BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964) (Arrow Video Blu-ray Review)

BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964) 

Label: Arrow Video
Region Code: A,B,1,2
Rating: 18 Certificate
Duration: 89 Minutes
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen (1.66:1)
Audio: Italian/English Dolby Digital Mono and PCM with optional English SDH Subtitles
Director: Mario Bava
Cast: Cameron Mitchell, Eva Bartok, Thomas Reiner, Francesca Ungaro, Luciano Pigozzi,Claude Dantes, Mary Arden, Dante DiPaolo

Of all the releases announced by Arrow Video (US) it was Mario Bava's stylish whodunit Blood and Black Lace (1964) that most intrigued me, a  classic 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. Bava set the tone for the Italian whodunit murder mysteries with the black and white 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 Blood and Black Lace (1964) jut the year after 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. It was a formula that would not be improved upon until Dario Argento's 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) 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 the bird in it's mouth. Apparently she 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 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 he will strangle, mangle, drown and burn his way through a series of gorgeous models, none of which are overly graphic or gory but they are certainly vicious. The killer mangles a woman's face with a clawed gauntlet, drowning one, smothering yet another and before tied-up and tortured before having her face pressed up against a red-hot furnace, and for a model I am sure that's a double negative, disfigurement and death. 

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, those eyes are something special. It's worth noting that the bathtub murder would become a pretty standard Giallo trope afterward, as would the 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 Max Marian (Cameron Mitchell years before his string of b-movies), a drug addled antique dealer named Franco (Dante DiPaolo) and employees of the fashion house, the pill-popping Marco (Massimo Righi) and the shifty-eyed Cesar (Luciano Pigozzi), 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.

Keeping with the high visual standards we've come to expect from cinema master 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 loads of atmospheric scenes to enjoy.

Arrow have meticulously restored the film from the original camera negative which is presented here in its original, uncut Italian version running eighty-nine minutes.  The screenshot comparisons below speak for themselves in respect to the quality of the restoration. The screenshots are sourced from the new 2K restoration from the Arrow Video DVD (sorry, no Blu-ray drive on the PC) compared to the 2008 DVD release from VCI Entertainment. Clearly there is no comparison when it comes to image quality with the Arrow offering more detail, clarity and depth all the way around.

SCREEN GRABS

ARROW VIDEO (2015) TOP

VCI (2008) BOTTOM

THE ARROW VIDEO RESTORATION 

MENU SCREEN GRABS 

SPECIAL FEATURES 

 Panel discussion on Mario Bava featuring Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava and Steve Della Casa, recorded at the 2014 Courmayeur Film Festival (11 Mins)

 The alternative US opening titles, sourced from Joe Dante’s private print and scanned in 2K especially for this release (2 Mins)

 Original theatrical trailer (3 Mins)

 Gender and Giallo – a visual essay by Michael Mackenzie exploring the giallo’s relationship with the social upheavals of the 1960s and 70s (38 Mins)

Psycho Analysis – a new documentary on Blood and Black Lace and the origins of the giallo genre featuring interviews with directors Dario Argento (Suspiria) and Lamberto Bava (Demons), screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi (All the Colors of the Dark) critics Roberto Curti and Steve Della Casa, and crime novelists Sandrone Dazieri and Carlo Lucarelli (55 Mins)

  

The Sinister Image: Cameron Mitchell – an episode of David Del Valle’s television series, devoted to the star of Blood and Black Lace and presented in full (56 Mins)

An appreciation by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, the creative duo behind Amer and The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears (11 Mins)

40-Page Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Howard Hughes, author of Cinema Italiano and Mario Bava: Destination Terror, an interview with Joe Dante, David Del Valle on Cameron Mitchell and more, all illustrated with archive stills and posters

- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys

Yellow – the much-acclaimed neo-giallo by Ryan Haysom and Jon Britt (Blu-ray exclusive)

Arrow Video have breathed new life into this classic slice of Italian whodunit cinema with a brand-new and gorgeous 2K restoration that is by quite a stretch the best this film has ever looked on home video. No self-respecting horror fan or Mario Bava completest should be without this on their movie shelf, an essential and seminal slice of whodunit. 

DVD Review: IN THE DEVIL'S GARDEN (1971)

IN THE DEVIL'S GARDEN (1971)

aka: Assault; The Creepers; Satan's Playthings; or Tower of Terror  

Label: VCI Entertainment 

Region Code: 1 NTSC

Dration: 91 Minutes

Rating: R

Video: 16x9 Widescreen (1.85:1)

Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 and Enhanced 5.1 Surround 

Cast: Suzy Kendall, Frank Finlay, Freddie Jones, James Laurenson, Lesley-Anne Down, James Cosmo

Director: Sidney Hayers

Tagline: Don't Go Down in the Woods today...

