DVD Collectors Online

Annie Hall, a review by snowcat

(From Emma's Film Reviews (snowcat) on November 2nd, 2009)

Blood and Black Lace, a review by Danae Cassandra

Blood and Black Lace (Sei donne per l'assassino)
Year of Release: 1964
Directed By: Mario Bava
Starring: Cameron Mitchell, Eva Bartok, Thomas Reiner, Ariana Gorini, Dante DiPaolo
Genre: Horror, Crime, Suspense/Thriller

Overview:
The Christian Haute Couture fashion house is a home to models... and backstabbing... and blackmail... and drug deals... and MURDER.

Having established a template for the giallo with The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Mario Bava set about cementing its rules with Blood and Black LaceBlood and Black Lace afresh and offers newcomers the ideal introduction to a major piece of cult filmmaking.

My Thoughts:
I've just started watching giallo films, and this reinforces my thus-far enjoyment of the genre. This is certainly a beautiful film. Bava has an eye for gorgeous visuals, with a rich color pallette, interesting use of light and shadow, and inventive and wonderful camerawork.

The technical aspects of the film are so good that it's a shame the characters are underdeveloped. The viewer doesn't care about any of the victims, nor do we really root for the police to solve the crimes. I found myself detached from the characters, instead absorbed in the beauty of the film. The story is good, and Bava skillfully takes you from kill to reveal to twist, but I didn't care about anyone.

That aside, this is a beautiful, influential film, and anyone interested in giallo, or in slasher films (of which this is considered the prototype) should definitely see it.

Watched For: Hoop-tober 3.0, Horror/Halloween Challenge 2016, Scavenger Hunt 19

Bechdel Test: Pass
Mako Mori Test: Fail

Overall: 3.5/5

Horror/Halloween Challenge Films: 36/52

(From Horror/Halloween 2016 Challenge on October 25th, 2016)

Tom's Random Star Trek Reviews, a review by Tom

VOY 3.21 Before and After
Writer: Kenneth Biller (Writer)
Director: Allan Kroeker
Cast: Kate Mulgrew (Captain Kathryn Janeway), Robert Beltran (Commander Chakotay), Roxann Dawson (Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres), Jennifer Lien (Kes), Robert Duncan McNeill (Lieutenant Tom Paris), Ethan Phillips (Neelix), Robert Picardo (The Doctor), Tim Russ (Lieutenant Tuvok), Garrett Wang (Ensign Harry Kim), Jessica Collins (Linnis Paris), Michael L. Maguire (Benaren), Christopher Aguilar (Andrew Kim), Janna Michaels (Young Kes), Rachael Harris (Martis)

Kes is travelling backwards in time from the time of her death to the present. This leads us to see a possible future for the Voyager crew (which will be an alternate future because Kes retained her memories and the timeline will certainly change because of this). So we got to see the Year of Hell, some of the crew dying, Kes' child and and grandchild.
One thing always bothered me about this episode. The producers chose a very bad point to change Kes' hairstyle. I remember the first time I have watched this episode, I thought not much about the longer hairstyle of Kes in the scenes set in the future. I thought that she will let her hair grow in the future. So when she was back at the present time, I thought that she still had one jump back in time left, because she still had the longer hair. As it turned out, they have changed her regular hairstyle between the previous episode and this one. Really bad choice as it just confuses the time-traveling even more. It would have been better, if they changed her present hairstyle after this episode. Then they could have used as a reason for the change, that Kes saw it in the future, liked it and decided to make this change.

P/T moment:
In this possible future, Tom and B'Elanna were a couple until B'Elanna died in the first Krenin attack.

Rating:

(From Tom's Random Star Trek Reviews on September 27th, 2009)