Blood and Lace

Blood and Lace
1971 – 86 Min.
Starring Gloria Grahame, Melody Patterson, Vic Tayback
Written by Gil Lasky
Directed by Phil Gordon

As discriminating in their appetites as an expert wine-taster, grindhouse audiences were a special breed of movie-goer: true connoisseurs of crap. Whether lounging in notorious Times Square fleapits like the Liberty or Cine 42, these particular patrons were looking for the cheapest of thrills and if the bums in the balcony felt cheated, watch out. Phil Gilbert’s Blood and Lace was that rare thing, a sheep in wolves clothing that escaped the wrath of 42nd Street’s most demanding moviegoers.

At first glance Gilbert’s film looks ready-made for The Deuce, his stilted direction and Gil Lasky’s awkward dialog smell of typical exploitation fare while the appearance of squeaky-clean homecoming queen Melody Patterson inspired a legion of unclean fantasies: the possibilities must have given the raincoat crowd aneurysms.

Patterson is Ellie, an aimless teen traumatized by her mother’s murder—that her mother was anything but innocent only added to the horror. The gruesome prelude is reminiscent of Joan Crawford disassembling her cheating husband at the beginning of 1964’s Strait Jacket, but William Castle kept the mayhem hidden in the shadows; cinematographer Paul Hipp shoots the scene from the point of view of the murder weapon, a floating hammer that bobs and weaves in front of the camera as it slowly approaches its victims, a bargain basement version of Psycho‘s shower scene.

While the police investigate, social workers send Ellie to an orphanage on the outskirts of town, a decaying colonial mansion owned and operated by Mrs. Deere, a tight-lipped taskmaster played by Gloria Grahame. Deere is a deranged martinet with a grudge against younger, prettier women, a reminder of Tallulah Bankhead’s sadistic grandma who got her kicks torturing Stephanie Powers in Silvio Narizzano’s Die, Die, My Darling. That creepy sadomasochism haunts Grahame’s character but it wasn’t new territory for the actress; her most famous role was in The Big Heat where a pot of boiling coffee met Grahame’s face—a scene guaranteed to turn heads even today, and far more shocking than any frame of Blood and Lace.

Mrs. Deere runs the orphanage in Dickensian fashion, doling out moldy dinner rolls like they were Bonbons and using her underage tenants as chattel. When any of the teens try to escape she leaves them hanging them in a meat locker, keeping them preserved (she thinks) till they can be rejuvenated by an as yet undiscovered scientific miracle.

Yes, she’s mad as a hatter but resourceful; she dominates her sleazy handyman Kredge (Len Lesser) and has the local social worker in her back pocket with regular trips to the bedroom (the horny caseworker is played by perennial milquetoast Milton Selzer). The arrival of Ellie has only added to Deere’s problems, with anyone of voting age licking their lips for a shot at the poor girl. But Deere is more worried about her latest visitor, a detective played by Vic Tayback, an affable gumshoe with a secret of his own.

Blood and Lace was notable for stretching the limits of its GP rating to the breaking point, a meaningless edict if ever there was—if anything the film is a perfect demonstration of corporate cluelessness. But once Blood and Lace has reached its supposedly shocking end, it’s plain the film is not much more than a tease.

And that’s the secret of the movie’s success, it creeps to the edge of bad taste but stops cold: since there’s precious little violence and not a hint of nudity, the film assured its second life on late night shock shows where its reputation, such as it was, blossomed.

The new Blu ray from Kino Lorber looks  shockingly good, 42 Street rarely entertained such pristine images (Hipp was also behind the camera for John Hayes’s Grave of the Vampire, a notoriously toxic film that escaped under the radar with a mere PG rating). Richard Harland Smith is on hand with a feature length commentary that illuminates while it entertains, and rounding out the package are alternate opening titles and the movie’s original theatrical trailer.