Arrow 4K Ultra HD Film Review

Blood and Black Lace (1964) • Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD [Arrow Video]

A masked, shadowy killer brutally murders the models of a scandalous fashion house in Rome.

Anyone who enjoys a good giallo will be ecstatic about Arrow Video’s new release of Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace, uncut and lovingly restored using a 4K scan of the original camera negatives “in bleeding colour”, to quote the English-language trailer. Made half a decade ahead of its time, some say this quintessential example is the progenitor of an entire genre that would dominate Italian cinema during the first half of the 1970s and remains relevant today.

Indeed, Blood and Black Lace introduced notable tropes and is a veritable checklist of what would become the defining features of the giallo. Although a precise definition remains hard to pin down, a giallo is simply a mystery thriller but tends to refer to highly stylised examples with elaborate plotting, ingeniously staged set pieces, and an aesthetic approach to bloody murder. I can think of better gialli made later, but Blood and Black Lace ticks…