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Category:    Home > Reviews > Horror > Thriller > Italy > Giallo > Blood & Black Lace – Unslashed Collector’s Edition (Double VCI DVD Set)

Blood & Black Lace – Unslashed Collector’s Edition (2 DVD Set)

 

Picture: B-     Sound: C+     Extras: B     Film: A+

 

 

The latter half of 2005 not only saw the release of two new upgraded DVD editions of Mario Bava’s murderous masterpiece Blood & Black Lace (one German, one domestic), but also the world premier CD release of Carlo Rustichelli’s magnificent score.

 

With the highly possible exceptions of Black Sunday and Lisa & The Devil, Blood & Black Lace (1963) could very well be Bava’s best film.  I find it to be without flaw, a true masterpiece.  On this one everything came together for Bava: a comprehensible plot, a solid script, a great cast (Cameron Mitchell’s rendering of Max Moriand is an icy delight, and the actresses playing the parts of the models are consummate in the manner in which they physically/visually complement each other), classy production values, and, of extreme importance, Carlo Rustichelli’s score.  All of Rustichelli’s work for Bava is exceptional, and his effort for Blood & Black Lace is a classic example of everything that is unique and superior to the Italian soundtrack.

 

The opening credits (American) of Blood & Black Lace begin with a stylized image of womanhood, a female silhouette is seen isolated in a corner of the screen and engulfed in darkness.  The music is threatening.  Abruptly the silhouette becomes illuminated with an eerie blue-green glow, and as it does the music registers sudden violence.  There follows a series of medium overlapping tracking shots past various female mannequins, all in darkness, each glowing in primary colors: red, green, blue, yellow.  For this strange panorama of anonymous femininity the music becomes a tango.  During these first seconds (less than a minute) of the opening credits much is said about the nature of the following narrative.  The mannequins are an obvious metaphor, and one that Bava imposes upon the whole film; they represent the anonymity of the female victim.  In Blood & Black Lace women are commodified as having aesthetic value – they are objects of beauty (the fashion models and the mannequins) and they ostensibly have psycho/sexual value for the film’s male viewers as sadian-sexual objects.  Consider that mannequins are pre-made as perfect symbols of the immature sexual object; they all have permanently idealized figures and blank faces, faces which can never change to register a complaint.  Bava also enforces an aspect of aesthetic value onto women with his colored lights.   By “dressing” the mannequins in color he mimics the agenda of the fashion designer who depends on women as the most suitable armature for decoration.  Rustichelli’s main title’s overture also speaks for the rest of the film, inclusive of his score: it predicts that there will be music of suspense, violence and depersonalized sexuality.  The “Tango Fatale”, Rustichelli’s primary motif for Blood & Black Lace, is a thematic format/dance that, although erotic, denies all the intimacy and individualized passion of human sexuality.  By stiffly ritualizing male/female coupling the traditional tango leeches all the spontaneity and much of the healthy heat from heterosexual union and leaves a soulless maneuver, one that can only be repeated again and again without ever achieving resolution/catharsis/climax.  This quality of formality and subsequent impotency of the traditional tango are demonstrative of Black Lace’s faceless assassin.  He repeats the same basic ritual/murder several times throughout the film, but a desired conclusion is never arrived at.  The film’s pair of murderous prime movers can only finish by eliminating each other. 

 

Immediately after the credits there is a scene of dialogue, which sets forth the film’s fragile false premise – illegal drug trade.  Blood & Black Lace is not about drug abuse, nor is it a detective mystery; it is an expressionistic tone poem epitomizing wonderfully enthusiastic sadistic excess, and this in hard contrast to feminine vulnerability.  Understandably Rustichelli all but ignores the bit of dialogue between an addict and his girlfriend, however his score kicks in for the following moment, and it is an instance of subliminal warning.  An employee of the Christian Haute Couture fashion salon sets up a ladder, and nervously attempts to reattach the salon’s large outdoor plaque.  The fact that visual emphasis is placed on the metal sign being dislodged (it swings precariously in the bitter wind of a night rain) makes clear it is an omen – beware of the Christian Salon, its karma has turned black and death lurks.  Rustichelli scores the scene with a very unsettling Herrmannesque fragment of descending minor chords for strings.  Later, his percussive accompaniment (bongos and kettle drum over brass and cello) for footage of the assassin stalking his first victim doesn’t merely promote tension; it also tints the killers’ actions as being relentless and methodical.  It is practically a “work theme”, saying that this is not a one shot act of passion but rather an enjoyable job to be done, and the killers’ labors will continue.  The alluring state of undress that the initial victim, Isabella, is in as the killer drags her corpse away reinstates the formula of woman as victim/object/mannequin.  Isabella’s body, once it is cold and inert, is exposed and eroticized. 

