Blood and Black Lace (1965)

Tightly-woven and visually impressive giallo. Has a refined and classic feel with very assured direction by Mario Bava. Definitely not the film to pick if you're looking for something to truly scare you. It has a few tense moments but overall the tone is somewhat light and the film breezes by relatively inoffensively. It remains engaging and entertaining nearly throughout though and feels well-crafted and sturdy. The visuals are definitely its biggest strength - fantastic lighting, interesting cinematography, and some downright beautiful sets and lush shot compositions. Definitely a high quality film but lacks the punch to really take it to the next level for me, on a first viewing anyway.Light 4/5

Regarded for mostly the first Giallo ever made,the Master gave us a new genre of picture aftewards,Mario Bava's legacy is a valuable efforts to all fans of this neglected kind,after this point and through the years slowly the genre getting strong as we knows today of utmost importance indeed,Brutal,Bloody,Cold,Fear and thriller can defines this new one!!!Resume:First watch: 2017 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7

Holy crap, this freakin' movie. So fantastic. It's considered to be one of the earliest and most influential of all giallo films and is said to have inspired filmmakers such as Tarantino and Argento. It's kind of a big deal.The director, Mario Bava, had already had worldwide commercial success with his two previous films (Black Sunday in 1960 and Black Sabbath in 1963), so he was given creative control over this one. He was "bored by the mechanical nature of the whodunit", so he chose to emphasize more of the horror and sex in the film. It had a fairly low budget of $150,000 and while it tanked in Italy (grossing only about $77,000), it has since been revered as one of the horror and mystery classics.One of the best things about the movie is the use of color and light. It's downright decadent, and a huge shift from his previous black & white films. The plot may not be the most complex and original, but the tension is palpable throughout the entire movie, and I was glued to the screen for the entirety, trying to guess who the killer was. The killings themselves are very intimate and personal, each one a little different than the last. Not overly gory -- I don't consider any killings with such obviously fake, bright red blood to be that bad -- but still disturbing all the same. But ultimately it's the tense paranoia of this film that keeps you pulled in. I loved it!

****SPOILERS****Filmed in lush and dazzling colors and mostly, some 90% of it, at night the late Mario Bava's "Blood and Black Lace" set the slandered for all the likewise Italian as well as US & European Giallo slasher movies that was to follow it. Set in an Italian boarding house for fashion models run by Contessa Cristina Como, Eva Bartok, and her American lover Max Marian,Cameron Mitchell,a crazed and masked killer targets the woman staying there starting with Isabella,Francesca Ungaro,whom he strangles to death within the first 10 minutes of the movie. As we soon find out it was Isabella who knew the killer's identity who she was blackmailing for embezzlement money of the boarding house's way of doing business.The film goes on to have the masked killer knock off some half dozen of the woman at the boarding house until with almost a half hour to go in the movie to no one's surprise-It was very obvious right from the start- that his identity is revealed as well as the person-Which wasn't that obvious- who's involved in his string of murders! Trying to throw the police off his scent the killer forces his accomplice to murder another one of the women, by drowning her in a bathtub and slashing her wrist, staying at the boarding house, to provide him with an alibi and then have him or her killed so to have the police case on his crimes closed. It was too bad for him that it didn't quite work out that way and it was that mistake, in his accomplice surviving, that ended up doing him in! ***SPOILERS**** It was police Inspecter Silverster, Thomas Reiner, who smelled a rat in all these killings and the real reason for that is the late Isabella's secret red diary that a number of pages had since gone missing. It was what's in it that implicated a number people who were embezzling the funds of the boarding house and the fashion salon connected to it which lead to the killer's murderous rampage. This at first was just a simple money issue that escalated into serial murder and ended up with the deaths, by them killing each other, of those involved in it.