Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Can it really be five years since Dream Home first graced our screens? Bloody hell. It seems incredible that one of the biggest hits of the festival circuit of the year of its release and a big success with many horror film fans has had to wait until now to make it out on Blu-ray. Well, ours not to question why (actually that’s bollocks – we’re always questioning why) and it’s here now, at least. It’s interesting, though: I haven’t revisited the film at all in the intervening years since I first saw it – meaning that, apart from anything else, fairly inevitably a few of the plot details had become lost to the mists of time – but I think seeing Dream Home outside of the festival experience at last has allowed me to look at it with a more sober eye. When I saw the film for the first time, I was blown away by the incredibly visceral gore, a raft of high production values and a genuinely unique rationale for the violence on offer – meaning it made one of my films of the year. Whilst all of those things are still there of course, it’s a lot clearer to me now that Dream Home is tonally rather odd. The film juggles pathos with overkill, commenting on very real social issues but doing it with a level of grue that’s sometimes arduous, and sometimes humorous. I’m not sure if ‘splatter satire’ was particularly a thing before Dream Home, but it certainly feels like it was the first to do anything quite like this.

Via a reasonably complex time frame which goes from minutes-and-seconds precision to time lapse and a back-story which encompasses many years, we meet our main character Sheung (Josie Ho), a young woman who may appear to be upwardly-mobile, but who struggles considerably to keep her head above water in Hong Kong’s brutal financial climate (which the film is very happy to make clear to foreign viewers, explaining the great disparity between average earnings and property prices). Working two jobs to help her save up for a deposit on a property, we’re gradually introduced to the reasons why she’s so hellbent on owning an apartment in one area of the city in particular; we see Sheung’s life as a rather bleak trudge through drudgery and anonymity, peopled by those who don’t care and largely don’t matter, and via flashback we see that it’s been this way for a significant share of her life so far. However, it’s some time before we’re permitted to fully join the dots, and see just why this young woman is on a murderous ascent through the apartment block she would like to call home.

Despite the great pains which director and writer Ho-Cheung Pang takes with the characterisation of Sheung, crafting a fairly complex contextualisation for her behaviour at the film’s most up-to-date point, she remains a challenging prospect, and I found this was more the case with today’s viewing than with the last, where I rather more happily accepted that there was method to her madness. Yes, she’s a young woman who has been pushed to the brink by circumstance, and Josie Ho does sterling work here in many respects, but there are aspects to Sheung that I find hard to get past, on reflection: perhaps that’s the point, and you’re meant to see her more as a symbol of the sort of blinkered materialism which drives people down certain incomprehensible paths (though perhaps not to this extreme!) than as some sort of beleaguered Everyman character who just can’t help it as a victim of circumstance, but as characters go she’s not easy to empathise with, all told. Step aside from the bad murders, even, and you’re still left with a lousy daughter (oh come on), a lacklustre mistress, someone who’s selfish, even squeamish, and to state the fucking obvious, deeply flawed. Still, maybe this is less about Sheung and more about everyone else: there are no likeable people in Ho-Cheung Pang’s modern vista of Hong Kong. Everyone we meet has some sort of agenda; everyone is out for themselves, either behaving connivingly, indolently or hopelessly, or accepting of all the above in spades. This is a very bleak film indeed.

Knowing all of that, though, perhaps makes it harder to accept the fact that the film takes some serious risks with its tone. In some places, especially when dealing with the young Sheung in her childhood, the plot feels almost saccharin: not all of the justification for her unshakeable adult stance on a sea-front view is convincing. Similarly, skip forward to the night of violence at the apartment block, and the film prevaricates, not sure whether it wants to plump for the more challenging, ‘torture porn’ style killings (hey, I don’t like the term either but you at least know what I mean by it) or a more grim, cartoonish type of splatter, with a few of the murders moving from the sublime well into the ridiculous, with one of the victims even sending himself up a bit. It can all feel a little schizophrenic, and maybe tried to do too much within one movie.

