BLOOD AND BLACK LACE

1964
Italy
Emmepi Cinematografica (Rome), Productions Georges de Beauregard (Paris), Top Film (Munich)
Director: Mario Bava
Screenplay: Marcello Fondato, Mario Bava, Giuseppe Barilla
Cinematography: Ubaldo Terzano
Music: Carlo Rustichelli
Cast: Eva Bartok (Countess Cristiana), Cameron Mitchell (Massimo Marian), Thomas Reiner (Inspector Silvestri), Mary Arden (Peggy), Arianna Gorini (Nicole), Claudia Dantes (Tao-Li), Franco Ressel (Marquis Riccardo Morelli), Dante Di Paolo (Franco Scala), Luciano Pigozzi (Cesare Lazzarini), Harriet White Medin (Clarice), Massimo Righi (Marco), Francesca Ungaro (Isabella), Giuliano Raffaelli (Inspector Zanchin), Enzo Cerusico (Garage Attendant), Lea Lander (Greta), Nadia Anty, Mara Carmosino, Heidi Stroh.

THE DVD

This title is available from AMAZON on DVD

BACKGROUND

Well, the only way that this can possibly be described is as a true classic. This is such a good film, such a recklessly good film, that it merely shows up how lifeless most of the dreck being produced at the moment by TV-weened careerists actually is. It should come with a health warning - this kind of thing destroys your tolerence. It's just not possible to sit through Titanic, Godzilla or any other amount of big-budget, low-imagination swill after this. Oh, the acting may not be of an, achem, oscar winning standard, and the total cost would probably only buy Tom Cruise's belly-button fluff, but it is alive. Too much cinema is produced by zombies for zombies at the moment, and the creative living dead have over-run our towns with their temples of the necropolis, the multiplexes. At some point these horrendous entities argued that because they had more screens they could show a larger variety of material. They didn't lie. Rather than showing three films they showed eight. However, every one of them shows the same eight, meanwhile strangling the independants and the more interesting programming that took place in them. And that's a shame. For films like Blood and Black Lace are best experienced on the big screen. Not because they are filled with thousands of extras or hugely expensive sets, but because they use the possibilities of the medium in an envigorating way.

I managed to catch a screening of this at the National Film Theatre and two things were extremely notable. Firstly, the size of the audiece. For a rep film it was huge, rivalled only by the occasional first screenings that take place. It is rare for the auditorium to be 75% full at showings of films made in the sixties, especially those made relatively obscure filmmakers and with completely obscure stars (I'm sorry, but Cameron Mitchell IS obscure). Secondly, the attitude of the audience. I guess that quite a number were attracted both by the Tarantino /Scorsese connection, and even more by the status enjoyed by Blood... within the Horror film fraternity. Summarily, there was quite a bit of laughing at crap dubbing (and yes, the dubbing is extremely poor in this instance), but notable periods of silence, especially during the extravagant camera operatics that characterise this most painterly of exercises.

STORY

The simple plot takes place within the setting of a fashion house, thereby allowing for the use of extravagant costumery as well as good looking girls accompanied by flawed by rich men. Somewhere along the line, a lot of the models are involved with the supply of cocaine, and many characters have more than one skeleton in their cupboards. This all kicks off with the murder of Isabelle, someone who we are led to believe had her fingers in rather a lot of pies. The scene in which this happens is like a prototype for all those which were to come in the later giallo frenzy, overflowing with the necessary ingredients of stormy night, mist, wooded grounds, shadowy figures and tasty music. Virtual replays can be found in Sergio martino's Torso and Umberto Lenzi's 7 Bloodstained Orchids among others.

The plot thickens with the discovery she had kept a diary. This passes through the hands of several people, all of whom are anxious to make sure that it contains nothing incriminating about them. All of whom also end up equally dead. The first of these follow-up killings is an absolute humdinger, and constitutes one of the finest examples of pure cinema in film history. Apparently filmed in the specially designed set of an open fronted house, the camera follows Nicole as she enters her boyfriends antique shop, prowling around behind her and following her progress amongst shop dummies, suits of armour and general detritus. Each floor is distinguished by a different colour filter, thus dividing the screen into two clashing tiers. In the background, the masked figure of the assassin can be glimpsed occassionally and momentarily, with an almost supernatural viscosity. Disorientating, tense and strangely beautiful, there's no way that an operative mind can allow this to be forgotten, and it most definitely wasn't by Dario Argento, who refined these few minutes into an entire career.

CRITIQUE

Like all giallo's, the final revelation is of relatively little importance and pretty predictable. The plot is little more than a mechanism by which the director is allowed to manipulate both his performers and the tools at his disposal. That is the simple reason why someone such as Bava, who's predominating interest was in the way that the medium of film could be used, in setting up sequences and desibgning shots, so flourished within the genre. It allowed him to persue his own technical and thematic interests : as long as there were muders, red herrings and the climactic uncoveing of the killer's identity, pretty much anything else (and preferably as much as possible) could go. As with the best works of it's type, the several flaws with Blood merely accentuate the reasons why it is such a compulsive entity as a whole.

And yes, there are flaws. The script is a bit too signposted, although this is a tendency that you become used too - and even grow to enjoy - after a few encounters with the typical Italian thriller. A lot of the characters seem to be abandoned about ¾ of the way throught the picture. They have served their purpose as suspects and are long longer needed when we realise who the guilty party really is. The acting is a bit questionable. Massimo Righi, who appeared in quite a few Bava movies (as well as several Spaghetti Westerns under the pseudonym Max Dean) is hilariously over the top as a weedy epileptic who must... have... his... pills. Then again, it's pretty difficult to judge the quality of a performance when it is veiled behind the oddest dubbing this side of Lee "Scartch" Perry. Honestly, were the voices for this provided by narcoleptics anonymous or something? Whoever supplied the vocal tones for Thomas Reiner's police inspector sounds as though they're in need of a swift dose of pro-plus. On the other hand, Eva Bartok is surprisingly powerful, especially when she's given a bit of leeway towards the end.

Despite it's contemporary setting, this isn't completely distant from his earlier gothics. The fashion house itself is a baroque castle. There are several scenes which reveal a suprising depth of cruelty (especially the imprisonment and torture of the sympathetic Peggy). Again, there is the idea of the truth that hides behind appearences and has to be forced into the open once the scenario is begun.