User Reviews

After her whore of a mother is murdered by a hammer-wielding nutjob, teen Ellie Masters is sent to live at the rural Deere Orphanage. She immediately begins plotting her getaway, as she wishes to track down the father she never knew. What she doesn't realize is that Mrs. Deere and her handyman, Tom Kredge, won't let anyone leave under any circumstances. If it comes down to murder, so be it. As she deals with this sadistic twosome, Ellie also realizes that she's being stalked by a masked creep with a claw hammer.

Often referred to as the sickest PG film ever, I had wanted to see this for years. After finally happening upon a VHS copy, I was disappointed when I quickly came to the realization that it was a cut print. The opening hammer murder wasn't as explicit as I'd heard, and the scene where Bunch seduces Walter in the barn was really chopped up. Thankfully, not only does the print on Netflix look incredible, but it's also fully intact. This is such a great, truly warped little nasty. The twists just keep on coming, getting sicker and more twisted as the film progresses. The ending is a real kick in the balls.

Gloria Grahame and Len Lesser own the film as the pair of crazies who will get those welfare checks at any cost. Melody Patterson is an arrogant bitch as Ellie, so I never felt much sympathy for her. Vic Tayback is the perverted detective who takes more than a passing interest in Ellie's predicament. His character made my skin crawl.

"Blood and Lace" is pure, untarnished nihilism on film. There's nary a sympathetic character in sight as the sleaze and melodrama run rampant. One also has to wonder if Wes Craven was inspired by this film's masked freak when he came up with the look of Freddy Krueger. The only thing I don't care for here is the music. It's overwrought in several places where something more subdued would have added to the overall effect. This is a gem that deserves a stronger reputation.

In a Shirley MacLaine wig with Kleenex in her cheeks Gloria Grahame gives possibly the worst performance in any of the hag horrors ever. She appears to be grinning at the hideousness of it all yet is obviously pleased to be getting a paycheck, evidenced by her non-stop grin. Grahame is the proprietor of a teenage Foster home, taking in the orphaned Melody Patterson whose prostitute mother has just been brutally slain in a hatchet murder. Patterson is a nosy girl, and obviously this is going to get her into trouble as Grahame has a bunch of her own evil secrets.

it is always sad to see a talented performer reduced to such trash and for oscar-winning Grahame, this is the lowest of the low that any star can go, tying with Veronica Lake from "Flesh Feast" for the most embarrassing fall from grace ever. Vic Tayback plays the local law, a big teddy bear of a man, and he's at least decent. This isn't just bad. It's way beneath hideous, just an exploitive shock fest that serves no purpose than to show ketchup flying in place of blood. Even the initial murder of Patterson's mother and her john being brutally slain looks fake. From there, it's further downhill, if that seems possible, which in this case it is.

I don't have much to add overall on the qualities of this production as others have already said most of what I also would have said. Melody Patterson is very appealing though a bit old-looking to be a teenager. But here is what bothers me; even though you don't expect stellar logic in a cheesy story like this. I still cannot help wondering WHY - after Ellie has seen a fellow female "inmate" chained up in the attic by the mistress of the house, and after she has seen possibly lifeless bodies in another room, and considering she very much wants to get away from this place, WHY - when the sheriff's detective comes to check out the place - does she not immediately tell him what she has seen in the attic and other room? It would have spelled the end for the wicked couple running the home and it would have freed Ellie as well. Anyone with any sense would have done that. Or perhaps they just decided to glide over this gaping plot point in order to keep the movie going?

Well, this film deserves a lot of the criticism it has received over the years: a most perverse storyline, major acting talent like Gloria Grahame being relegated to grade Z horror, lots of blood and unsettling scenes for early 1970s, and cheap, cheap, cheap production values. I cannot argue with any of these things as they are all true. The spirit of this film is one of genuine misanthropy, devoid of any human compassion at any level. All the characters seem to have flaws which turn them away from our sympathies(with the possible exception of Melody Patterson in the lead role as Ellie. The story is about Ellie, having witnessed the brutal slaying of her prostitute mother and a trick(not much of a treat here)with a hammer no less, being sequestered in a children's home from Hell. The place is run by Gloria Grahame - once promising and later flourishing star of Hollywood now desperate for a job, any job. Grahame is actually very good as a chilling woman who cares nothing for her wards but rather about cutting costs as she has a most depraved secret herself. She sanctions all kinds of terrible things in this home and will do anything to protect what she has - even sleeping on a regular basis with a county social worker type. Her henchman is Len Lesser - I recognized the face - and soon realized this was Uncle Leo from Seinfeld and Garvin from Everybody Loves Raymond. He plays a sick, twisted man who does the real bad stuff at the home. What kinds of things do we get here: rape, incest, death by hammer, provocative behaviour and undress from an adolescent, children running and killed trying to escape, children that have been slain being kept in a freezer and then brought out and defrosted and left in the infirmary for the body count by the social worker, a cop who has a sick, almost pedophilic obsession with Ellie, a killer wearing an effectively chilling mask and so on. There is almost nothing redeemable about the characters or the story or the budget, and yet despite all this I found the film interesting in a so-bad-its-good way. No, it isn't one of those films that will make you laugh - almost not all. But it has something about it that makes you glued. Part of it is that the acting is decent from Patterson to Grahame and Lesser to Vic Tayback doing a good job as the cop. Even some of the "kids" at the home are somewhat developed(character depth-wise I mean). I cannot say that I know many films like this one and recommend it as one of the more truly unique horror experiences from the 1970s. Watch out for that ending - it shows it is coming and yet I never caught on.

