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“Perhaps the sight of beauty makes him lose control of himself, so he kills.” Yeah, that makes no sense at all, but Mario Bava still makes it work. Join this episode’s Grue Crew – Joseph Perry, Chad Hunt, and Jeff Mohr – as they discover that the latest trend in fashion is murder in Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace (1964).
Decades of Horror: The Classic Era
Episode 65 – Blood and Black Lace (1964)
A masked, shadowy killer brutally murders the models of a scandalous fashion house in Rome.
– IMDb
- Director: Mario Bava
- Writers:
- Marcello Fondato (story and screenplay),
- Giuseppe Barilla (collaboration)
- Mario Bava (collaboration)
- Mary Arden (adaptation) (English version) (as Kelly Leon)
- Director of Photography: Ubaldo Terzano, Mario Bava (uncredited)
- Music: Carlo Rustichelli
- Featured Cast:
- Eva Bartok as Countess Christina Como (Contessa Cristiana Cuomo in the Italian version)
- Cameron Mitchell as Max Morlan (Massimo Morlacchi)
- Thomas Reiner as Inspector Sylvester (Ispettore Silvestri)
- Arianna Gorini as Nicole
- Mary Arden as Peggy Peyton
- Lea Lander (as Lea Krugher) as Greta
- Claude Dantes as Tilde (Tao-Li)
- Dante DiPaolo as Frank Scalo (Franco Scalo)
- Massimo Righi as Marco
- Luciano Pigozzi as Caesar Lazar (Cesare Lazzarini)
- Francesca Ungaro as Isabella
- Enzo Cerusico as Gas Station Attendant
- Goffredo Unger as The Masked Killer (uncredited)
- Paul Frees as Max / Sylvester / Morell / Ceaser / Marco / Zanchin / Attendant / Butler / Walla (voice) (uncredited)
Blood and Black Lace, aka Sei donne per l’assassino, is Mario Bava’s seminal work establishing many of the tropes commonly used in giallo films. Your Classic Era Grue-Crew is stunned by the vivid colors and cinematography in Blood and Black Lace. Jeff does his usual deep dive, this time into Cameron Mitchell’s career and also delves into the dubbing and subtitles (Shhhh! Let him think it’s interesting.) Although Chad and Joseph are not big giallo fans, they most definitely appreciate Bava’s genius. Joseph tells about his first experience with the bathtub drowning scene when he saw it as a child and how it stuck with him for decades. Chad praises Paul Frees, who dubbs most of the film’s male parts, and has equally high praise for the quality of Shudder’s streaming version of Blood and Back Lace.
Your Grue-Crew highly recommends Blood and Black Lace, Bava’s splendid and unique christening of the giallo subgenre. For more on Mario Bava’s work, check out the following Gruesome Magazine content:
- “Blood And Black Lace (1964): Bava At His Best” by Bill Mulligan
- “Caltiki: The Immortal Monster (1959): Boring Blob But With Bits Of Bava” by Paul Cardullo
- Black Sunday (1960) – Episode 40 – Decades of Horror: The Classic Era Podcast
- A Bay of Blood (1971) — Episode 78 — Decades of Horror 1970s Podcast
Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era is part of the Decades of Horror 3-week rotation with the 1970s and 1980s. In three weeks, the next episode in their very flexible schedule will be The Body Snatcher (1945), a Val Lewton production for RKO, directed by Robert Wise and starring Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Henry Daniell.
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To each of you from each of us, “Thank you so much for listening!”
