BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964)
Label: VCI Entertainment
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 89 Minutes
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Audio: English PCM Mono 2.0 with optional English Subtitles
Director: Mario Bava
Cast: Cameron Mitchell, Eva Bartok, Thomas Reiner, Francesca Ungaro, Luciano Pigozzi,Claude Dantes, Mary Arden, Dante DiPaolo
Mario Bava's stylish whodunit Blood and Black Lace (1964) is a slice of Italian murder cinema bathed in vibrant primary colors and Euro-stylish set design with a fantastic bossanova lounge score and more than a few wonderfully staged murders. A few years earlier Mario Bava set the tone for the Italian whodunit with the black and white giallo The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963), a film that established many of the tropes we have come to enjoy from genre but it was this film, Blood and Black Lace (1964), that laid the foundation for the modern giallo with it's stylish blend of vivid set design, black-gloved murder, exotic scores, and drop-dead gorgeous women. An intoxicating formula that would argualbly not be improved upon until Dario Argento's brilliant The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970).
Gorgeous brunette fashion model Isabella (Francesca Ungaro) is murdered by a man in a trench coat with a faceless mask outside the the Cristian Haute Couture fashion house on a dark and windy night. Inspector Sylvester (Thomas Reiner) is assigned the case and interviews the co-managers of the salon, Max Marian (Cameron Mitchell, Raw Force) and the widowed Countess Cristina Como (Eva Bartok) but finds out very little about what could have lead to the murder of the fashion model. However, when it is discovered that Isabella kept a diary pretty much everyone at the fashion house begins to act like a cat caught with a bird in it's mouth. Apparently the dead model had dirt on everyone scribbled into that book and someone is willing to murder every model in the place to get to it before the police do.
The murderer has a classic giallo look, a black trench coat and a faceless stocking mask with a brimmed hat, which looks quite a but like Rorschach from Watchmen without the ink blots. On his journey to recover the diary the killer will strangle, mangle, drown and burn his way through a series of gorgeous models, none of which are overly graphic or gory but they're vicious and well-shot. The killer mangles a woman's face with a clawed gauntlet, drowning one, smothering yet another. The most graphic has him torturing one by pressing the model's pretty face up against a red hot furnace, which for a model has a double negative, disfigurement and then death, you're not even leaving behind a pretty corpse!
As you might expect of a film full of fashion models the women are completely glamorous and gorgeous without exception, particularly the short-cropped Tao-Li (Claude Dantes) who gets a fantastic drowning scene in a bathtub, her eyes are something special, so striking, particularly in death. Bathtub murders like this would become a standard operating procedure for Italian whodunits afterward, as would the straight-razor which the killer uses to stage her suicide after the fact.
There's no shortage of suspects in the movie, we have a police line-up featuring the salon's co-manager Max Marian (Cameron Mitchell, From a Whisper to a Scream) years before his string of often mind-bogglingly bad b-movies. Then there's a drug addled antique dealer named Franco (Dante DiPaolo, The Girl Who Knew Too Much) and employees of the fashion house, the pill-popping Marco (Massimo Righi) and the shifty-eyed Cesar (Luciano Pigozzi, Yor, the Hunter from the Future), the latter of whom reminded me just a little of the bug-eyed Peter Lorre. It could be any one of them or maybe none of them, but one thing's for sure, once the existence of that diary is revealed it becomes painfully clear that no one at the fashion house is without some damning secret of their own they'd rather not have revealed.
Keeping with the high visual standards we've come to expect from Mario Bava the film looks exquisite, the scenes of the killer stalking his prey in the darkness are bathed in shadow and atmospheric colored lighting, stylistically this is a visual feast and an obvious influence on the films of Dario Argento. A scene of the faceless murderer pursuing Peggy (Mary Arden) through a shadowy antique shop is an obvious highlight, but there are so many visuals treats throughout.
Audio/Video: Blood and Black Lace (1964) arrives on Blu-ray from VCI in 1080p HD widescreen, having been previously released in the UK and U.S. by Arrow Video with a pristine 2K restoration from the original camera negative. The Arrow release is gorgeous, but it did have one drawback, the 1.66:1 was controversial. VCI present the film in what is widely considered the proper framing of 1.85:1, so we get more information on the left and right of the film, which is great if you want a more proper framing of the film. That said, the technical strength of the transfer wane in comparison to the Arrow restoration. Black levels are anemic and the color saturation is soft throughout, colors just are not as vibrant as the Arrow release, reds are dimmer (in some cases), purples are more faint, and the contrast suffers, with a lack of depth and clarity. Grain is also better managed on the Arrow release, with the VCI version looking to have been DNR'd in places removing facial detail and fine textures. You could argue that the Arrow release is a tad overly bright, check out the screenshot comparison at the bottom of the review, skin tones look warmer on the VCI, but overall I prefer the Arrow color timing, though there are instances where I think the VCI might be more accurate or natural looking.
