DVD Review: Blood and Black Lace

April 19, 2015 in cinema, Erika Sella, review

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

DVD Review: 'The Girl Who Knew Too Much'

November 23, 2014 in cinema, Erika Sella, review

Another week, another Arrow Video Bava release. This time we have The Girl Who Knew Too Much (La Ragazza Che Sapeva Troppo, 1963), a film considered by many to be the first Italian giallo. While nodding firmly in the direction of Alfred Hitchock (at first impression, the title might even suggest a Hitchcock parody of some kind!), it certainly introduced some of the features that were eventually to become commonplace within the subgenre: in this case, an innocent tourist that witnesses a crime and becomes an amateur detective, a mysterious serial killer, and a convoluted plot with a twisted surprise ending.

DVD Review: 'Rabid Dogs'

November 09, 2014 in Erika Sella, cinema, review

Mario Bava (1914-1980) was an influential yet incredibly underrated Italian director (or, as he would have put it, a 'humble artisan of cinema'). During his long and prolific career, he experimented with a number of different genres (horror, sci-fi, peplum, western) with mixed results. He is mostly well-known for his supernatural horror films Black Sunday (1960), Black Sabbath (1963) and Kill, Baby Kill (1966), and for consolidating the 'classic' formula of what is known as the Italian Giallo with The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1962) and with his lush, spellbinding Technicolor masterpiece, Blood and Black Lace (1964).