Get ready for a fun ride with Mario Bava. Dripping with atmosphere, mysterious shadows, intense colors, and a stalking camera moving through curtained archways and around multicolored wicker mannequins, Bava sets the standard for the Artful Slasher(wasn't he a Dickens character?). I don't know if anyone else would draw the same parallel, but I found the killer's costume quite similar to the murderer in The Bat(1959). I haven't read about Bava being familiar with that film, but the costumes each have the blank face for the mask, and a large dark hat, black gloves, and so on. Both were probably borrowed from the pulps.
The plot concerns several young ladies in a fashion salon who are being murdered by a "fiend without a face." He stalks like a mixture of Jack the Ripper and The Phantom of the Opera. I only wish the body count had been bigger--I really enjoyed seeing his handiwork. Some reviewers of old have described this as gory, well, it certainly is not. Most definitely not when paired against Blood Feast which was released close to the same time. There are a few bloody shots, some from a distance, but nothing to make anyone squirm nowadays. It may have been something back in the day, but audiences didn't flock to this when it was released and it performed poorly at the box office. The usual inept police show up and help carry the story along. The killer reveal is sort of ho-hum and the reason for the murders is not what modern fans may be used to. Normally, these days, one expects serious psychological issues or even retardation in those old sex maniacs(gotta love the Italians for throwing that term into almost every giallo or slasher they ever made), but this characters motivation is a little simpler.
The use of color is marvelous and you will deeply dig the camera-work. Personally, I hate stationary cameras or ones that just move from left to right on a tripod. Bava moves from room to room, passing the sinister shadows, and occasionally flashing neon into windows for some great sequences. My only real complaint is with the audio track. It's a shame that modern DVD companies can't fix that sort of thing. I don't mean that the dubbing was bad(though it was--spoken very quickly) but the timing was off by a good one second, so car doors slam shut in your ear a second after the door itself is already closed, or characters begin talking but there's no sound. And then we have the keys rattling against tumblers after the person's hand has stopped turning. But, you can't have everything. Blood and Black Lace is the sort of film that very few film makers in the 80's probably ever saw. Slasher movies can have artistic merit as great cinema regardless of their subject matter. This movie is proof.
The plot concerns several young ladies in a fashion salon who are being murdered by a "fiend without a face." He stalks like a mixture of Jack the Ripper and The Phantom of the Opera. I only wish the body count had been bigger--I really enjoyed seeing his handiwork. Some reviewers of old have described this as gory, well, it certainly is not. Most definitely not when paired against Blood Feast which was released close to the same time. There are a few bloody shots, some from a distance, but nothing to make anyone squirm nowadays. It may have been something back in the day, but audiences didn't flock to this when it was released and it performed poorly at the box office. The usual inept police show up and help carry the story along. The killer reveal is sort of ho-hum and the reason for the murders is not what modern fans may be used to. Normally, these days, one expects serious psychological issues or even retardation in those old sex maniacs(gotta love the Italians for throwing that term into almost every giallo or slasher they ever made), but this characters motivation is a little simpler.
The use of color is marvelous and you will deeply dig the camera-work. Personally, I hate stationary cameras or ones that just move from left to right on a tripod. Bava moves from room to room, passing the sinister shadows, and occasionally flashing neon into windows for some great sequences. My only real complaint is with the audio track. It's a shame that modern DVD companies can't fix that sort of thing. I don't mean that the dubbing was bad(though it was--spoken very quickly) but the timing was off by a good one second, so car doors slam shut in your ear a second after the door itself is already closed, or characters begin talking but there's no sound. And then we have the keys rattling against tumblers after the person's hand has stopped turning. But, you can't have everything. Blood and Black Lace is the sort of film that very few film makers in the 80's probably ever saw. Slasher movies can have artistic merit as great cinema regardless of their subject matter. This movie is proof.