Blood and Lace [1971]

Made in 1971, this is a late entry in the 'horror hag' cycle of the 1960s [Gloria Grahame's gone-to-seed trampiness is an interesting step down from the faded grandeur of Davis and Crawford] but also an early slasher film. It opens with a POV stalking, hammer held in frame, as someone we could identify fairly easily sneaks into the bedroom of middle-aged slut Edna Masters [Louise Sherrill] and batters her [and her current lover] to death before setting a fire. Ellie [Melody Patterson], Edna's innocent blonde teenage daughter [and, yes, later revealed as her killer – though the film has plenty more up its plot sleeve], is dumped by crumpled middle-aged Detective Carruthers [Vic Tayback] on a local hellhole orphanage. The directress is Mrs Deere [Grahame], a widow who talks to her dead husband [and probably has him stashed around somewhere] and keeps the corpses of a some runaway kids in the freezer, bringing them out every time there's an inspection and passing them off as sick so she can keep earning a monthly $150 a piece for their keep. Completing the weird cast are a clutch of mixed-up, disaffected kids – including a young Dennis Christopher, and nymphet Terry Messina – and gurning handyman Tom Bridge [Len Lesser]. Tom has a sinister catchphrase ['you get my drift'] and can chop off a kid's hand with a cleaver-throw. The severed hand is stuck in a suitcase and forgotten until, late in the day, the case is opened for a predictable but effective shock. A killer in an all-over burn-mask stalks the orphanage, a girl is tied up in the attic for the sin of trying to run away [Grahame torments the thirsty victim by drinking a glass of water in front of her] and Mrs Deere's cracked backstory gets equal time with the heroine's.

Scripted by Gil Lasky – who had a few odd items on his CV [producer of Spider Baby, writer of The Night God Screamed and Mama's Dirty Girls] and directed by one-shot Philip S. Gilbert, Blood and Lace has bright colours and a staid, swift AIP / TV movie look that tends to present chase-escape or suspense [locked in the freezer] scenes in flat sunlight. Choppy editing gives the extensive gore an almost HGLewisian matter-of-factness, but across-the-board great performances – even the kids are fine, and the use of character types like Lesser, Tayback and [as the orphanage inspector] Milton Selzer is outstanding – lifts this above schlock. The punchline is predictable but depraved: after the tyrants have been killed, the heroine is pursued by the burnface character [the scars are so obviously a mask that dialogue has to raise the fact we're supposed to think he's the lover from the first scene] who reveals that he knows Ellie killed her whore mother, but is willing to forget that if she marries him [!], whereupon he mentions that he was the first man to make love to her mother and therefore [unbeknownst to him but knownst to her] her father. Sick laughter ensues.
KIM NEWMAN

First published in this form here.

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