 

One of the key visuals in the film is one of the simplest.  Marco, a drug addict (the same fellow who earlier ineffectively reattached the salon sign), sneaks some pills behind a divider of translucent glass.  Bava blocked this shot so that the man’s silhouette, seen through the glass, shares the screen with a blood red mannequin.  The image of the addict, a symbol of the narrative’s spurious motive, is diminished behind the glass, while the mannequin, a mascot of the film’s true focus, the female victim, holds an undeniable position of prominence.  Rustichelli judiciously leaves the sight unadorned; such a flagrant picture needs no support.

 

The “Tango Fatale” first appears full form during a detective’s visit to the salon to investigate Isabella’s murder.  It is a sultry, sleazy theme; reeking of lust, greed and moral decay – a classic piece of noir film music – and I believe it to be as potent and timeless as Barry’s Body Heat or Herrmann’s Taxi Driver theme.  During the scenes that take place while the salon is in operation (principally those dealing with Isabella’s diary) people are moving to and fro as a boardwalk show unfolds for potential buyers.  The models, designers and other employees are surrounded by mannequins, and for the most part they are both solid and blood red (victims of violence), or made of white wicker.  Both of these maintain a metaphor of hapless feminine sacrifice to sadism.  The wicker figures must mirror how the faceless assassin perceives his targets, as being transparent and hollow, and thus incapable of eliciting any compassion. 

 

The stylistic core of the film manifests about a third into the narrative.  The model Nicole arrives at an antiques warehouse where she intends to secret the diary to her lover Frank. The warehouse is dark and cluttered with furniture, bizarre curios and collectibles.  The only light comes from Bava’s rainbow palette of gel-tinted spots, and they breach the spatial integrity of the sets with impunity, producing a disorienting expressionistic tableau.  Soon aware that only an intruder awaits her, Nicole flees into the warehouse’s maze of queer shapes, shadows and colored patches of illumination.  Her terror is palpable for she realizes that she has suddenly become prey.  Bolstered by Bava’s luscious and invigorating environmental inventions, Rustichelli’s “Tango” speaks that this woman’s death run is naught but a game, a coldly erotic game, a union of sex and violence, sex and death.  Over twenty years after Blood & Black Lace American slasher films would showcase the same basic series of events involving the murder of women, but these films are quite ugly and leave most viewers feeling sullied.  Bava and Rustichelli are able to transcend the horror of actual violence by encapsulating its cinematic guise in the substance of their craft – murder is always ugly, but Blood & Black Lace is beautiful!  Bava and his composer secure this by adhering to European post-Renaissance aesthetic principles; both men are using the skills of classically trained artists.  Other than the work of Terence Fisher, Roman Polanski, and Coppola’s Dracula, such finely tuned artistic “common sense” has not been a prevalent highlight of the genre apart from Mario Bava.  Dario Argento would later successfully push Bava’s ideas and style into hyper-drive on such films as Suspiria (reviewed elsewhere on this site) and Inferno.

