If you write about horror movies, you have to do your homework. Of course, this means time away from house work (the weeds love all this rain and hot weather) and regular work (which can’t be compromised). Mario Bava has often been cited as one of the influential horror auteurs, but until this year I’d not knowingly watched any of his films. So, homework. I saw a list of movies that made an impact, and one of them was Blood and Black Lace. It’s horror of the giallo subspecies, never my favorite. But it was free on a commercial streaming service, so, well that homework’s not going to do itself! This isn’t generally considered Bava’ best work. Besides, giallo is murder-mystery and I prefer monsters. Who wouldn’t?
This film, with its lurid colors and stylistic cinematography, does make an impression. The acting is poor and the script even worse—apparently it didn’t lose anything in translation. A crooked couple run a fashion salon. (There will be spoilers, so if you’re sixty years out of date, be warned.) One of their fashion models is murdered, but when another discovers her diary the body count mounts. The film lingers over the murders, which, I suppose, is one of the reasons it’s classified as horror. With the film’s problems, however, at least this far removed, the whole thing begins to look rather silly. The women have to die because of the first woman’s diary. The police are singularly ineffectual, not even taking standard kinds of precautions. Even with a run time of only 88 minutes it felt too long.
Horror in the sixties was still finding its way. I’ve been watching a number of movies from that era—generally considered a dry spell for American-made horror—and the results have been interesting. There are some gems tucked in amid the gravel. What we’ve grown to appreciate in more contemporary horror cinema learned a lot of lessons from these early exemplars. I could see foreshadowing of Suspiria here. I’ll need to do more homework to find other direct descendants, though. Blood and Black Lace suffers from having too few characters you get to know well enough. The models, who all seem to have some secrets, die off before we get to know them. Even the criminal pair behind the killings die in the end. There’s a kind of nihilism to the story, and it’s all done for love of money. The story could’ve been better, but you have to start somewhere when growing a genre. And doing homework.