HORROR 101 with Dr. AC: BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964) / AMER (2009) GIALLO ROUND TABLE!!

BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964) d. Mario Bava (Italy)
AMER (2009) d. Bruno Forzani / Helene Cattet (Belgium/France)

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In 1963, director Mario Bava made The Girl Who Knew Too Much and gave birth to the Italian film genre known as the Giallo. Named after a series of crime paperbacks with yellow covers, the Giallo was boldly contemporary, eschewing the cloaks and capes of Hammer’s Gothic melodramas. A year later, Bava made the film that would define and popularize the giallo for years to come, Blood and Black Lace.

Set in a large fashion house in Rome, the story contains all the trappings of a classic whodunit, with a series of murders, multiple suspects, and a secret-filled diary, but the plot is nothing more than a thread for Bava to string his pearls of exquisitely crafted, colorful, imaginative, and violent set-pieces. Instead of being repelled by the horrific images, viewers are seduced their visual bravado and panache, with shadowy rooms filled by flashing red and green lights, blue fog rolling through the exteriors, and every drop and smear of blood meticulously dabbed onto the moving canvas.

45 years later, Belgian husband and wife filmmaking team Bruno Forzani and Helene Cattet created a stunning tribute to Bava and his brethren with their 2009 feature film debut, Amer, a three-pronged examination of a young woman’s life, shot through the Italian horror lens. And like their forerunners, the story and deeper meanings seem almost secondary, heavily masked, like a black-gloved killer waiting for the right moment to strike.

Tonight, AC and his awesome panel of guests (Nicola McCafferty, Barry Kaufman, Jason Coffman, Chris Scales, and Craig J. Clark as our "Mister E. Man") examine these two singular examples of visual storytelling, defying such easy dismissals as “style over substance,” recognizing that style is, in fact, substantial, and murder, in the right hands, can be magic.