SPASM – Blood and Black Lace

Before Dario Argento’s Deep Red, there was Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace. At the Cristiana Haute Couture fashion house, models and their boyfriends excel at the art of backstabbing, blackmail, and snorting cocaine. That is, until a faceless maniac embarks on a mission of death! After the one-two punch of Black Sunday and Black Sabbath, Mario Bava unleashed Blood and Black Lace — the movie that perfected the ultra-violent sub-genre that would come to be known as “giallo.” With a mood that mashes together the elegance of a quiet rain on a summer night with the luridness of a trashy paperback, it’s no wonder why Martin Scorsese once referred to this movie as “an incredible moment for cinema.”