Memorable, crazy movie

Best movie ever!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

First question is what's with the eerie, sci-fi creep out music? Sounds like Day the Earth Stood Still! And the opening scene where we watch a claw hammer float through the house drags on,and on,and on! The subsequent action, when it finally occurs, can't be anything but anticlimactic.The eye candy from the TV show F Troop is the star of our bloody lingerie story, a young woman who's certain something is rotten in the state of the local convalescent home. There is a cast of creeps to keep the audience playing a guessing game...who's the killer? The problems with this film are 1) it got made, and 2 it offers nothing to horror fans. MGM was slow on the uptake since it clearly wasn't paying attention to independent films that were setting trends for shock and horror. This one plays like a made-for-TV operation. It stinks!

After her prostitute mother and her john are beaten to death while they are asleep in bed, teen-aged Ellie Masters (Melody Patterson) is sent to an isolated orphanage run by Mrs. Deere (Gloria Grahame) and her handyman (Len Lesser).While Melody Patterson is known for being Wrangler Jane in "F Troop", she will now forever be branded in my mind as Ellie Masters. I found this film to be far better than the ratings people assign to it, and Patterson was an excellent choice as the film's star (why she no longer acts is a mystery to me).Perhaps most interesting, from a historical standpoint, is this film's impact on the slasher subgenre. I generally like to think of "Black Christmas" as the first true slasher film, but there were elements here that had "slasher" written all over them. The film in general is not a slasher film, but the opening scene with the "hammer cam"? Heck, it was very much like the beginning of "Halloween". Coincidence or inspiration?

Great premise. Troubled teen goes to group home that mistreats children. Disappointingly, the movie has so many scenes that lack realism and common sense that the movie is totally unbelievable. The overriding discrepancy occurs when our heroine, Ellie, finds a girl tied up in the attic who is thirsty and starving. But when she has a chance to tell her detective friend who can help her, Ellie neglects to report that a girl is dying in the attic. This, in spite of the fact that she is rebellious, unhappy, and wants to leave. Instead, she tells the cop she is sure there have been many runaways! That scene alone ruined the movie for me, but there were other discrepancies. For example, after the custodian chops off a runaway's hand, he keeps it in a visible suitcase in a room that the kids have to clean. Also, when the woman who runs the group home finds out about an inspection, she moves 3 dead bodies covered in sheets from a walk-in freezer in order to find a better hiding spot. Of course, an unlocked room is the best spot! The 3 dead kids with dead-white complexion, bleeding gashes, and bloody sheets are laid on beds and not even covered! At one point, our main character, Ellie, walks into this room and proceeds to question the dead corpses; never realizing that they are bloodied stiffs! In another hole in logic, some of the kids during the dinner-table scene speak of the place as if it wasn't so bad. This, in spite of 3 missing "runaways" and hello! ... a girl tied up in the attic! You would think at least one of them would have been close enough to care what happened to the 3 "runaways" or the poor sod in the attic! Of comical value, most of the "kids" in the home are well into their 20's and at the time of the movie, the character Bunch, who was supposed to be 16, was actually 24! Finally, the monster at the end of the movie looks like a guy with a rubber mask over his head. Not scary, just laughable. In conclusion, while some of the acting, the production, and the premise are good, the movie is burdened and ruined by a dumb and totally unbelievable script. 4.5 out of 10

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!