Before Dario Argento’s Deep Red, there was Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace. At the Cristiana Haute Couture fashion house, models and their boyfriends excel at the art of backstabbing, blackmail, and snorting cocaine. That is, until a faceless maniac embarks on a mission of death! After the one-two punch of Black Sunday and Black Sabbath, Mario Bava unleashed Blood and Black Lace—the movie that perfected the ultra-violent subgenre that would come to be known as “giallo.” With a mood that mashes together the elegance of a quiet rain on a summer night with the luridness of a trashy paperback, it’s no wonder why Martin Scorsese once referred to this movie as “an incredible moment for cinema.”

Blood and Black Lace
ICON GUIDE
OCOpen Caption screening
Additional program content
35mm
SFSensory Friendly. Details HERE
This film is part of the After Hours series.

Blood and Black Lace
1964. 86 m. Mario Bava. AGFA. Italy. Italian with subtitles. Rated NR.
Tickets: $11 (members), $16 (nonmembers)
"Few gialli are as visually accomplished as this, which marks a high bar for the genre that wasn’t matched, much less exceeded, until the release of Dario Argento’s Deep Red."
"It is such a lysergic collision of high art and low that its very outmodedness has now become a paradoxical part of its timeless appeal—and from such heady heights, the only way could be down for the slasher genre that Bava's film helped model."
This film is part of the following initiatives:
This film is part of the After Hours series.
The Jacob Burns Film Center is proud to receive generous support from:
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