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Well
this opening sequence looks kind of
familiar...
Our
macabre tale of orphans, rape, frozen corpses,
incest,
grisly blunt
 trauma murders, and other
assorted carnage, begins at night as a POV
(point
of view) shot quietly enters a
quieter house. We cut away to two people,
a man and a woman, sleeping in a bed
inside the house. Switching back to the
POV vantage point, we silently stalk
through the house, into the kitchen, rummage
through a drawer and find a claw hammer.
Then, with the hammer in frame, the
"hammer cam" leads us into the
bedroom where the woman sleeping awakens
just in time to take a several blows to
the skull -- clawed end first!
After the unseen attacker turns the
woman's face into hamburger -- pretty
graphically I might add, considering the
fact that this movie got away with a PG
rating, in 1971! -- the attacker also
deals several blows to the man, who slumps
off the bed, but the attack quickly refocuses
on the woman.
When
the frenzied assault finally abates, the
murderer, who we never see, drops the
hammer onto the floor, strikes a match,
and sets the house on fire. And as the
fire rages out of control, and the unknown
killer flees, we spy the man who fell off
the bed, still kicking, trying to crawl
away. Suddenly, a woman screams -- that
we, first, assume is the
bloodied victim, but it's really Ellie
Masters (Melody
Patterson -- more on her in a sec),
who's screaming as she wakes up in a
hospital room, safe and relatively
sound. You see, the grisly
murder victim was her mother, and since
her death several days ago, Ellie has been
plagued with the same reoccurring
nightmare of hammers, blood and fire.
Despite
her older appearance, Ellie is still a
minor who became a ward of the county
after her mother's death, and a Mr.
Mullins (Milton
Selzer) has made arrangements for
her to stay at the Jameson Deere Youth
Home run by Jameson's widow, Edna (Gloria
Grahame -- yet
another in a long line of great performers
whose careers ended in bottom-feeder
flicks like this.) The
plot expositions itself a little bit when
Ellie says she knew Deere. In fact, she new
a lot of men (including Mullins!) that
her mother brought to their home as, well,
"clients" -- in the biblical
sense, if you know what I mean (and
I think you do). Ellie has no love
for her whoring mother, and not wanting to
go the orphanage, she instead wants to
head out on her own and find her father.
The only problem? No one knows who her
father really is (and everyone
reminds Ellie that the entire town was
sleeping with her mom, so who knows.)
It's
all moot, anyway, as Mullins informs that
until she turns 21 (which appears
to have happen several years ago),
she'll be staying at the orphanage. Ellie
tries to run away from the hospital but is
rounded up by Detective Caruthers (Vic
Tayback). He's in charge of the
murder investigation and asks her some
questions: seems Ellie was in the house
that night, and claims she saw a man with
a hammer leaving the house while she
escaped the fire. (And
is anyone else creeped out by Caruthers'
lecherous, off the cuff advances on this
minor? Bad touch! Bad touch!) Later,
Caruthers talks to Mullins and we get our
first inkling that something isn't quite
right at the Deere Youth Home -- and
definite proof that something's not quite
right with Mullins AND Caruthers,
who drops more hints that he'll be
watching Ellie, closely. When Mullins
suggests he's a little too interested in
the girl, Caruthers accuses him of turning
a blind-eye on the orphanage's problems
for sexual favors from the owner -- and their
scurvy conversation really doesn't get any
better so let's just move on...
...Meanwhile,
we get our first glimpse at the
orphanage's "problems" when one
of the cleanest cut orphans ever committed
to screen (-- he looks just like
Robbie Benson for heaven's sake --)
tries to run away. He's spotted and chased
down by Tom Birch (Len Lesser),
Mrs. Deere's hired thug, and his trusty
meat cleaver(!). And when the runaway
tries to hide behind a tree, Birch spots
him -- and throws the cleaver at him(!),
managing to lop the kid's hand off(!!!). (Is
this standard procedure?) In
shock, the kid stumbles off into the trees
to die. When Birch can't find him, he
gathers up the runaway's discarded
suitcase, tosses the dismembered hand
inside it(!?!), and heads back to the
orphanage where he's confronted by Edna
Deere. Her main concern is the lack of a
warm body; meaning the County will no
longer pay them for the missing boy. Birch
pacifies her, saying they're getting a new
girl, tomorrow, that will compensate for
the loss. And that
reminds Edna to have the right head count
for Mr. Mullins, or their government check
will be short (so I assume they're
not getting paid with government cheese),
and they've got to get the infirmary ready
for inspection.
