Blood and Black Lace

Isabella, one of many beautiful models employed at a fashion house, is walking through the grounds that lead to the establishment one night when she is attacked and violently killed by an assailant wearing a white featureless mask. Police Inspector Sylvester is assigned to investigate the murder and he interviews Max Morlan, the manager who co-manages the salon with his lover, the recently widowed Countess Christina Como. Max attests that he cannot provide any information whatsoever to assist the inspector, but as the investigation continues all of the fashion house's various indiscretions, including corruption, abortions, blackmail and drug addiction, begin to come to light. It is revealed that Isabella had kept a diary detailing these vices, and suddenly almost every employee becomes nervous.

Nicole finds the diary, and she promises to provide it to the police, but Peggy manages to steal it from her purse during work. That night, Nicole drives to an antique store owned by her paramour, Frank. He is not there, and while inside she suddenly finds herself stalked by a black clad figure, who had apparently been waiting for her. She gets to the front entrance door but is grabbed from behind by the masked individual, who raises and slams a spiked glove into her face, killing her instantly. The murderer searches the corpse and her purse for the diary. When it becomes clear that she did not have it, the killer runs out of the shop.

The murderer next visits Peggy's apartment. The killer gains entrance simply by knocking on the front door, and when Peggy opens it, the masked figure abruptly walks inside. The assailant slaps and hits her repeatedly, and she explains that she no longer has the diary and had in fact burned it in the fireplace. When her attacker checks the fireplace to see if she has told the truth, she tries to pick up a telephone to call for help. Enraged, the murderer hits her repeatedly in the face until she is knocked unconscious. The assailant then carries her away just as the police arrive.

Peggy is taken to another location and tied to a chair. The killer tortures her, demanding to know where the diary is. The woman reaches up and knocks off the mask. The shocked girl recognizes her assailant, who proceeds to kill her brutally by slowly pressing her face against the red-hot surface of a burning furnace.

Inspector Sylvester is convinced that the murderer is one of the men employed at the fashion house, so he arrests all of those he believes might be related to the deaths. However, while the suspects are in custody, Greta discovers Peggy's corpse hidden in the trunk of her car, and is then attacked and smothered to death by the killer. After discovering the bodies of the latest victims, Sylvester releases all of the men.

Max visits Christina and reminds her about how he had assisted in the murder of her husband. Isabella had found out that Max had been involved in the crime, and began blackmailing him. When she started asking for more and more money, Max murdered her. It was only later that Max and Christina realized she had been keeping a diary that revealed everything. While attempting to retrieve the diary, Max had also killed Nicole and Peggy. When Max and the other men from the agency were placed under arrest, Christina had murdered Greta to give Max an alibi for the previous killings. Now, Max tells Christina that he once again needs her help and convinces her that after only one more death they will be safe. That night, the voluptuous Tilde is drowned in her bathtub by the masked killer who, immediately after the murder, removes the mask and is revealed as Christina. She uses a razor blade to slice the corpse's wrists in order to make the death seem like a suicide. Christina prepares to leave the victim's apartment when she is interrupted by a knocking sound on the front door followed by the loud voice of a man identifying himself as the police. She decides to escape out the second story window and then tries to climb down a drainpipe, which falls under her weight, slamming her to the ground.

Later that night, Max searches through Christina's desk, looking for money and documents. Suddenly, a bloody and bruised Christina enters the room, shakily holding a gun aimed directly at Max. Max had been the "policeman" knocking on Tilde's door, and, knowing how Christina would attempt to escape, he had deliberately broken the drainpipe in such a way that it would be guaranteed to collapse. He attempts to persuade his lover and almost succeeds in getting her to hand over the gun, but she abruptly changes her mind and shoots him to death. The mortally wounded Christina collapses next to Max's corpse.

• Cameron Mitchell as Massimo Morlacchi (Max Morlan in the English Version)
• Eva Bartok as Contessa Cristiana Cuomo (Countess Christina Como)
• Thomas Reiner as Ispettore Silvestri (Inspector Sylvester)
• Arianna Gorini as Nicole
• Dante DiPaolo (as Dante Di Paolo) as Franco Scalo (Frank Scalo)
• Mary Arden as Peggy Peyton
• Franco Ressel as Marchese Riccardo Morelli (Marquis Richard Morell)
• Claude Dantes as Tao-Li (Tilde)
• Luciano Pigozzi as Cesare Lazzarini (Caesar Lazar)
• Lea Lander (as Lea Krugher) as Greta
• Massimo Righi as Marco
• Francesca Ungaro as Isabella
• Giuliano Raffaelli as Zanchin
• Harriet White Medin (as Hariette White Medin) as Clarissa (Clarice)
• Mary Carmen (as Mara Carmosino) as Model
• Heidi Stroh as Bleach Blond Model
• Enzo Cerusico as Gas Station Attendant
• Nadia Anty as Model
• Calisto Calisti as Butler (uncredited)
• Goffredo Unger as the Masked Killer (uncredited)

