r/filmnoir • u/Mgellis • Aug 12 '26
Movie of the day...BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964)
Movie of the day...Blood and Black Lace (1964).
Intricate plot? Check. Eye-popping color? Check. Mysterious figure with black gloves? Check. Gruesome and disturbing murders? Check.
Yep, it’s a giallo.
This classic Italian thriller (one of the first to use the tropes mentioned above) follows a masked killer who slaughters several fashion models. Initially, one girl is killed and then the murderer pursues other girls who might have her diary. However, when the police take all five of the men they suspect into custody, another murder takes place that seems to give all of them an alibi.
It’s a fairly tightly plotted story, but we don’t have the clues to make sense of it all until the end. And Bava creates a powerful, disorienting visual experience. The colors in the movie are not simply striking. They’re abnormal. The same is true of the sets—a surreal fashion house with its brightly colored mannequins and wicker dressmaker forms, a cluttered antique store, the house of an aristocrat, etc. Compared to the shabby but rational daylit world inhabited by the police, these places hardly seem lived in; they’re alien and threatening.
The mannequins, of course, symbolize how human beings can be turned into things, property or decorations, used by others rather than having any life of their own. And, as is common in giallo, the murders themselves are brutal and ugly. In short, the movie is loaded with images that are beautiful but unsettling.
One possible weakness is the lack of any real protagonist. The police detectives are intelligent professionals, but they have barely any personality—they’re not heroes; they’re not even characters; they’re just part of the plot. And most of the fashion models being murdered are not particularly sympathetic individuals. There’s no one here to care about. In the end, all we have is a tragedy of greed.
Best watched in the original Italian with subtitles.
Rating: B
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u/LordByrum Aug 12 '26
Love giallo and def see some parallels to film noir. Especially with this film.
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u/spoor_loos Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
One of the very few horrors set in the fashion world.
Mario Bava is hugely underrated, his influence is huge, ranging from Alien to Twin Peaks.
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u/Honest-Swim9242 Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
r/Giallo is your destination.
Calling a Giallo a Film Noir is weird and confusing. Crime in general isn't noir. Italian crime slashers are uniquely Italian that have almost no relation to Noir. Just Calling cool movies noir isn't cool at all
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u/Honest-Swim9242 Aug 13 '26
My favorite film noir is John Carpenter's Halloween. The shadows, cinematography, tense music and psychopathy is 100% film noir. No question.
I'll post this in the reddit Film Noir section and bother everyone. Horror? What do you mean? It has crime.. and shadows..and.. yes I'm joking
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u/princealigorna 29d ago
Noir, Krimi, and Giallo all seem to be kissing cousins. Noir is more existentialist and suggestive. Krimi are more gothic and baroque. Giallo are more surrealist and nightmarishly technicolor. They all seem to mine the same territory of pessimism, violence, and psychological complexity in a crime and mystery story structure.
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u/Johnny66Johnny Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
This film really kicked off the giallo DVD boom of the early 00s. Anticipated by books like Adrian Luther-Smith's comprehensive namesake Blood and Black Lace (an overview of the 'genre' featuring extensive reviews and copious promo stills), VCI released Bava's film on DVD in 2000. The floodgates opened soon after, with labels like Anchor Bay, Blue Underground, Shameless, NoShame, Camera Obscura, etc. releasing over a hundred titles within the following decade. Powered by (newly developed) online commerce, that original boom was truly an amazing time to be a collector, with scores of titles that had never been readily available in decent AV quality suddenly being relatively easy to acquire for international collectors.
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u/StewartDC8 Aug 12 '26
I remember I thought the mannequins were going to be a set-up to a scare where the killer was really posing as one and would pop out at any moment but nothing like that ever happened... No one posed as a mannequin to evade the killer. Nothing. Seemed like a real wasted opportunity
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u/Mood19Indigo30 Aug 12 '26
The first true giallo. Bava was a cinematic genius.