And
then things take an even more morbid and
sinister twist when Birch and Edna head to
the basement and enter a walk-in freezer
where three corpses are held in cold
storage. For
it seems Mr. Benson wasn't the first
runaway casualty -- he was just the only
one where they couldn't find the body! And
these corpsicles must be moved to the
infirmary before Mullins gets there with
Ellie, so he can be fooled into the right
headcount; and then back to the freezer
they go before they thaw out...
Are
you #%@* kidding me?!?
Wow!
And we're barely twenty minutes into the
film -- and I haven't even talked about
the disfigured
mystery man that's lurking about (is
this the man who was sleeping with Ellie's
mom? Or is this the killer who's now after
Ellie?); or the fact that Edna is a
few beers short of a six-pack because she
doesn't believe the kid-popsicles -- or
her late husband, for that matter -- are
really dead, and she keeps them frozen
until "science catches up" to
bring them back to life (but that
doesn't stop her from asking her frozen
husband for advice until this miracle
happens); and the apparent fact
that Shirley Jones, Robert Reed and
Florence Henderson must have died because
all the Brady and Partridge kids appear to
be imprisoned at this Orphanage of the
Damned. And
with everything we've seen so far, I'm
still stupefied by the fact that this
thing got a PG rating; and it goes way
beyond the graphic nature of the murders
on screen and the abuse of the popsicle
corpses. This this is like a kiddie
version of an Ilsa movie. It's that
sick; and all we really need is some
gratuitous nudity and we've got a bona
fide atrocity picture. (And we
actually do kind of sorta get some
nakeditity, it's just not gratuitous).
Scott
Ashlin, a/k/a El Santo, over at 1000
Misspent Hours and Counting talks in
his review of Dementia
13 about digging up movie fossils in
his quest to discover the origins of the
slasher movie. I, too, am afflicted with this
disease. I can't even call slasher
movies a guilty pleasure because, really,
there is no guilt involved. I love the
good ones and the bad ones generally make
me smile as I revel in the ineptitude. Blood
and Lace
is another archeological find to be added
to the slasher fossil record.
People
like to point out or complain that the
late '70s/early '80s slasher boom stole
the majority of their ideas from the
Italians, but there is a ton of evidence
of just as heavy domestic influence that I
like to call American G-iallo; whodunits
that are high on the body count and, like
their Italian counterparts, don't make a
whole lot of sense in the end when the
smoke finally settles over all the bodies.
I'd say
it's even money that at some point John
Carpenter probably saw this movie as the
opening stalk-n-kill is eerily similar to
the beginning of Halloween,
where the young Mike Myers, via the steady
cam, murders his older sister. And that in
no way, shape, or form, should be
construed as a knock. He might have been
influenced by it, but Carpenter one-up'd
it, big time. That is one fantastic
scene.
You
also may be startled by the plethora of
familiar faces in this movie. Gloria Grahame,
a former femme fatale, who tempted to woo
Jimmy Stewart away from Donna Reed in It's
A Wonderful Life,
does nothing to embarrass herself here.
And Lesser and Tayback are veteran TV
actors who help anchor the film. Then
there's our leading lady...
Now,
I'm embarrassed to admit this, but, the
first time I saw this movie, Ellie's
character was looking really familiar to
me, but I couldn't quite place the
actress. I wasn't paying attention during
the opening credits, and when the closing
credits scrolled up it finally hit me! That
was Melody Patterson -- Wrangler Jane from
the old F-Troop
TV show; one
of the greatest programs ever made for the
old boob-tube IMHO. (You wanna hear
me sing the theme song?)
My
Wrangler Jane. *sigh* You have to
understand, whenever anyone would trot out
the old joke and give you the choice of
Ginger or Mary Ann, I would always answer
Wrangler Jane. Damn, but I had the biggest
crush on her. Considering
when F-Troop
was made, I figured Ms. Patterson was in
her 30's when she made this movie. I was
wrong. She was only 22. Meaning she was
only 16 when she made F-Troop,
keeping her age a secret after she got the
part. This was only one of a handful of
films she appeared in after F-Troop
folded after two seasons -- the only other
one I can think of is Cycle
Savages,
where she poses plum-nakers for some hippy
artist. After which, she married James
MacArthur -- Dano from Hawaii
5-0
-- and retired to work mainly on the
stage.
