BLOOD AND BLACK LACE

Aka: Sei donne per làssassino
Director: Mario Bava
1964

The roots of the Hollywood slasher are often traced back to Blood and Black Lace, yet Mario Bava's seminal giallo has a richness of texture and complexity of gaze that have kept its elaborate carnage scintillating even following decades of leeching from genre vultures. A blood-drenched mod-whodunit, it kicks off with a young woman ambling through the misty woods, only to be strangled by a trenchcoated, fedoraed figure—her body is dragged out of the frame just as the camera pans left to reveal statues of cherubs in the garden. Christiana is the name of the haute couture fashion house where the other characters are assembled, though spiritual salvation may be the last thing in their minds; presided over by salon owner Cameron Mitchell and recently widowed countess Eva Bartok, the place is, under its coolly elegant surface, a seething vipers' nest of greed, drugs, abortions, blackmail, and, especially, sadistic slaughter, for the killer is barely getting started.

Decadent visualist as well as severe moralist, Bava locates the macabre beauty at the heart of his art in this fashion-world dollhouse, where the models, both human and inanimate, become the main canvases for the sensual lushness of the mise en scène; the witty opening credits already suggest the link by posing the cast in sinister tableau, and mannequins are trenchantly arranged throughout as mute witnesses to the spectacle of human malice.