Audio comes by way of an English PCM Mono 2,.0 with optional English subtitles, some of the Carlo Rustichelli (The Long Hair of Death) jazzy score can sound a bit thin at times, but the fidelity is generally good on this one.
Onto the extras VCI carry-over all the extras from their 2008 2-disc DVD except for the Tim Lucas (Video Watchdog) commentary, though he did record a new one for Arrow's release. The carry-over stuff includes vintage interviews with Dawne Arden and star Cameron Mitchell, selected isolated score from Carlo Rustichelli, the theatrical trailer and an image gallery.
New for this 2018 release are two commentaries, the first with Kat Ellinger, Editor-in-Chief and author, Diabolique Magazine and second with VCI regulars, film historian and David Del Valle and director/writer, C Courtney Joyner. I found both to be excellent, Ellinger is always giving great commentaries, offering her views on the seminal film. The second track from Del Valle and Joyner is a great buddy commentary riffing off each other. Del Valle always offers some inside gossip on these vintage films. Also new is a 28-min video comparison of the censored U.S. version versus the European cut, a thoroughly detailed examination of the differences, I always appreciate these comparison videos that lay out the differences.
The 2-discs DVD/CD release comes housed in a clear keepcase with a sleeve of reversible artwork, we get a theatrical poster option and a black and red version, I preferred the yellow option, but sort of wish they had offered up the original artwork from their 2-disc DVD which I've always liked. The discs inside actually mirror the same disc art as the 2-disc DVD with elements from the original theatrical poster.
Blu-ray Special Features:
- New 2018 2K Restoration from Original Film Materials in 1080p HD widescreen (1.85:1)
- 2018 Commentary by Kat Ellinger, Editor-in-Chief and author, Diabolique Magazine
- 2018 Commentary by film historian and David Del Valle and director/writer, C Courtney Joyner
- Original American Theatrical Trailer (3 min) HD
- Extensive Photo Gallery (8 min) HD
- Alternate American Title Credit Sequence (2 min) HD
- Music Tracks by composer Carlo Rustichelli (7 min) HD
- Video Comparison: American Version Cuts / Euro Uncut (28 min)
- VCI Trailers: The Night Visitor, Ruby, Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, & The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (10 min) HD
- 2-Sided Cover Wrap with Alternate Artwork
DVD Special Features
- 2018 Commentary by Kat Ellinger, Editor-in-Chief and author, Diabolique Magazine
- 2018 Commentary by film historian and David Del Valle and director/writer, C Courtney Joyner
- Video Interview with Mary Dawne Arden (12 min)
- Archival video interview with star, Cameron Mitchell, with David Del Valle (7 min)
- Original American Theatrical Trailer (3 min)
- Extensive Photo Gallery (8 min)
- Alternate American Titles (2 min)
- Bonus Music Tracks by composer Carlo Rustichelli (7 min)
- Video Comparison: American Version Cuts / Euro Uncut (28 min)
- VCI Trailers: The Night Visitor, Ruby, Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, & The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (10 min)
Blood and Black Lace (1964) is a stylish whodunit set in a house of fashion, Mario Bava set the tone for all gialli that came after with it, it's a classic for a reason, a gorgeous and stylish murder mystery with a decent body count and some fun deviant characters. If you were not happy with the Arrow framing this corrects that and offers up two excellent commentaries not found anywhere else, there doesn't seem to bee a definitive release of the film that will please everybody, so this is yet another piece of the puzzle with it's own plus and minuses as far as presentation and extras.
BLU-RAY COMPARISON
TOP: VCI (2018)Blu-ray
BOTTOM: ARROW (2015) Blu-ray
Gorgeous brunette fashion model Isabella (Francesca Ungaro) is murdered by a man in a trench coat with a faceless mask outside the the Cristian Haute Couture fashion house on a dark and windy night. Inspector Sylvester (Thomas Reiner) is assigned the case and interviews the co-managers of the salon, Max Marian (Cameron Mitchell, Raw Force) and the widowed Countess Cristina Como (Eva Bartok) but finds out very little about what could have lead to the murder of the fashion model. However, when it is discovered that Isabella kept a diary pretty much everyone at the fashion house begins to act like a cat caught with a bird in it's mouth. Apparently the dead model had dirt on everyone scribbled into that book and someone is willing to murder every model in the place to get to it before the police do.
Keeping with the high visual standards we've come to expect from Mario Bava the film looks exquisite, the scenes of the killer stalking his prey in the darkness are bathed in shadow and atmospheric colored lighting, stylistically this is a visual feast and an obvious influence on the films of Dario Argento. A scene of the faceless murderer pursuing Peggy (Mary Arden) through a shadowy antique shop is an obvious highlight, but there are so many visuals treats throughout.
