BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964) d. Mario Bava (Italy)
AMER (2009) d. Bruno Forzani / Helene Cattet (Belgium/France)
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.
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CRAIG J. CLARK watches a lot of movies. He started watching them in New Jersey, where he was born and raised, and continues to watch them in Indiana. He is a frequent contributor to Crooked Marquee and writes the monthly Full Moon Features column for Werewolf News. He is not a werewolf himself (or so he says).
JASON COFFMAN is the Unrepentant Cinephile. He is a former contributor to Daily Grindhouse and Film Monthly (RIP), the director of the feature film Housesitters, and an occasional "recording artist." Jason is the proud owner of 35mm prints of Andy Milligan's Guru, the Mad Monk and Zalman King's Two Moon Junction. You can find him on Letterboxd at BARRY KAUFMAN has been committed to spreading the gospel of obscure horror and science-fiction cinema since writing the fanzines Monsters of Japan and Demonique in the 1970s and 80s. He ran All-Horror Video out of a house in the woods in Homewood, Illinois through the 1980s, followed by his shop The House of Monsters in Chicago from 1996 to 2007. He now vends at genre related shows and programs festivals in the Chicago area featuring his inconspicuous film favorites. NICOLA MCCAFFERTY is a PhD candidate in the department of Radio, Television, and Film at Northwestern University whose current research focuses on how screen representations of nonhuman women (think mannequins, cyborgs, and humanoid aliens) help us gain insights into the categories of both humanity and femininity. Outside of grad school, Nicola has a few stray bylines at Dread Central and runs an Etsy store (, where she sells enamel pins, stickers, and prints inspired by horror and cult films from the 1960s to today. CHRIS SCALES is a lifelong horror fan, aspiring horror screenwriter, and horror panelist. ---------------------------------------- Keep Searching, Keep Exploring, and, most of all, Keep Sharing the Scare!
