- Blood and Black Lace
Later this week, Doc Films is showing Kidnapped, aka Rabid Dogs, one of the final films by horror master Mario Bava. The film represents the director’s only foray into the crime genre, and it screens as part of Doc’s “Poliziotteschi: Shoot First, Die Later” series. It’s an interesting film, relatively staid compared to Bava’s other stuff, but it has a visceral edge that plays with audience expectations. The director is best known for his horror thrillers and gialli, disturbing yet exciting movies whose stylistic flourishes and devilish attitude influenced a generation of genre filmmakers. (For the uninitiated, take a look at J.R. Jones’s excellent survey of the director.) Like most Bava devotees, I’m most drawn to the director’s visual sensibilities. In the decade leading up to his directorial debut, Bava was a cinematographer, which explains why his films, however gory and unsettling, are first and foremost preoccupied with the emotional flow of light, shadow, color, and movement. He had the eye of a great painter and the imagination of a psychopath. Below, you can see my five favorite Mario Bava films.
- Blood and Black Lace (1964) Among the greatest of all gialli, this crazed whodunit, besides anticipating the Grand Guignol of Argento’s Deep Red and Suspiria, owes a lot to the backstage dramas of classic Hollywood. In one of the director’s most inspired sequences, Bava’s camera laterally tracks the dressing rooms of a baroque maison couture, showing us a series of scantily clad models—and future victims—in various states of emotional distress, foreshadowing the chaos that’s about to erupt. The 60s fashion and pop references give this brutally violent film a sort of deranged kitsch appeal.
