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This chapter describes how the murderer in the film Blood and Black Lace (6 donne per l'assassino) became an icon through its clothing, which included a raincoat, hat, and black gloves. It explains how the outfit of the murderer in the film, like a haute couture model, will be copied over and over in forthcoming gialli. The chapter analyzes the multiple literary and filmic influences identified in Mario Bava's faceless murderer and Edgar Wallace's novel White Face to the German krimis. It mentions faceless figures that populate Man Ray's surrealist short film Les Mystères du château de Dé in 1929, which was considered the most outstanding and surprising predecessors on iconic images of murderers. It also analyzes how masked murderers in films are more than a gimmick to hide the identity but emphasizes an almost feral attribute due to its muteness.

This chapter locates Suspiria (1976) in the broader international horror canon, considering it in the context of Dario Argento's own oeuvre, and alongside other popular instances of the genre at the time. As the most critically acclaimed and beloved of all Italian horror directors, Suspiria marked a significant point in Argento's career as he turned from his earlier gialli films to something more overtly supernatural. A number of factors intersected in the creation of the film, both collaboratively and in terms of Argento's own professional trajectory up to this point. One of the most fascinating aspects of Suspiria is the unique way it brought together a number of diverse influences, from Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) to Thomas de Quincey, whose laudanum-fuelled Suspiria de Profundis (1845) is referenced in the film's title. Argento's partner and Deep Red (1975) star Daria Nicolodi brought de Quincey's work to the director's attention, and along with a number of other key collaborators such as cinematographer Luciano Tovoli and rock band Goblin, Suspiria offers a useful place to consider the relationship between the director as auteur and their collaborators.

This chapter analyzes the baroque complexity of the murder scenes in Blood and Black Lace (6 donne per l'assassino). It explains how the film was modelled after Alfred Hitchcock, who had always given great importance to elaborate murder sequences in his works. It also mentions the film Caccia all'uomo that was directed by Mario Bava's friend, Riccardo Freda, which was a stunning anticipation of what would be found in the forthcoming gialli. The chapter talks about Bava's Blood and Black Lace that reprised the emphasis on the crescendo which precedes death and multiplied it while amplifying the atrocity of the killing itself. It describes the murder sequence of the film that was characterised by a well-defined environment and has its own specificity regarding the characteristics of the victim, such as the ways of her dispatching and the murder weapon.

This chapter looks into Mario Bava's aesthetic sensibility and synthesis of the stylistic and thematic thread that underlies the film Blood and Black Lace (6 donne per l'assassino). It explains how viewers of the film associated the gimmick of using mannequins with the opening pages of Gialli Mondadori, which include a list of characters and their qualification in order to give the reader a “human map” on which to rely when reading. It also discusses how the same concept of a human map is reinvented in the film Blood and Black Lace in a visual key with a surrealistic effect through the use of mannequins. The chapter analyzes the poses of mannequins that are considered artificial, enigmatic, and disturbing. It highlights how mannequins reiterate the initial equation between men and anthropomorphic objects, in which mannequins provide cautionary shadows for actors and actors are sometimes caught in the act of making the same gesture as the mannequins.