Still, it sounds for all the world like I really didn’t enjoy my second viewing of Dream Home…but I did, really, newly-found misgivings or otherwise. For all of her unlikeable traits, Sheung remains a compelling and original character throughout, and her own disbelief that she’s doing what she’s doing definitely adds an engaging note to the plot. It’s here that we closest approach caring for her. And although it’s not approached all in one way or another, either deadly serious or played for kicks, Dream Home does have a very real set of concerns at its core, with its particular telling of the long-term effects of slum clearance and rising city prices certainly making for a hard-hitting, innovative horror film. Sure, everything is blown up to grotesque proportions (that’s what monsters are for) but that fits in well with the film’s opening assertion that in a crazy city ‘one has to be crazier’. The film still looks incredible, too, with its colours and long shots really popping off the screen in the new, polished format. If you haven’t yet seen Dream Home, this is definitely the way to go.

We’ll say nothing of the fact that the distributors, in their wisdom, have included cover ratings from two defunct and let’s say, problematic print magazines (Nuts and Gorezone!) – in this case, this is still a worthy disc to add to the collection.

Dream Home is available via Network from 25th May 2015.

By Keri O’Shea

Japan, 1960s: a young man by the name of Jiro ( the effortlessly cool Akira Kobayashi) has just been released after eight years in the big house. No sooner has he walked through the gates, but an approaching man curtly reminds him that, as Jiro was implicated in the death of his younger brother, he needs to watch himself. That’s the kind of world into which Jiro has just emerged – a world of yakuza, of threats and vendettas, but it’s the world he knows, and so he returns back to his ‘family’, the Ichimonji clan.

To his dismay, he arrives to find a clan in disarray. The godfather of the clan is elderly, frail and sick (and I’ll confess at this stage that I have no idea of yakuza terminology is this close to mafia terminology or if something has very definitely been lost in translation somewhere along the way) whilst many of the men, seeing him in this precarious state, have gone about their business elsewhere. It’s clear that there is not much of a family of which to speak here – and Jiro needs to find work, so when he’s offered a chance by the once-rival Hazama clan at running the nearby boom town of Takagawa, he cautiously accepts.

This being a yakuza movie, however, it’s soon clear that Jiro’s new position has thrown him into a precarious situation. To consolidate the Hazama position, there will be many rivals to deal with – many of whom are interested in controlling Takagawa because there’s ready money to be made, thanks to the wealth of surrounding farmland that’s just waiting to be taken from all the terrified farmers who still live and work there. The Aoba gang, essentially a troupe of unprincipled thugs, prove themselves happy to bludgeon and intimidate their way towards their goals; their big rivals, the Tono gang, are sharper-dressed and better-mannered, but not gents by any true definition of the term. So, in order to fulfil his brief for the Hazama and avoid finding himself on the pointy end of a sword, it seems that Jiro will have to tread very carefully – but even his soft tread may not be enough to keep himself out of danger altogether as war breaks out…

As a yakuza movie, this is an entertainingly gritty affair, definitely aiming for realism, with a distinct lack of choreographed fight scenes or particularly lurid detail (although a definite artistic eye is apparent along the way, with some scenes boasting incredibly innovative work indeed). However, in keeping with many other crime dramas from a culture which is always as different as it is recognisable, there are some criminal conventions here which need a bit of figuring out, although the film yields plenty of results as a result. Once you navigate the mire of convoluted rules and behaviours on display, as well as the extreme, codified politeness which goes hand in hand with tyrannical dealings and bloody murders, then this film can be rewarding. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that the most vile behaviour is drawn in pretty broad strokes throughout, thus tying in with the realism angle in some respects, yet also rendering the yakuza gangs as almost cartoonish in their monstrousness in others, as they cheerily torment and assault women (albeit through a range of – mostly – euphemistic 1960s camerawork), recruit card sharps, and generally lie and cheat their way to riches. Quelle change I guess, though at least this is one scenario that social networking won’t be blaming on David Cameron this week…

