Blood and Lace (1971) - Movie Review

Ellie’s mother is the town’s most popular attraction and men are absolutely thrilled by her park rides. SHE’S A WHORE – GET IT?! Criminy, gotta spell everything out for you kids; probably can’t even wipe your own asses properly. 

One night, while Ellie (Melody Patterson) is asleep, her mother (THE WHORE) and her current client are bludgeoned to death and the house is burned down. Ellie escapes and is soon placed in foster care under Mrs. Deere (Gloria Grahame) and her creepy maintenance man Tom (Len Lesser – best known as Uncle Leo from Seinfeld). 

Ellie soon discovers that she may have lived through one nightmare but she has entered an entirely new one. Mrs. Deere’s home is more of a prison than a home, and punishment for any disobedience is swift, severe, and bloody. All the while, her mother’s killer is still loose and only welfare detective Calvin Carruthers (Vic Tayback – Mel from Alice) has Ellie’s well-being in mind.

Blood and Lace (not to be confused with Mario Bava’s quirky giallo Blood and Black Lace) wound up being much better than I could have ever anticipated. The story is simple, but you do seem to start questioning the motives behind every character and wondering what is evil and what is good? The shocks are blunt, and the use of then-new Technicolor was brilliantly exploited in the clothes and makeup, and in the violence. The acting was actually fairly standard, mostly amongst the older cast members, particularly Vic Tayback as the gruff, no-nonsense detective; well done. The (COUGH) teenagers (there was nothing teen aged about any of these “kids”) didn’t fair as well, but they sure were pretty to look at. But what the heck is a twenty-one year old still doing at an orphanage; seriously?

This was director Phillip S. Gilbert’s only known directorial effort from a script by Gil Lasky. The bar wasn’t raised, in fact it was barely even touched by fingertips from a little person standing on phone books, but it delivered a bizarre tale starring wicked characters that made it intriguing enough to keep watching.