Hot Picks

- Ready for My Close Up 2019

- Talk of the Dead 2016

- Tower Rats 2020

- Script of the Dead 2024

- The Bell Affair 2023

- Easter Bloody Easter 2024

- Velma 2022

- Everwinter Night 2023

- Main Character Energy 2023

- Stupid Games 2024

- Bittertooth 2023

- 4 Minutes of Terror: Night Slasher 2024

- Apart 2024

- The Abandoned 2006

- Becky 2024

- The Evil Fairy Queen 2024

- The Black Guelph 2022

- Followers 2024

- Silence of the Prey 2024

- Battle for the Western Front 2024

- Beware the Boogeyman 2024

- Subject 101 2022

- Driftwood 2023

- The Legend of Lake Hollow 2024

- Black Mass 2023

- Skinwalkers: American Werewolves 2 2023

- The Manifestation 2024

- Spirit Riser 2024

- Garden of Souls 2019

- It's a Wonderful Slice 2024

- Caleb & Sarah 2024

- The Thousand Steps 2020

- The Desiring 2021

- When a Stranger Knocks 2024

- Quint-essentially Irish 2024

- Son of Gacy 2024

- Saltville 2024

- The True Story of the Christ's Return 2024

- Whenever I'm Alone with You 2023

- Jurassic Triangle 2024

- Midnight Peepshow 2022

- Offworld: Alien Planet 2024

- The Swiss Conspiracy 1976

- Sex-Positive 2024

- Here for Blood 2022

- All Over Again 2024

- The Color Yellow 2023

- Des Töchterleins Leid 2024

- I Am a Channel 2024

- The Hermits 2023

- Murdaritaville 2024

- Inheritance 2024

- The Devil's Partner 1960

- First Impressions Can Kill 2017

- A Killer Conversation 2014

- Star Crash 1979

- Strangler of the Swamp 1946

Sei Donne per l'Assassino

Blood and Black Lace
Blutige Seide

Italy/France/West Germany 1964
produced by
Alfredo Mirabile, Massimo Patrizi, Georges de Beauregard for Emmepi Cinematografica, Monachia Film
directed by Mario Bava
starring Cameron Mitchell, Eva Bartok, Thomas Reiner, Ariana Gorini, Dante DiPaolo, Mary Arden, Franco Ressel, Claude Dantes, Luciano Pigozzi (= Alan Collins), Lea Krugher (= Lea Lander), Massimo Righi, Francesca Ungaro, Giuliano Raffaelli, Harriet Medin (as Harriet White Medin), Mary Carmen (as Mara Carmosino), Heidi Stroh, Enzo Cerusico, Nadia Anty
written by Marcello Fondato, with the collaboration of Giuseppe Barilla, Mario Bava, music by Carlo Rustichelli

review by
Mike Haberfelner

Available on DVD!

To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned)

Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!


Preparing for a big fashion show, the last thing Countess Cristiana (Eva Bartok) and her advisor Morlachi (Cameron Mitchell) need is one of their models - Isabella (Francesca Ungaro) - being killed by a masked madman.

Amidst all the confusion following that incident though, and despite the investigations by inspector Silvestri (Thomas Reiner), Cristiana keeps it cool and is having her fashion show the very next day - during which one of the models, Nicole (Ariana Gorini) finds Isabelle's diary, and after rather prematurely telling it to everyone, she announces she will bring it to the police herself right away. Instead though she goes to her boyfriend, antique dealer Franco, in order to destroy the diary which might hold many compromising facts about her and Franco's cocaine addiction.

Of course, at Franco's antiques shop, Nicole doesn't find her lover but the masked killer who brutally kills her ... but wouldn't you know it, Nicole does not have the diary anymore. The next logical stop for the killer is thus model Peggy's (Mary Arden) place, whose car Nicole has borrowed ... and who did indeed steal the diary from Nicole, but she also has burnt it since it did contain compromising details about her as well ... Since she did burn the diary which might reveal his identity, the killer decides to be merciful and doesn't kill Peggy but only ties her up and tortures her ... until she tears off his mask, with which she pretty much signs her death warrant ...

By now inspector Silvestri has come up with a theory that the killer might be a misogynist maniac working from within the fashion house, so he arrests all the house's male employees and associates, which are beides Morlachi and Franco Peggy's boyfriend Marco (Massimo Righi), the generally creepy Lizzarino (Luciano Pigozzi = Alan Collins), and model Greta's (Lea Krugher) boyfriend, the Marquis (Franco Ressel).