Perhaps, though, the most interesting thing about this movie (perhaps excepting an appearance by a very young, very meek Meiko Kaji which doesn’t even get a mention in the opening credits) is in its fascinating balance of the urbane and the opulent, the old and the new. This is a modernising Japan, with all of modernisation’s big hitters and poor victims; the city of Takagawa is swallowing up the land on its outskirts, and via the yakuza, it’s displacing the old guard, the old Japan that has been there – as Meiko Kaji’s character Saeko says – ‘for centuries’, and could remain as such if it wasn’t made to change. As kimonos and sharp suits jostle for view in the same shots here, is there a means by which the old guard can still be treated with respect in such a changing world? This becomes Jiro’s predicament, and the catalyst which drives the conflict at the heart of the film. All of this is refracted through some frankly stunning camera-work, deftly demonstrating director Yasuharu Hasebe’s multi-shifting perspectives on the action as it unfolds.

The idea of one man vs. corruption is an old and an established one, but Retaliation manages to carve something of its own out of the premise. Whilst the ‘time capsule’ effect does not necessarily a great movie make, here it’s married effectively to the crime drama at the heart of the plot, and through a range of effective performances Retaliation certainly shows that it has a good deal to offer the curious viewer. As usual, Arrow have presented a worthy version of the film here, with a small range of special features (interviews, stills and a trailer) to accompany the feature itself.

Retaliation is available via Arrow Films from the 11th May 2015.

By Keri O’Shea

When modern life comes crashing down on screen, you can depend on Australian genre cinema to represent this in gratuitous levels of detail, and let’s just say – we love them for it, don’t we? There have been so many examples of ingenious, batshit insane cinema coming out of the antipodes that it would make for a lengthy aside if I started going through them. However, all in all we can at least say it makes for an impressive pedigree, and you can always hope to add another film to the list, so if I was a little underwhelmed by the prospect of reviewing ‘yet another zombie movie’, then Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead soon won me over. Sod subtle and restrained – if you’re cramming your film with the walking dead then you may as well go for it: director Kiah Roache-Turner, in his first feature-length here, clearly knows this and the end results are impressively entertaining.

The plot starts out fairly reliably and familiarly, with an unspecified virus rapidly making its way through small town Australia, turning people into flesh-crazed maniacs and leaving only a small group of survivors thrown together by circumstance, licking their wounds whilst they try to figure out what the hell to do next. We piece together what’s gone on in retrospect, but to tell truth, at the early stages of the film we’re as perplexed as our characters are – one minute, one of the head characters, Barry (Jay Gallagher) is a happily married family man, the next he’s having to dispatch his young daughter with a nail-gun. Ditto, Benny (Leon Burchill) was just out on a hunting trip with his brother, but ended up having to blow his kneecaps out with his shotgun – and still he came after him. One of those days I guess (and there’s a pretty clear indication for you, if you like your zombie horror grisly, that you won’t be disappointed here). For whatever reason, though, these guys haven’t been affected by the initial virus – though they still need to avoid getting bitten – but Barry needs to get down the road to look for his sister, Brooke (Bianca Bradey) who is alive and has been ‘rescued’ by the military, which doesn’t turn out so great for her either…although before too long she has a novel way of turning things around.

If you feel like you could pitch that opening premise – virus, zombies, threat, corrupt establishment – into any number of zombie films, then you’d be right; thing is, once Wyrmwood really gets underway, it demonstrates that it actually has decent, innovative writing behind it. This is no cop-out first film where it’s just a retread of other genre films, even though you can see affectionate nods to several classics along the way. The start of Wyrmwood doesn’t dictate where it’s all going, happily, as there’s far more to it, and if you think you can predict everything that follows, well, then you’d be wrong. Promise. There are some really neat twists to the story which definitely feel in keeping with the genre, but also work really nicely in their own right. They’re daft as a brush but fun, and allow the film to keep things fresh and interesting.

