Blood and Black Lace

Mario Bava's stylistic excesses colour in a look book of inspiration for a burgeoning Giallo subgenre, years ahead of its time.

Selected by Ari Wegner.

Models beware! While briskly walking through the wooded grounds of an haute couture fashion house on a ferociously stormy night, a raincoat-clad model is stalked and violently murdered. The following day, after the polizia wrap up some initial questioning, her secret diary is discovered. As the other models clamour to find out (or hide) the secrets within, the killer begins a bloody trail of his own to the diary.

Shot in stunningly vivid colour years before Italian giallo films truly hit their stride, Mario Bava's trend-setting B-film set the rules for the subgenre, but also for slasher films as a whole. Its influence echoes fifty years later as a visual inspiration for Peter Strickland's In Fabric (2018).

A giallo-horror for Halloween selected by Ari Wegner. Melbourne-based Ari Wegner’s propulsive career trajectory recently garnered Academy Award, BAFTA and American Society of Cinematographers’ nominations for her work on Jane Campion's multi-award-winning The Power of the Dog (2021). Wegner has carved out an impressive, award-winning career both in Australia and the USA, through her cinematography for Justin Kurzel’s True History of the Kelly Gang (2019), William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth (2016), The Girlfriend Experience television series (2017), executive produced by Steven Soderbergh, and Peter Strickland's In Fabric (2018).

We recommend pairing with Peter Strickland’s In Fabric.