Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace Review

Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace

During the forceful presence of the US film industry in post war Italy, Italian producers decided to hit back by investing in distribution of their own films. However, the US countered this by investing in Italian productions, co-financing Italian films, buying some Italian films for the US market and making their own films in Italy. For the Italian film industry, the experience of working with the US opened up the possibility of venturing into Co-distribution with other European countries. This opportunity meant that Italian film studios could cut production costs whilst guaranteeing mutual distribution. 

In the 1950’s and 1960’s British and American crime story’s became popular in France, Germany and Italy. “Whodunit” story’s written by writers such as Edger Wallace and Ed McBain Where sold as cheap paperbacks. The success of these books, which were almost exclusively printed with a yellow cover, attracted the attention of bigger publishing houses, who began releasing the story’s, mimicking the style of the cover. Soon the word “Giallo” would become synonymous with mystery novels. Giallo being Italian for yellow. French “Fantastique” films had enjoyed success in the 1950’s and the British director Alfred Hitchcock had gained critical acclaim for his stylish suspense films. These trends had a sizable influence on what would become “the Giallo”. However, the biggest influence on the Giallo film was the German crime sub-genre “krimi”. Krimi films were hugely successful German films of the early 1960’s that were exclusively based on Edger Wallace stories. The films where typical whodunit story’s with a masked killer filmed in black and white. The Typical Krimi movie has distinct stylistic traits such as dolly shots, pans, a unique editing style and slight over acting.

When Italian director Mario Bava was given full creative control to direct Mystery film Blood and Black Lace the producers were expecting a routine crime story in the style of Edger Wallace Krimi’s. But Bava was bored with the mechanical nature of the whodunit and decided to put less emphasis on the accepted clichés of the genre. Bava gave more importance to the stalking and killing scenes rather than the detective work, instead emphasizing and glamourizing horror and sex in ways that had never been dared before.

After minor changes were made to the title sequence by the American distributors to make the film more marketable in the US and dubbing tracks where recorded for international distribution the film was released and initially received mixed reviews.  Despite the film being a financial failure at the box office, shortly after its release new young Italian directors began to imitate the Bava style and credited him for the influence.

Mario Bava probably didn’t mean to invent a subgenre when making Blood and Black Lace But he managed to create a set of codes and conventions that would not only reinvent the Krimi genre but also create the Giallo genre and become the staple for what would come to be known as “slasher films”.  Bava’s Blood and Black Lace is must see viewing for anyone who has a taste for the morbid.