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Blood and Black Lace – 1964 Bava
- Mario Bava’s blood and black lace is a fascinating blend of high and low art. The script is putrid and the acting is just straight bad but bava’s gliding camera, and especially his use of color, is a major artistic achievement
- He often uses neon lighting and heavy shadow work in the same mise-en-scene. It’s gorgeous
- Heavy neon with posing characters for the intro title montage—jazz score—it’s a very inspired opening
- The story is a slasher and a who-done-it set in the fashion industry (which gives bava plenty of excuses to go nuts (and I love it) with the décor
- Flashing neon green from vertigo
- Clearly influences argento, mainly suspiria, refn’s neon demon and only god forgives, and greenaway’s the cook, the thief, his wife and her lover
- The film is proof a good director can make an archiveable film from any source material
- The fast motion photography sequences are unfortunate choices
- The second murder set piece, about 20 minutes in, is the main spectacular sequence- it’s about 5 minutes—there’s another one at the end with a superb tracking shot long take through a neon lit house filled with colorful mannequins.. if these sequences had been more than 15 minutes of the 90 minutes or so we could’ve been talking about a top 5 film of 1964—its about ratio here and there are 20 minute chunks here and there where it’s a really weak movie filled with bad acting—even without the dubbing—some of the bad dubbing, simple genre story stuff with spectacular visuals remind me of john woo’s work
- Very cheap “who-done-it” montages as bava cuts to half guilty faces when a new clue comes up
- R/HR border- elements are amongst the best of the year but others are amongst the worst of any film in my archvies—tough film to categorize
Drake2020-07-03T10:31:21+00:00
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[…] Blood and Black Lace – Bava […]
Just to clarify, by “Top 5 film of 1964,” do you mean Masterpiece or Must-See?