Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace is basically the Citizen Kane of the giallo, and it’s no surprise, because it’s amazing. Arrow Video have brought out a new 4K UHD edition of the film and it looks better than ever, so get ready for plenty of verbal fellating.
Blood and Black Lace takes place in a Rome fashion house suddenly turned upside down when one of its models is found brutally murdered. Shortly after, a diary belonging to the victim is discovered and things take a turn for the worse. Not only is the diary full of scandal, but the murderer is also keen to get his or her gloved hands on it and is happy to kill again and again to obtain it. Thus begins a twisted tale of finger pointing, fake alibis, and beautiful women dropping like flies.
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Blood and Black Lace has been hailed time and again as a classic giallo, and there’s no reason to dispute this – it is, perhaps, the giallo. Everything is set up so perfectly, but what really sets the film apart is the stylish way it approaches the murder-mystery, from the beautiful production design and gloriously effervescent colours to Carlo Rustichelli’s classy musical score. Complementing that further is a beautiful sense of wit running through the whole affair, with the film nodding to the elements that inspired it – Agatha Christie, the German krimi films – while injecting it with its own character. What results from this is a gloriously beautiful and demented slice of cult cinema.
Given its stature in gialli and the horror genre in general, Arrow have released the best edition so far of Blood and Black Lace. They had previously put out a wonderful disc in 2015 with a restoration from a 2K scan done by L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna, but this new edition comes from a 4K scan of the original camera negative done by Arrow themselves, and it’s absolutely stunning. It’s so wonderful seeing and hearing the film in such great quality, with not only the image but lossless audio on Italian and English versions.
The extras are plentiful. All of them come from the 2015 edition, but they’re still of top quality, with an audio commentary by expert Tim Lucas, a documentary on the film and the genre, a visual essay by author Michael Mackenzie on the giallo and its relationship with gender, and there is also new writing on the film by Rachael Nisbet and Kat Ellinger contained in the booklet (although this was not supplied for review, Nisbet and Ellinger’s credits speak for themselves).
Blood and Black Lace is an absolute classic of sex, scandal, and straight razors, and it’s never looked and sounded better. Essential, especially for anyone interested in exploring the giallo phenomenon.
Blood and Black Lace is out now on 4K UHD from Arrow Video.
