The story concerns the brutal murders of a Roman fashion house's models, committed by a masked killer in a desperate attempt to obtain a scandal-revealing diary.

Film critics and historians such as Tim Lucas and Roberto Curti have identified Blood and Black Lace as representing an evolution in both Bava's style and the thriller genre depicted in cinema.

After the successful release of Dario Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage in 1970, a wave of gialli were made in Italy, with many sharing stylistic traits from Blood and Black Lace.

Isabella, one of many beautiful models employed at Christian Haute Couture, a Roman fashion house, is walking through the property's grounds at night when she is violently killed by an assailant wearing a white, featureless mask, a black fedora and a trenchcoat.

Panicking when he is identified as having visited Peggy's apartment, Marco tries to accuse Cesare, the house's eavesdropping dress designer, for the killings because of impotency; he then suffers an epileptic seizure and is hospitalised, and his drugs turn out to be medication for his condition.

[10] Bava had explored the elements of suspense and eroticism in the film genre that would become the giallo with The Girl Who Knew Too Much, which involved a woman who witnesses a murder and becomes the target of a serial killer, and the Black Sabbath segment "The Telephone", in which a prostitute is blackmailed while she is undressing for the night.

[2] Curti described Blood and Black Lace as predominantly a series of violent, erotically charged set pieces that are "increasingly elaborate and spectacular" in their construction, and that Bava pushed these elements to the extreme.

[11][12] Curti noted the film was promoted as a whodunnit in Italy but differed from both that genre and krimis of the period, specifically in its lack of humour or a string of clues as to the identity of the murderer.

[16][17] The synopsis of Blood and Black Lace at the Archive of State in Italy and the script at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia library are credited to Marcello Fondato and Giuseppe Barillà.

[16] The estimated budget attached to bureaucratic papers submitted to the Ministry at the beginning of production list Fondato and Bava as the authors of the story and credits the script to "Giuseppe Milizia", a name that does not appear in any other documents.

It included Italians (Arianna Gorini, Massimo Righi, Franco Ressel, Luciano Pigozzi, Giuliano Raffaelli, Francesca Ungaro and Enzo Cerusico), Americans (Cameron Mitchell, Mary Arden, Dante DiPaolo and Harriet White Medin), Germans (Thomas Reiner, Lea Lander and Heidi Stroh), French actress Claude Dantes, and Hungarian-British actress Eva Bartok.

[26] Reiner, a classically trained actor whose experience was primarily in West German television and voice dubbing, was impressed by Bava's working methods, believing that the lack of obligation to record direct sound on-set allowed him to film shots in imaginative ways; Reiner spent his off-set time walking Centi, Bava's pet Basset Hound, which inspired him to buy one for himself and his wife upon his return to Germany.

[26] Mitchell recalled that Dantes told him that she suffered from an eating disorder and had undergone an experimental weight loss procedure in Paris a month prior to the start of filming, whereby "they'd put you to sleep for three weeks, massage you, give you pills or injections to relax you and it would help take the weight right off"; Lucas corroborates this by noting that Dantes appeared to be "at least forty pounds heavier" in The Hyena of London, which she had filmed prior to working on Blood and Black Lace.

"[28] Mitchell stated that Bava's mood on-set was genial despite hearing rumours that he had recently suffered a nervous breakdown, explaining "In this business, frankly, everybody breaks down.

[29] The crew consisted of many other of Bava's regular collaborators, including director of photography Ubaldo Terzano, film editor Mario Serandrei and costume designer Tina Loriedo Grani.

[31][32] Curti has disputed the idea of a wagon being used on the film, as Lamberto Bava said on an Italian DVD audio commentary that the cameras used were Mitchells, which would have been too heavy to mount on such a device (as opposed to lighter Arriflexs).

[2][39] It was released in the United States under the title Blood and Black Lace[39] on July 7, 1965 by the Woolner Brothers (who had previously distributed Bava's Hercules in the Haunted World) as part of a deal with Allied Artists.

[2] In contrast to the often drastic alterations made to Bava's earlier films by American International Pictures and other distributors, the US version is largely identical to its Italian counterpart, featuring only two very minor cuts in dialogue exchanges.

[40] Filmation Associates created a new title sequence for this version,[39] which credited much of the cast and crew aside from Bava under "Americanized" pseudonyms, such as "Herman Tarzana" (Ubaldo Terzano), "Mark Suran" (Mario Serandei) and "Carl Rustic" (Carlo Rustichelli).

[43] In 1997, the film was set to be released by Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder Pictures, a division of Miramax designed to introduce audiences to the works of low-budget filmmakers he admired.

[44][45][46] Rolling Thunder was unable to release the film because of an inability to source usable 35 mm English language elements;[46] in a 1998 interview, Tarantino said that "people over [in Italy] just don't care.

[50] The disc's special features include an audio commentary by Lucas, various original and archival video essays and interviews, the US version's title sequence (restored from a print owned by Joe Dante) and Yellow, a 2012 short film made by Ryan Haysom and Jon Britt as a tribute to the giallo genre.

[38] Reviews in Europe in La Stampa noted the film was "finely photographed" and that it "dispenses thrills and emotions more by way of the director's excellent technique than with the shaky gimmicks of a clumsy script".

[38][39] Ugo Casirhagi of L'Unità felt Bava was "a fellow who has lots of fun playing with macabre elements ornaments, intermittent lighting, and changing colors" and "putting the characters to death (and with even more relish when they are elegant and sophisticated ladies) in the most hideous ways.

"[53][54] An anonymous reviewer in Cahiers du Cinéma dismissed the film as a "riot of hideous lighting and effects as heavy as the Ritz: all of it in a jumble of objects as Ophuls, Sternberg or even Albicocco never dared to offer".

[55] Outside Europe, A. H. Weiler of The New York Times found the film was a "super-gory whodunit" where characters "are dispatched in varying horrendous styles, leaving nary a lissome lovely around to model those fancy gowns.

[59][60] Almar Haflidason, reviewing the film for the BBC, said that, "Through a prowling camera style and shadow-strewn baroque sets that are illuminated only by single brilliant colours, [Bava] creates a claustrophobic paranoia that seeps into the fabric of the movie and the viewer.

[61] In the book The Definitive Guide to Horror Movies, James Marriott described the film as "fascinating and flamboyantly stylish" and found the scenes of eroticized violence disturbing.

[62] Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide gives the film one and a half out of four stars, criticizing its "wooden script and performances" but complimenting Bava's direction, calling it "imaginative".

[72] Giallo films released after The Bird with the Crystal Plumage showed a stronger influence from Blood and Black Lace, such as Roberto Bianchi Montero's So Sweet, So Dead, Stelvio Massi's Five Women for the Killer, and Renato Polselli's Delirium.