Back in the fashion house in the meantime things calm down as well since Cristiana and all the models who are still alive think the killer is one of the arrested men as well, and slowly, one after the other, the girls drive home ... but Greta, upon arriving at her home, finds the corpse of poor Peggy in the trunk, and when she's trying to hide her (though it's not quite clear why she tries to hide her), she gets killed by our masked killer as well ...

Being faced with that fact, Silvestri has to let all his suspects go, since their alibis are more than waterproof, and now has to find an outside sex-maniac. And in truest genre fashion, the killer is of course who you'd least expect it to be ...

 

By and large, Blood and Black Lace is considered as one of the earliest examples of the giallo - meaning basically an Italian psycho serialkiller-whodunnit -, a genre that wouldn't come into full swing until the early 70's. In the late 70's, too, the giallo, while not at all without predecessors, would have a large impact on the American slasher-movies.

As it is though, all the key elements are quite in place in this one: a masked and fetishized killer, a bunch of attractive girls getting killed in increasingly nasty, inventive, sadistic ways, all wrapped up in a way too convoluted plot relying heavily on both coincidence and red herrings instead of narrative logic - and in the hands of director Mario Bava, this all turns out to be a very stylish, tense and above all highly enjoyable affair, a film that, while not necessarily well-written, has all the suspense and shocks in the right places, and even though it's clearly a piece of nostalgia, it still keeps one at the edge of one's seat!

 

Quick Links

Abbott & Costello

The Addams Family

Alice in Wonderland

Arsène Lupin

Batman

Bigfoot

Black Emanuelle

Bomba the Jungle Boy

Bowery Boys

Bulldog Drummond

Captain America

Charlie Chan

Cinderella

Deerslayer

Dick Tracy

Dr. Mabuse

Dr. Orloff

Doctor Who

Dracula

Edgar Wallace made in Germany

Elizabeth Bathory

Emmanuelle

Fantomas

Flash Gordon

Frankenstein

Frankie & Annette Beach Party movies

Freddy Krueger

Fu Manchu

Fuzzy

Gamera

Godzilla

Hercules

El Hombre Lobo

Incredible Hulk

Jack the Ripper

James Bond

Jekyll and Hyde

Jerry Cotton

Jungle Jim

Justine

Kekko Kamen

King Kong

Laurel and Hardy

Lemmy Caution

Lobo

Lone Wolf and Cub

Lupin III

Maciste

Marx Brothers

Miss Marple

Mr. Moto

Mister Wong

Mothra

The Munsters

Nick Carter

OSS 117

Phantom of the Opera

Philip Marlowe

Philo Vance

Quatermass

Robin Hood

The Saint

Santa Claus

El Santo

Schoolgirl Report

The Shadow

Sherlock Holmes

Spider-Man

Star Trek

Sukeban Deka

Superman

Tarzan

Three Mesquiteers

Three Musketeers

Three Stooges

Three Supermen

Winnetou

Wizard of Oz

Wolf Man

Wonder Woman

Yojimbo

Zatoichi

Zorro

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

Feeling lucky?
Want to
search
any of my partnershops yourself
for more, better results?
(commissions earned)

The links below
will take you
just there!!!

Find Blood and Black Lace
at the amazons ...

USA  amazon.com

Great Britain (a.k.a. the United Kingdom)  amazon.co.uk

Germany (East AND West)  amazon.de

Looking for imports?
Find Blood and Black Lace here ...

Thailand  eThaiCD.com
Your shop for all things Thai

Something naughty?
(Must be over 18 to go there!)

x-rated  find Blood and Black Lace at adultvideouniverse.com


Thanks for watching !!!

 

 

In times of uncertainty of a possible zombie outbreak, a woman has to decide between two men - only one of them's one of the undead.

 

There's No Such Thing as Zombies
starring
Luana Ribeira, Rudy Barrow and Rami Hilmi
special appearances by
Debra Lamb and Lynn Lowry

 

directed by
Eddie Bammeke

written by
Michael Haberfelner

produced by
Michael Haberfelner, Luana Ribeira and Eddie Bammeke

 

now streaming at

Amazon

Amazon UK

Vimeo

 

 

 

Robots and rats,
demons and potholes,
cuddly toys and
shopping mall Santas,
love and death and everything in between,
Tales to Chill
Your Bones to

is all of that.

 

Tales to Chill
Your Bones to
-
a collection of short stories and mini-plays
ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
from the post-apocalyptic
to the weirdly romantic,
tales that will give you a chill and maybe a chuckle, all thought up by
the twisted mind of
screenwriter and film reviewer
Michael Haberfelner.

 

Tales to Chill
Your Bones to

the new anthology by
Michael Haberfelner

 

Out now from
Amazon!!!