A Matter of Style

Abstract

This chapter discusses how Mario Bava opted color for his film Blood and Black Lace (6 donne per l'assassino), which he had also done in his previous horror films. It talks about Bava's employment of Eastmancolor for the saturated colour compositions of his Gothic movies that drove the colour consultants on set to distraction. It also illustrates the context in which the characters moved in Blood and Black that ended up looking like a non-place, both baroque and abstract, that brought together elements typical of the Gothic genre. The chapter describes Blood and Black Lace's labyrinthine atelier of death as a modern-day subsidiary of Gothic's castles, with crypt, secret passages, curtains fluttering in the night, and mannequins instead of suits of armour. It also looks into the insistence of shapes that move with mechanical regularity that represented Blood and Black Lace's microcosm, where the distinction between human and nonhuman becomes uncertain, fleeting, and deceptive.