Synopsis: In this slickly made thriller, a 16-year-old girl is brutally assaulted and raped in the woods near her London school. Struck dumb by her experience, she remains so until a second girl is murdered. The school art teacher (Suzy Kendall) claims to have seen the killer -- who looks like Satan himself -- and she decides to set him a trap with herself as bait. A British flavored giallo, and a ripping good whodunit!

The Film: In the Devil's Playground (1971) begins at the end of a school day as the kids are dismissed for the day, a young teen in a white blouse and pink skirt with knee high stockings cuts through the forest nearby. Listening to her transistor radio she walks carefree along earthen path. What she does not realize is that she's being observed from off the path by someone stalking her every move.When the attacker makes himself known she flees in terror and we get a pretty decent chase scene. Near an electrical tower she is caught, partially stripped and raped - she's left in a semi-catatonic state unable to identify the perp who's face is never revealed. The attack is violent but the film does not hang over it, the film instead chooses a close-up of the young woman's muffled suffering. This is perhaps the first clue that what we're in for here is more aligned with a police procedural whodunit than a stylish and violent Giallo along the lines of Dario Argento's Deep Red (1975) or Lucio Fulci's Don't Torture a Duckling (1972), the sexualized violence is tame and the cinematography is very workmanlike, not dissimilar to a made-for-TV production. Likewise the score is obnoxiously 70's television oriented and took me right out of the moment, really ghastly stuff.

After the attack the young ladies of the academy are warned not to walk alone for fear of another attack but a girl named Susan unwisely cuts through the forest and pays for her ignorance when she is attacked and raped. When the school's art teacher Julia West (Suzi Kendall, Torso) realizes that young Susan is not among the group of girls she's driving home she is told that she went through the wood. Alarmed by the thought of harm coming to the girl she drives hurriedly down the forest path hoping to catch up with her but loses control of the car on a muddy stretch and spins out of control stopping askew in the road. Steadying herself and about to drive off she catches a glimpse of someone in the brake lights through the rear window illuminated by the red glow of her tail lights, someone whom looks strikingly like Old Scratch himself, Satan, it's a great effect and nicely framed. The figure quickly disappears from sight and she realizes that he was huddled over the body of young Susan who's been strangled to death.

As the typically incompetent authorities investigate they find it hard to swallow that Satan is the culprit and instead focus on more Earthbound suspects including an obnoxious crime scene reporter (Freddie Jones, Dune), Greg Lomax (James Laurenson, The Monster Club) a psychologist and the pervy husband of the school's strict head mistress - yup, there's a full arsenal of red herrings but it's not hard to figure out who the culprit is.

The Giallo elements are pretty weak, we get a unseen killer stalking young women adorned in the traditional black-leather gloves but none of the sexy style we get from an Argento, Fulci or Martino. When the killer's identity is revealed it's not a surprise, his identity having long been broadcast several times over thus the mystery of the whodunit is altogether lost. Slightly redeeming this entry is a snappy finale that starts with the use of an experimental drug called "Pentothal" meant to bring the first catatonic victim out of her dumb struck state, it's very solid and goes a long way toward redeeming the film with a "shocking" reveal followed by a close quarter struggle culminating at the scene of the original attack and ending with someone set afire in a crackle of high voltage electricity - it's fun stuff but not enough to fully redeem a film that starts in really fine fashion but labors to keep one's attention and in the end, despite a punchy finale, is an exercise in whodunit mediocrity.

The acting is pretty solid throughout, particularly Suzy Kendal who herself is no stranger to the Giallo having appeared in both Sergio Martino's Torso (1973) and Dario Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) among many others. There's not a rotter in the bunch, but it's just dull in a dry, very stuffy British sorta way which might have had a lot to do with my lack of interest in the film. What I loved was pretty much anything shot in the forest which was well-shot, great atmosphere and creepy - particularly the numerous woodland chase scene with plenty of creepy POV shots.

DVD: VCI Entertainment presents In the Devil's Garden on DVD for the first time in the US with an anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) transfer. It's sourced from a clean print but I wanna say this is a PAL to NTSC conversion with some of the tell-tale video jitters, the image is soft, murky and colors are muted. We get two audio options, a English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo mix and enhanced 5.1 Surround Sound. The audio is a bit boxy with no depth to it and that awful score isn't helped by the poor fidelity either. The menu is a simple static menu and there are no bonus features on the disc.

Verdict: In the Devils Garden has some of the elements of a black-gloved Giallo but at it's heart is more of a straight whodunit and lacks the sleaze and style of an Argento, Martino or Fulci. As a thriller it's mildly successful but as a Giallo this is disappointing, maybe I am just a perv but I wanted a bit more sleaze with my blacked-gloved shenanigans, it almost went there but pulled back against it's darker nature much to my dismay. 2.5 Outta 5