One of the key ways it does this (and I don’t think I’m spoilering, considering the selected quote on the cover, let alone the film’s title itself) is how it marries zombie horror with road movie. Mad Max has been mentioned as a comparison; yeah, in several places, this rings very true. Barry is a bit of a dab hand when it comes to mechanics, see, and so are the fellas he winds up with. A lot of the film takes place through high pursuits and precarious travel scenarios, via kitted-up vehicles and embattled, armoured survivors. The presence in the plot of sister Brooke keeps the film from feeling like a boys’ club, but that said, Wyrmwood has a higher-than-average brawn factor – so look out for modded weapons and fist fights alongside the head-shots and splatter. So yes, Mad Max works as a reference, but to me, the film felt like it could have been adapted from a 2000 AD one-off, especially given its stylised, highly colourised shooting style, which came across looking like a cartoon strip in several places, intentionally or otherwise.

Sure – the whole ‘sprinter with white contact lenses and good cheekbones’ zombie archetype has taken over the genre these days, but the important thing in Wyrmwood that no one, living or (un)dead, phones in their performance. The film works so well as entertainment because quite simply, it has the courage of its convictions. It doesn’t spare anyone’s sensibilities, it takes a batch of good ideas and sees them through, and it never errs on the side of caution. The fact that Wyrmwood 2 is already in the works is good news, as the film has easily done enough to merit a follow-up – not least because it leaves us on a such a cliffhanger…

So is the zombie road movie a thing now? I really hope so. Wyrmwood deserves the steady fandom it’s been gaining, and I look forward to seeing where Brooke and Barry go next – two cult characters in waiting if ever I saw them. If you were feeling burned out on zombies, then this is a great, energised palate cleanser.

Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead will be released by Studiocanal on 11th May 2015.

By Keri O’Shea

When I saw that The Haunting of Radcliffe House (formerly titled Altar) was set in Yorkshire, I asked for it purely on that basis. Having lived in Yorkshire for around half my life, I think it’s fair to feel a little pride in the place, and although the city I live in is rammed to the gunnels with allegedly haunted pubs and other buildings, ‘ghost walks’ and a wide range of books all proudly discussing just how ghostly the county is, there aren’t many horror films based here. Well, no longer, and interestingly, this one is directed by Nick Willing, whose 1997 film Photographing Fairies badly needs and deserves a decent DVD release. So far, so promising. I notice, though, that Willing hasn’t directed for a while, and certainly hasn’t made anything with this theme before. This may have an overall impact on the film, as he is also the writer here…

Kicking off with a beautiful array of long shots of God’s own acre, it certainly seems as though The Haunting of Radcliffe House is going to deliver. It does feel grounded in Yorkshire – but unfortunately, a lot of the promise of the setting is squandered pretty early on. That’s not to say it’s a dreadful film; it’s just that it’s rather unpolished, and it suffers from a problem lots of supernatural-themed films suffer from. Its script is essentially a re-write of many previously-done scripts. This is a shame, but it seems to be a common obstacle.

Anyway. A pan-Atlantic family – dad Alec (Matthew Mod…Matthew Modine?!) mum Meg (Olivia Williams) and two children that they’ve pulled out of school for several months are heading to the Radcliffe House of the title; Meg is a renovator and she’s been charged by a wealthy client with the task of getting the hall back to how it was in its prime; Alec, meanwhile, can do whatever it is that he does all day – drawing and sculpting, mainly. The house is ramshackle, but that’s not its main issue, as before any time at all has passed we can see that it’s a weird place with unexplained phenomena: rattling pipes, ghostly images on photos, and a constantly rumbling musical score. It has the obligatory secret rooms and doors, but that’s not all: the family is soon warned of the house’s dark history, during which the original owner of the house apparently killed his wife Isabella during a magical ritual. Can Meg overcome her skepticism in time to prevent the house and its ghosts exerting an unholy influence over her family, she asked rhetorically?