 

A final note on Rustichelli’s score, and I refer to that which backgrounds as Peggy tolerates Marco’s anxious and pitiful declaration of affection for her, and later as she reads from the incriminating diary.  Rustichelli circumscribes the two moments with sounds befitting the supernatural, very effecting music.  It seems that the only reason to do this exists outside of the narrative’s fictional world, indicating a device calculated to subconsciously unsettle the film’s audience.  The two short scenes just mentioned could have easily been left without music, or scored incidentally, but by tracking them with such potent and strange phrases Rustichelli creates a sense of unease, as if even the smallest gesture or innocuous action is still going to be part of an all encompassing fabric of evil.  This is part of the mystique of the film, that it so completely immerses the viewer in a miasma of sin.  Unlike Hitchcock’s Psycho, Bava’s film has no heroes and offers no hope; the great Italian director’s painterly flair and Rustichelli’s sensual score instead make their film visually luscious and an exercise in wicked pleasure.  However, this is not glorifying or promoting the murder of women.  The film’s murderers do die of their own vile inclinations.  Nor does Bava make the experience of murder fun for us; he merely gives the impression that the faceless assassin is finding murder gratifying.  When I watch a giallo or murder mystery/thriller I do not want to literally experience what it would be like to actually be present as some mental defective tears the flesh off of a screaming woman’s face (precisely Scorsese’s great failure with his remake of Cape Fear).  I expect a filmmaker to be responsible in his capacity as a professional artist/entertainer and to provide some form of a buffer between me and the awful reality of violence and death.  Bava and Rustichelli do this in Blood & Black Lace, and the device they use as their “buffer” is optimal – they masterfully employ the stylistic principles of the fine arts.  This is why I refer to Bava’s “visual flair” and Rustichelli’s “sensual” score.  While watching Blood & Black Lace I never feel I am experiencing the real world, the real world will never be as good as any great movie!  The film doesn’t make me want to go out and kill; however it does make me wish I also could make such an elegant and sophisticated work of art. Bava’s visuals and Rustichelli’s music aesthetically communicate specific conceptual and subliminal notions and conceits, for instance some of the previously mentioned symbols and metaphor, which are refined, and alternate to the crass reality of murder and death.  This is what successful fine art achieves, it allows for people to confront any reality, from the sublime to the most horrific, without being corrupted by the stimulating proximity.

 

There are only a few differences this reviewer can detect between VCI’s two releases of the film.  The very recent 2005 edition is slightly more tightly letterboxed with a 16 X 9 anamorphic enhancement, providing a bit more information at the sides, and the picture appears to be a tiny bit more crisp and bright.  The second distinction involves the scene of murder which takes place in the antiques warehouse.  The current “upgraded” release displays a slight problem involving the soundtrack being out of synch with the visuals.  For instance, the masked assassin attempts to crush Nicole by dropping a heavy trunk on her.  He misses, and the deep thud of the trunk crashing down is only heard about a half-second after it hits the floor.  Oddly enough, this minor flaw, which lasts for about a minute, is not on VCI’s original 2000 DVD release of the film.  The new version has a whole second disc devoted to bonus material; including commentary by Bava biographer Tim Lucas, interviews with Cameron Mitchell and Mary Dawne Arden, four isolated tracks of Carlo Rustichelli’s score (lifted from CAM’s library LP), six theatrical trailers, a photo/stills gallery, the alternate American release Main Titles sequence, and a comparison of the cut American print to the uncut European release.  The film runs 90 minutes in this region free, NTSC DVD set.

 

The score for Blood & Black Lace had been a holy grail among aficionados of Silver Age Italian film music for almost 30 years.  In the 60’s CAM released a 45 with two tracks, and a rare non-commercial library platter with four cuts.  Over the years various interested parties have contacted CAM in attempts to lease rights to the score, but to no avail. Even Carlo Rustichelli could not convince management at the label to preserve his music to a commercial CD, and the only certainty is that no one has ever unearthed why.  With the complete CD release of Rustichelli’s score for Blood & Black Lace (combined with the composer’s La Frusta E Il Corpo aka The Whip & The Flesh: Digitmovies CDDM041 – 2 discs, 40 tracks), it now appears that the CAM “iron curtain” has come down, or at least has developed substantial cracks. Classic scores are now starting to get out – hallelujah!

 

Lastly, and offered as a curiosity, the upbeat music heard during the scenes occurring at the Christian Salon in the midst of one their fashion shows is from an earlier 1962 film scored by Rustichelli called Bellezza D’Ippolita.

 

 

-   John Bender


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