If you enjoy seeing once respected actresses past their "prime" in sleazy roles, then seek out this sickie with Gloria Grahame (co-star of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, an Oscar winner for THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL and highly impressive in several notable film noirs) as the abusive Mrs. Deere. To save money at the orphanage she runs, Gloria and the sadistic handyman (Len Lesser) kill their charges and store the bodies downstairs in a padlocked walk-in freezer. Melody Patterson (Ranger Jane from the "F-Troop" TV show) looks way too old for the role of 17-year-old Ellie Masters, who's sent there after her parents are killed by being whacked upside the head a few times with a hammer. The masked sick-o responsible for that crime and a sex-offender detective (Vic Tayback) show up to complicate matters.

Yeah, the plot is overloaded to the max with all kinds of sick stuff and this is strictly a gutter trash exploitation movie, but Grahame (an underrated character actress if there ever was one) is good, it's fairly colorful and well photographed and there are a few surprises to the story. Not as surprising though as how this movie, with lots of brutality directed toward children (one even has his hand chopped off with an axe!), implied rape and incest and overall bad taste, earned a PG rating.

This odd and twisted 70's exploitation gem is incredibly hard to find these days, but definitely worth tracking down in case you're a fan of low-budget horror stuff that pioneered in shocking themes and abrupt plot twists. "Blood and Lace" was extremely ahead of its time back in 1971, with its story lines about child-abuse inside the walls of an orphanage, POV murder-sequences and incestuous relationships. The film is also quite explicit, as it displays - albeit with cheap make-up effects - the brutal murder of a sleeping couple with the sharp end of a hammer! And this right at the beginning of the film, so how's that for an intro? The woman who gets murdered is the prostitute-mother of the young and beautiful Ellie Masters. Since she never knew her real father, Ellie is sent to an orphanage ran by the corrupt Mrs. Deere and her sadistic handyman Tom. They have the nasty habit of torturing disobedient residents and even killing the ones that try to run away before storing their bodies in the basement freezer. If that isn't enough yet, there's a horribly deformed killing lurking around the orphanage with a meat cleaver. A police inspector whose interest in her is more than just professional closely follows Ellie's every move and proposes a strange offer in exchange for her rescue "Blood & Lace" benefices from an incredibly creepy atmosphere and the overall nihilistic tone often makes the film very disturbing. This is a genuine American drive-in exploitation flick, so you can expect the most offensive and politically incorrect situations imaginable! The acting performances also contribute a great deal to the film's power. Particularly Gloria Grahame (as Mrs. Deere) and Len Lesser (Tom) portray nightmarish characters you certainly don't want to interfere with. Naturally, the budget was far too low for one-time director Philip Gilbert to play with imaginative camera angles or visual tricks, but that's okay, since "Blood and Lace" purely relies on shocks and cruelty. You won't believe your eyes and ears on more than just one occasion! Highly recommended super B-trash of the seventies!

If you're wondering, "How did a movie about a teenage girl whose prostitute mother was killed with a hammer and now lives in an orphanage where people getting their hands cut off get a PG rating," you're not alone. This is one of the roughest, scummiest movies I've watched, no matter the rating.

Ellie (Melody Patterson, F Troop) is that girl, now stuck in the orphanage of Mrs. Deere (Gloria Grahame), which she runs like a sweatshop with the help of the sweaty, swarthy Kredge (Len Lesser, Uncle Leo from Seinfeld).

Beyond that trauma, they're also keeping dead kids in a giant freezer along with Mrs. Deere's husband, who she refuses to believe is deceased. There's also a dirty cop named Carruthers (Vic Tayback) who pursues Ellie in a way that it's obvious that he has no good intentions in mind.

The only innocent seems to be Pete (Dennis Christopher), but once he falls for another girl named Bunch, Ellie has no one. Well, no one but that killer who keeps showing up staring at her while she sleeps as he clutches a hammer.

Stick around. Things get even sicker from there between those two, as if that were possible.