Speaking
of TV westerns, producer Gil Lasky, who
made a quantum leap from working on Bonanza
and The
Virginian
to this, had already hit the public with
one of these tales when he teamed up with
Jack Hill a few years earlier for the
totally delightful and yet completely
skewed Spider-Baby.
Co-writer Ed Carlin would go on to give us
Victor Buono as the devil doing nasty
things in a haunted house in The
Evil.
Together, these two teamed up with
director Phil Gilbert and AIP for Blood
and Lace.
Their
production basically boils down to a
Brother's Grimm Fairy Tale. You could make
some inference to Charles Dickens' Oliver,
and Dickens might have dreamt up a story
like this after consuming some bad pork,
but I still think it's more in tune with a
fairy tale: helpless children trapped in a
nightmare situation (the
orphans), wicked step-mothers (Ellie's
mom),
witches (Mrs. Deere),
monsters (the killer -- all three
of them, whoops did I just give something
away?) and several characters
meeting very violent ends -- only in this
one, they all definitely don't live
happily ever after, and turns out Prince
Charming is one real schmuck of a turd-burger.
Read on...
As
Mr. Mullins escorts Ellie to the orphanage,
we find out that Mrs. Deere knew about her
husband's affair with Ellie's mother. So
their feelings about her are mutual, but
Edna still plans to take it out on Ellie.
Sending her on to meet the other kids, the
adults, well, tend to business in a
biblical sense. (A
little nookie negotiation for some more
government cheese, I guess.)
While exploring the converted mansion,
Ellie stumbles into the infirmary. Not
understanding why none of the patients
answer her, she goes for a closer look. But
Birch catches her, lays down the house
rules, and Ellie soon realizes that the
Deere Youth Home is less of an orphanage
and more of a concentration camp: where
food is strictly rationed, and you have to
work on the house's upkeep to earn your allotment
(--
and slackers get no fruit cup.)
So
Ellie spends her first few days cleaning
for the vengeful Edna, avoiding the
statutory rape attempts from Birch, and
falling for a lunkhead of a dope named
Walter (Ronald
Taft), another orphan. Their
relationship blossoms during long walks
where they talk nihilistically about the
lemons life gave them. But Ellie thinks
she can make lemon-aid if she could only
find her father, while Walter warns her
not choke on the pits. Then
the mystery (--
Which one? The movie's got about seven
layers of mysteries and can't quite decide
on which one is the main focus --)
of Deere's Home begins to unravel when she
asks
about the three kids in the infirmary.
When Walter says no one's been sick for
over a month, Ellie begins to piece things
together with the other evidence: Edna and
Birch claimed only one person has ever
runaway from the home, but the other
orphans say four have escaped and never
came back (and I'm betting that's
the three in the freezer plus the one who
got his hand lopped off; he's the one
"that got away".) Later,
Ellie
also finds another orphan, who looks like
Alanis Morrisette, tied up in the attic.
She's been hung up there for days without
food or water as punishment for trying to
run away. Ellie is caught trying to get
her some water and threatened with the
same punishment if she tries it again.
Also
poking around the orphanage, Detective
Carruthers is allegedly looking for the
missing boy -- but I think he's there just
to ogle at Ellie. And while he interviews
Birch, he grows belligerent when the
handyman cracks about taking a shot at her.
Moving on, he talks to Ellie who confides
in him about the other missing runaways
and what she saw in the infirmary. He
promises to look into it.
Later,
things come to a premature boil when Birch
promises to help Ellie escape. All she
needs to do is take his tools down into
the basement where they can talk in
private. But Ellie has problems touching
his hammer (--
and I don't mean biblically. so get your
head out of the gutter --) because
she's still plagued by her nightmares (actually
the killer has been lurking in her room
but always disappears so she assumes he
was just part of her dream). She
makes it down to the basement, but,
naturally, it was all a ruse to get her
alone. Burch assaults her,
gets in several gropes, and cups a feel (and
this is PG? In 1971!?);
but Ellie manages to fight him off
until Edna catches them. Ellie's
punishment is to clean the garage. After
she's gone, Edna tries to fire Birch but
he knows too much and is willing to go to
the Sheriff. In fact, he demands half the
government money, making them equal
partners.
