In lesser hands, Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace could easily have been a stagey and stiff whodunnit. The plot's premise is simple: a model is killed by a mysterious masked figure on her way to a fashion house show and leaves behind a diary that could potentially incriminate her employers, colleagues and former partner - further intrigue and a murder spree ensue. The film is instead credited with genre innovation (and has influenced many an auteur,including Martin Scorsese), as it established of the Giallo peculiarities