Let’s start with what’s good, aside from the attractive shots I mentioned earlier. Firstly, I’d say that Olivia Williams’ performance is a real highlight: she is believable as the wife and mother of the piece, and manages to balance her character’s clear rational thinking with a burgeoning sense of unease, right up until the point where she has to act. On a similar note, the two children (who I assumed were going to pale into the background or else become cliche feckless kids who can’t do anything for themselves) grow into characters in their own right, who have some bearing on how the story plays out. That’s undoubtedly a good thing, and in particular I hope the work continues to arrive for actress Antonia Clarke, as she seems worthy of it. But perhaps the biggest plaudit I can award the film is to say – thank you, thank you for not feeling the need to throw jump scares at us every five minutes, as if the hallmark of a good scary story is being made to leap out of your skin. Far better to opt for the raising-hairs-on-back-of-neck approach, a thing which The Haunting of Radcliffe House achieves during its best moments (people crawling at top speed through background shots? That is creepy – and the darker, more understated scenes shot in the house are the film’s stand-out best).

It’s not all plain sailing though, and somehow in playing this role in a modest-budget, British-set feature, Matthew Modine comes across as having been ripped out of his comfort zone. Perhaps just used to flashier, bigger things, he can’t match Olivia Williams’ performance like for like and often seems to be returning lines of dialogue with an aplomb which just doesn’t suit the context. He also spends a lot of the film off-camera, a fact which is perhaps intended to make the viewer believe he is being influenced by all sorts of malign forces where we can’t see him, but for me it just made him feel less part of the film full stop, and made subsequent developments feel a little thin. His ‘breakdown’ beneath the occult forces of the house, such as it is, feels rather unconvincing – it’s so abrupt and underexplored that it lacks weight.

Add to this a number of characters who seem to have little to actually contribute to the story, and that sense of the plot as rather thinly-spread worsens – with a near-miss on a comic interlude (whether he was trying for it or not) when Steve ‘Erotic Odyssey’ Oram rocks up for a cameo as a paranormal detective. Having opted for a tried-and-tested formula – considering the press release and the blurb I don’t think I’m spoilering if I say ‘possession’ comes to the fore – the film badly needed to focus. At times, however, it felt like it had tried to do more than it realistically could, even given the fairly obvious storyline it decided to follow (which may explain why the more interesting occult plot lines were abandoned!)

So, not a bad film per se, but not a good one either, this is just imbued with too much baggage – including a sizeable case of deja-vu. The Haunting of Radcliffe House has its good elements, but these get lost in the mix. Nick Willing can really bloody direct, though, so fingers crossed this will give him enough impetus to get something else off the ground, get to writing with someone fresh and develop something with much more bite.

The Haunting of Radcliffe House will be released by Image Entertainment on 11th May 2015.

By Keri O’Shea

The influence of the zombie – formerly, the ghoul – continues to rise and rise; we now see zombies in the upper eschelons of pop culture, in such various places as a vastly-popular TV franchise and even…in a teen romance film. Yep, the risen dead are clearly here to stay. But what if, as the zombies march onward, they completely forget to appear in the very films where you’d expect them to be integral?

That’s about the size of it in What’s Left of Us, a film where an outbreak of zombies is by and large merely the context for creating an impressively claustrophobic and uneasy human situation. Charming in places, dreary in others, the film shows us its rationale for having these people trapped in a house and then goes on to develop an unexpected and brooding character study, jettisoning the more obvious sources of horror altogether. If you can forgive them that, then there is a lot to like here, actually.

