BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Though BLOOD AND BLACK LACE established the best-known trope of the Italian giallo film-- that of a masked or otherwise concealed killer methodically stalking victims, mostly female-- I've never liked it as much as later exemplars of the subgenre. 

The film's Italian title translates as "Six Women for the Murderer," thus summing up the subgenre's fascination with woman-killing. But the English-language title is better, in that it intimates a connection between violence and sex. Later giallos would make this connection even more overt and even more exotic with titles like "Seven Blood-Stained Orchids." The script for LACE, on which director Mario Bava collaborated, provides as setting a Roman fashion house, so that the killer can prey upon a number of beautiful women with secrets to hide.

What's the masked killer after? After police discover his first victim, there's the suspicion that the late model left behind a diary full of incriminating information about both other models and the men in their lives. When a second model is slain, the police theorize that they may be dealing with a sex maniac due to the intense violence of the murders.

The fashion house is managed by Moriacchi (a badly dubbed Cameron Mitchell) and his partner in business (and romance), widow Countess Cuomo (Eva Bartok). Though the script tosses out a few red herrings, Moriacchi and Cuomo receive so much time prior to the revelation of their guilt that there's no surprise about the film's "mystery" angle. In between killings Bava and his collaborators fill time with various banal soap operatics about who's sleeping with whom, none of which was memorable.

The device in LACE that works to best effect is the viscerality of the killings, especially in comparison with the popular German krimis of the period. Here there's no use of distance-weapons like arrows or guns that shoot black widow spiders; the killer rushes victims like a fullback, overpowering them with superior strength. Bava may have been playing a little with gender roles, since late in the film the killer unmasks after drowning a woman, and it's the Countess, not her male partner. In addition, the two killers are just murdering for profit, so there are no quirky psychologies behind their depredations. Possibly Bava's main contribution to the giallo was in terms of composition, in that he worked out the way to show a world of beauty and glamor being profaned by sadistic violence, and in such a way as to emphasize the brilliant Technicolor executions.