Subtitles:

English, none

Extras:

Gloria Grahame joined the list of aging Hollywood stars who bloodied their hands in the wake of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? with this sick, effective horror film about nasty doings at a private orphanage. Grahame gives a wonderfully grotesque performance as Mrs. Dorothy Deere, a crazy widow who bilks the county out of money by running a home for wayward youths. If any of her tenants happens to run away, the wino handyman Tom kills them with a meat-cleaver and throws them into a deep-freeze in the cellar. Into this unsavory situation comes young Ellie Masters (Melody Patterson of TV's F-Troop), whose prostitute mother was viciously murdered with a claw-hammer while in bed with a john. Ellie witnessed the killer leaving the burning bedroom, and is warned by helpful cop Carruthers (Vic Tayback) that he could still be around. This film looks absolutely horrible considering the names involved, with an air of cheapness pervading even the most minor elements of the production. Nevertheless, it works because of the performances. Grahame brings a deadpan madness to her character that is a welcome and chilling change from the fright-wigged harridans of similar films, and Len Lesser exudes considerable menace as the murderous Tom. It might also amuse some to see a young Dennis Christopher as the nerdy Pete. The "shock" ending is pretty silly, but director Philip Gilbert manages to maintain a fairly skillful tone of depravity and madness until that point, making this an atmospheric (if ratty) treat.

There's a good deal of blood and a minimum of logic, or lace for that matter, in "Blood and Lace," which was exposed in local theaters yesterday, to illustrate, we assume, that horror can be both vague and silly. Exposed also are Gloria Grahame and a clutch of decidedly lesser-known performers in a low-grade exercise in shadows, screams, traumas and slayings that are largely more laughable than shocking.

There is, for openers, the hammer murder of a prostitute whose daughter, Melody Patterson, a blond chick beside herself with neuroses, hate for her mother and a yen to find her father, is sent to the local orphanage run by Miss Grahame.

Miss Grahame is not a standard type. She needs the money she gets for operating her sylvan concentration camp and when youngsters try to break out, she has them caught with the aid of her wacky handy man, Len Lesser, who dispatches them with a cleaver and hangs them up in the orphanage's basement freezer.

Gary Tooze

November 16th, 2015