Three survivors of an unspecified zombie apocalypse – the vivacious but temperamental Ana (Victoria Almeida), the outgoing Jonathan (William Prociuk) and the introverted Axel (Lautaro Delgado) – have become trapped inside a ramshackle, but fortunately well-defended house. They’re frustrated with their lot, of course, so they mutually decide on letting off steam by recording their private thoughts on video, before locking them away forever, never to be seen again. It’s a kind of pauper’s therapy, I guess. We don’t know how long they’ve been doing this exactly, but there are a hell of a lot of tapes locked away in that box. The flashpoint in this already tense situation comes when Axel, who it seems has a quiet obsession with Ana, begins to cheat: he unlocks the container, and he begins to watch the tapes, where what he sees only fuels his ardour (whilst he begins to avoid speaking to Ana in real life altogether, preferring to encounter the two-dimensional version). It’s the sort of situation in which you’d assume something has got to give: extreme isolation, simmering, unhealthy sexual rivalry, and (we presume) a shitload of the walking dead at the very door. A recipe for something explosive, right?

Well…no. Not quite. Not how you’d expect. The path chosen by director Christophe Behl in this, his first feature film, can feel frustrating in places; it’s really more of an art house movie than a horror, and choosing the frame which has been used here is clearly something of a risk, but for me, once I’d accepted the film’s unconventional use of an all-too-familiar backdrop, I rather liked it.

The film has a strange, unconventional feel to it at all times, creating a good sense of the loss of the relevance of time as we know it, whilst the actors involved enact the tedium of being holed up very well indeed. The pettiness, the boredom, the irrational tics (such as Axel gradually getting himself plastered in tiny tattoos of insects as the film progresses, promising everyone that he’ll leave the house once he’s fully covered) – it all stands up very well. Simple devices, too, such as the constant buzzing of flies which the film uses as a kind of impromptu soundtrack, really help to create a stifling, unsanitary atmosphere. Forget the walking dead outside, or even the solitary zombie ‘pet’ which Axel and Jonathan decide to bring indoors out of sheer dumb curiosity: the living that are left seem just as sickly. Glowering, unwholesome and grimy, Axel’s unrequited and rather warped love for Ana manifests itself as physical sickness; he looks terrible, though that said, all of the other, limited cast of characters take their turn at looking almost inhuman, they’re so far removed from vigour and sanity. The film chooses for its colour scheme that popular, washed-out and often blueish tone beloved of a lot of new-wave horror cinema, which may be a little obvious, but it does work here, particularly alongside the abundance of (unbearably) close shots of the inmates. It’s a stylish film, without necessarily being easy viewing.

Ultimately, the perspective taken by the film is an interesting, bold one. Little touches like the threadbare nature of Ana’s clothes; the growing tattoo; the treatment of the zombie as a kind of ‘pet’ and an art project; well, these are all effective in their way, but really the main focus of the film is on treating the outside world as an alien country. This places a particular strain on the three survivors, and keeps the focus on them, not on some grand scheme to escape, or even to save anyone else. Most films which invoke the whole zombie apocalypse and its human survivors can’t help but give us gratuitous shots of the walking dead which have caused the situation; What’s Left of Us keeps this deliberately low in the mix, providing us instead with a slow burn, unseemly but in its own way catastrophic love triangle, which plays itself out in extraordinary circumstances. The focus is very much on the human; so much so, and with such gravitas, that being undead doesn’t seem like it’s so bad after all.

A well-realised oddity, it would be a supreme and an unfortunate misfire if this film was marketed at fans of the more headshot-orientated kind of zombie flick. However, as a film which doesn’t rest very comfortably in any genre, this could be a risk for What’s Left of Us – hopefully though, more pragmatic viewers will soon find their way to this rather ambitious, atmospheric little feature.

What’s Left of Us will be released by Peccadillo Pictures on May 11th, 2015.

