The Red Telephone

Abstract

This chapter discusses the film Blood and Black Lace (6 donne per l'assassino) that has become a cult movie over the years. It mentions how many young cinephiles became aware of the film in the 1980s via the opening sequence of the Matador film in 1986 by Pedro Almodóvar. It also talks about the fruition of a genre film through the filter of a thought-provoking auteur such as Almodóvar, who summed up the most obvious elements of an erotic mise-en scène of death with a paradoxical commentary through the protagonist's sexual arousal. The chapter describes the influence of Blood and Black Lace on foreign cinema, such as the film “Halloween” in 1978 by John Carpenter that reinvents Mario Bava's expressionless, ubiquitous, and mute assassin into a new icon. It also cites the 1984 film A Nightmare on Elm Street that features a murderer wearing a lethal razorblade glove which recalls the spiked weapon seen in Bava's film.