo movies and Mario Bava. It contains a tremendous amount of extras including commentary by famous film historian, Tim Lucas, who wrote a biography on the Italian director.
Description of Blood & Black Lace
An unscrupulous business operating under the guise of a top fashion house with exotic models running sexual favors, cocaine dealings and blackmail, becomes a murder scene-after someone is pushed to the edge. The saga begins when a beautiful model is brutally murdered, and her boyfriend, a known addict supplying her drugs, is suspected of the crime.but is he guilty or is someone waiting in the shadows setting him up? Languages: English, French & Italian. Subtitles:English & Spanish. DVD extras: Motion menus, Photo Gallery, Biographies, Commentary by Tim Lucas (Editor of the Video Watchdog), Interview with Mary Dawne Arden, Interview with Cameron Mitchell by David Del Valle, Bonus Music Tracks by composer Carlo Rustichelli, Original Theatrical Trailer, Dolby Digital 5.1, DVD-9/DVD-5.Though the original Italian title translates to "Six Women for an Assassin," the American title, Blood and Black Lace, is far more evocative of the psychosexual nature of this elegant slasher picture. The thin plot concerns a respected Italian fashion house, a murdered model, cocaine, and a tell-all diary that seems to implicate just about everyone connected with the house of style. The disappearance of the diary initiates a wholesale slaughter of the remaining models. Mario Bava's stylish exercise in mayhem lovingly delivers every elaborate killing with dreamy assurance. As the stalker, a faceless figure wrapped up in a trench coat, makes a move for his next gorgeous victim, Bava's prowling camera snakes through sets, rushes down hallways, and generally takes off like a low-budget Hitchcock flick on speed. By contrast, Bava runs through the police investigations with a perfunctory air--the lifeless scenes, which aren't helped by the flat English dubbing, feel like he's marking time between the murders--and when the identity of the black-clad killer is revealed it almost seems beside the point. As the narrative melts into a near abstract display of choreography and color (with an often troubling misogynist edge), exposition and psychological explanations seem oddly out of place in this elaborate dance of death. As a traditional thriller it lacks any genuine thrill, but as a piece of cinematic spectacle it has moments of dreamy, disconnected beauty. --Sean Axmaker
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