By Keri O’Shea

The ‘neo-giallo’ has become something of a hot filming style in recent years, and although not yet numbering as many films as the faux grindhouse trend has given us, a fair few young directors have tried to turn their hand to the heavily-stylised, aesthetically-minded ultraviolence of the giallo – with a range of outcomes; some good, some not so much. It’s certainly high time for us to get this new, painstakingly-restored version of Blood on Black Lace anyway, the film which effectively cemented the genre in the first place. Years of watching films of a similar ilk may have blinded us to the sheer ingenuity of Bava’s originality and verve here, but it shouldn’t be so: happily, this version is so bloody glorious that it ought to be able to restore any viewer’s faith, even if you come to it hardwired to see through the film’s plot twists and turns.

The film is set in and around the Cristiana Haute Couture fashion house in Italy, where the glamorous girls who work there are presided over by the equally glamorous Contessa Cristina (Eva Bartok) and her partner. One night, one of the girls, Isabella, is brutally murdered by a masked killer in the grounds of the house. The smooth Inspector Silvestre is assigned to the case, but no sooner has he begun to investigate life at Cristiana, than there’s another killing. Could it be linked to the discovery of Isabella’s diary, which seems to have rattled a few cages? Soon, an atmosphere of paranoia and unease pervades the house – and the body count continues to increase.

Essentially a whodunnit, the original Italian title of the film even lets you in on how many casualties to expect but for all that, you genuinely still want to get to the bottom of the mystery. This is quite something, in and of itself. However, for me the real pleasure of Blood and Black Lace lies in the journey, not the destination. It’s hard to understate just how creative Mario Bava shows himself to be with his work on this film: innovative camera work, long takes, a painterly eye for scene composition, superb lighting and soundscape and sumptuous sets, it’s a thing of beauty, a truly immersive piece of cinema. So what if you guess who the culprit is – you’ll have a blast anyway.

All of this comment on how good the film looks and sounds, though, shouldn’t detract from the fact that it still – all these decades after it was made – packs a punch. I’d only ever seen one (terrible quality) version of the film, about ten years ago, and perhaps the poor quality of the print took away from the brutality of the murders, but having revisited it, I’m still pretty taken aback by how unsettling the murders actually are. In bold, crisp Eastmancolour, it’s a protracted and nasty affair, all told. Much has been said about the relationship between sex and violence in the giallo genre, and perhaps it’d be too much of an aside to go into it fully here, but you can’t escape the fact that the girls getting variously throttled, slashed and burned in Blood and Black Lace show sex appeal and terror being married together; although the murders don’t turn out to be sexual in motivation, Silvestre assumes that they are, and perhaps we do, too. Indeed the states of undress which the victims end up in could easily be seen in these terms, and sexuality runs through the film like a current. Similarly, even when being terrorized, the beautiful female victims look incredibly elegant. This is a film choc-full of good looking types.

But then, they’re being offed by someone who has a certain level of style, too. The assassin – in a simple white face covering – is a very effective villain, creepy and evocative. They’re a plausible threat who doesn’t sacrifice on the aesthetic aspect. There’s plenty more to admire about them, also. At some points they seem omnipotent, in the vein of a slasher villain from the decades which followed, but then again, they seem clumsy and fallible in other respects. It’s an interesting blend which allows for engaging viewing and some great scenes – and you can chalk up the sheer number of other, later films which have clearly been influenced by this assassin.

A heady, lurid blend of sex, drugs, lies and murder, Blood and Black Lace set the bar for the giallo genre and this definitive release by Arrow finally gives the film the reverential treatment it deserves. It absolutely rewards the great pains they’ve taken with it to get it looking as good as it does – and I utterly recommend that you buy it, then bask in one of the most enjoyably grisly time capsules you’ll ever have the pleasure to experience.

Not enough for you? Arrow have, as always, thrown in a raft of decent extras with this release, everything from the obligatory movie trailer through to a ‘visual essay’ about gender and giallo, an episode of The Sinister Image, a panel discussing Bava and his work, a feature-length documentary on the film, and even a copy of Yellow, the recent neo-giallo which made waves on the indie horror movie scene.

Blood and Black Lace is available to buy now.