Grá mo chroí. Tá tú go h-álainn

long live gialli, kids

If there is a home base of the Italian giallo, then Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace (1964) is surely it. Giallo is is an Italian 20th century genre of literature and film, which in Italian indicates crime fiction and mystery. Giallo, means ‘yellow’ in Italian, the origin of the genre is a series of cheap paperback novels with trademark yellow covers. With his predatory camera and unflinching view Bava arguably gave birth to a new slasher genre that would pave the way for many future auteurs. (Argento, Carpenter, De Palma etc.)

Like most of Bava’s Films, Blood and Black lace, has little care for plot or character, or even a logical progression of ideas. The plot is simple. A faceless (and i mean faceless as in this character goes through the film with what resembles cheese cloth wraped around his entire head) killer dressed in a black trench coat and sporting a fedora that was later to become the staple of a famous cinema character- Fred Kruger. The faceless aspect would later be adopted by John Carpenter, accident or not, to create the horror that surrounds Michael Myers in Halloween. The brilliance of the monster sporting a blank face is that the audience can project anything they want onto it. Horror film, unlike other cinema, presents a form of catharsis that is often misunderstood. The curiosity about mortality, death, fantasy, and violence can all be felt during the viewing of a horror film. More importantly, aggressions and anger/fantasy can be openly experienced in the darkness of the movie theater because the audience can even project their own face onto that blank mask —genius. The killer stalks and murders all these glamorous models in order to retrieve a diary that could be incriminating. From beginning to end this film is alive, brandishing bright colors, invasive camera angles, and infectious enthusiasm for the macabre.

The most amazing part of this film, however, is Bava’s commitment to his own mis-en-scene. Although made up of vivid colors, visual and narrative red herrings, it ultimately leads no where. The visualization however, still remains stunning. The script was written to treat the elaborate deaths, not the plot, which is, in my opinion, a genius characteristic of Giallo films. Directors such as Argento, Carpenter, De palma, Craven, and even Hitchcock understood that the plot is subsequent, the murders serve the plot and not the other way around.

Even though Psycho and Peeping tom (1960, 1962) were released before ‘Blood and Black Lace’ the ferociousness of Bava’s death scenes and his refusal to shelter American viewers ushered in a new wave of cinematic violence, especially against women and womens bodies. Hitchcock played with viewers, Powell exposed viewers to everything but kept a safe distance, but Bava unflinchingly revealed everything. Camera as weapon; the killer as cipher upon whom the audience is invited to project their darkest animosities.

what’d you think? See the film, you might see what im talking about. Long live Gialli films :)