Mario Bava's Black Sunday (1960) and Black Sabbath (1963) were worldwide commercial successes. As a consequence, Bava was given creative control over Blood and Black Lace. An Italian-West German co-production, the film's backers were expecting a routine murderer-on-the-loose yarn in the Edgar Wallace tradition. In Europe during the early 1960s, movies based on the murder mystery novels of the incredibly prolific Wallace had become a mini-genre of their own. Forty or so of these movies were made, most of them produced in West Germany. Although some of the murder sequences could be vicious, the emphasis was on the police procedural and mystery aspects of the narrative.

Bava was "bored by the mechanical nature of the whodunit"[1] and decided to deemphasize the more accepted clichés of the genre. The stalk-and-kill sequences themselves were given more importance than all other concerns. He emphasized horror and sex in ways that had usually only been hinted at before. Under the working title of "L'atelier della morte" ("The Fashion House of Death"), the movie was filmed in Rome during a six-week period between November 1963 and January 1964. The exterior locations of the fashion house were filmed at the Villa Sciarra and not at the Villa Pamphili as incorrectly reported by many sources. The film's budget was low, approximately $150,000. Bava was forced to improvise numerous times during the production in order to get the technical results he wanted. Cameron Mitchell noted that in order to film an impressive dolly shot through the fashion house, Bava simply placed the camera on a child's red wagon. Similarly, Bava completed several crane shots by utilizing a "makeshift seesaw contraption."[1]

Blood and Black Lace was written in English in order to allow for easier exportation to the United States; all of the film's cast members spoke their lines in English, some of them phonetically. Actress Mary Arden found the translated script to be too stilted, and subsequently wrote the dialogue as it appears in the film as a favor for Bava and the producers. Two separate English dub tracks for the film were created: the original version was directed by actor Mel Welles in Rome, and featured most of the English-speaking actors, including Mitchell, Eva Bartok and Arden, reprising their onscreen roles; Welles dubbed Thomas Reiner and several other actors. Now believed to be lost, this track was rejected for American distribution by the Woolner Brothers, who commissioned a second dub track that was produced in Los Angeles under the supervision of Lou Moss. With the exception of Dante DiPaolo (who looped his own lines), most of the male voices for the second dub, including Mitchell and Reiner's, were provided by Paul Frees.[3][4]

Blood and Black Lace was shown in Italy on 14 March 1964[5] and on 7 April 1965 in the United States. In Italy, Blood and Black Lace was a box office failure, grossing only 123 million lire (approximately US $77,000), earning back only half of the production cost. It was subsequently nearly forgotten and became difficult to see in that country until a 1999 home video release. In West Germany, the film was a moderate financial success and helped convince the backers to film their subsequent Edgar Wallace-styled whodunits in color.[4]

Because of the film's titillating combination of near-naked women and gory murder, American International Pictures passed on releasing Blood and Black Lace, despite having had commercial success with Bava's previous Black Sabbath and Black Sunday. AIP felt Bava's movie was "too intense, too adult for the 'kiddie trade.'"[1] The film was instead distributed in the U.S. by the Woolner Brothers (producers Lawrence and Bernard Woolner). Woolner Brothers released the movie, but with a different opening title sequence.[1]

Blood and Black Lace's mixture of eroticism and violence later used as a template for both giallo and slasher films. Tim Lucas has written that Blood and Black Lace was "one of the most influential thrillers ever made" and "the first authentic 'body count' movie."[1] Blood and Black Lace has been included in multiple lists in various media outlets as one of the greatest horror films ever made. It was ranked at #28 in Paste Magazine's "50 Greatest Serial Killer Movies of All Time".[14] Paste Magazine would also list the film at #8 in their "50 Best Slasher Movies of All Time".[15] Esquire place it at #50 in their list of "The 55 Scariest Movies of All Time".[16] It was listed at #59 in Slant Magazine's "100 Greatest Horror Films Ever Made".[17]

Bibliography

• Curti, Roberto (May 2019). Blood and Black Lace. Auteur Publishing. ISBN 978-1-911325-93-2.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Luther-Smith, Adrian (1999). Blood and Black Lace. Stray Cat Publishing Limited. ISBN 978-0-9533261-1-2.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

• Blood and Black Lace at AllMovie
• Blood and Black Lace on IMDb
• Blood and Black Lace at Rotten Tomatoes
• Blood and Black Lace at the TCM Movie Database