In
the garage, Ellie finds the suitcase of
the dead runaway and sneaks it into her
room, planning to use it when she runs
away. Walter tries to talk her out of it
but Ellie is determined to find a better
life once she gets out and finds her
father. Walter reminds her she doesn't
even know who that is; all she knows is
that when her mother scolded her, she said
the first man she made love to got her
pregnant, ruining her life, and she spent
the rest of it reminding Ellie she was an
accident that no one wanted.
After
another frightening night with the
disfigured killer lurking about, Ellie
turns to Walter for comfort but finds him
having sex with another orphan in the
garage (what
a creep). That's the last straw,
and Ellie decides to run away that night.
But Walter rats her out, so Edna locks her
in her room. Having had enough of the
little trouble-maker, the old lady tells
Birch that Ellie should join her friends
in the freezer. Still determined to get
out, Ellie tries to pack up her things but
finds the severed hand in the suitcase.
Horrified, Birch manages sneaks in, gags
her, and drags her off to the basement and
locks her in the freezer. Inside, the girl
opens one of the bags and screams at the
corpse inside.
Which
would have been quite a shock if it
hadn't been spoiled over an hour ago.
Unknown
to Birch, another orphan, Pete (a
very young Dennis Christopher in his first
role) saw the whole thing. He tries
to rally the others but they won't believe
him. Meanwhile, Mullins shows up.
Caruthers told him about the other
runaways, and with his job on the line,
demands to search the house from top to
bottom. On the verge of being busted, Edna
tells Birch to help him -- and to start at
the bottom, near the freezer.
E'yup, Mullins
never new what hit him as he takes a meat
cleaver in the back. When Edna opens the
freezer, so they can drag the body inside,
the other, disfigured killer pops up
wielding a hammer
-- last scene hunched over the girl
tied up in the attic. Birch takes up
the cleaver and they start dueling. During
the confusion, Ellie escapes and tries to
warn the other orphans, saying Edna and
Birch killed the others, they're currently
trying to kill her, and they all need to
get the hell out of Dodge. After Ellie
runs off, Pete
encourages the others to get moving but
they all just sit there. When Pete says
"Let's go!" Walter replies
apathetically "Go where?"
All
together now: "It's a hard-knock
life for us. It's a hard-knock life for
us..."
In
the basement, the killer whacks Birch in
the head with the hammer and then runs
after Ellie. With him gone, Edna drags
Birch, who is still alive, into the
freezer. He begs her not to leave him in
there, but Edna laughs that he won't be
lonely, all his friends are already here.
But when she tries to leave, Alanis, the
orphan from the attic, closes the freezer
door, muting Edna's screams as door slams
shut and locks tight
Now
wait a second? How'd she get loose? Wait.
The killer let her go?
That's
right. And hang on; the film's got not
one, not two, but three big twists coming
yet:
When
the disfigured killer runs Ellie down --
but not before she stumbles upon the
decomposing remains of the first runaway
-- our first twist hits us hard as Ellie
starts begging her attacker for mercy,
crying she never meant to hurt him. We
then flashback to her mother's murder and
it's revealed that Ellie was the
one swinging the hammer and playing with
matches. (That's
one.)
Suddenly,
the killer stops and pulls at his head,
tearing off a mask, revealing Caruthers
underneath the latex. He pieced together
that it was Ellie all along with some
handy twelfth-hour revelations that would
have made Jessica Fletcher proud. So
he knew all along, and just used Ellie's
stories of a man escaping the fire to
scare her into running away from the
orphanage so he could catch Edna and Birch
in the act and bust them. (That's
two.)
Okay,
this is where the movie takes the third
and last twist and uses it like the hammer
they've been using the whole movie and
bludgeons us over the head with it. For it
seems Caruthers
has no intentions of arresting Ellie for
the murder of her mother and the other man
(whoever
that was). He's had his eye on
Ellie for a long time, and thinks she's
fine stock for a wife. (Okay, this
is getting weird.) He gives her a
choice: life in prison, or marry
him.
That
thud you heard was my jaw hitting the
floor. Tell him to kiss your grits!
Ellie
doesn't like the sound of prison and
agrees to his blackmailed marriage
proposal. After all, her mom always said
there's someone for everyone. Maybe this
creep is for her. Caruthers then has the
gall to mention that he was her mother's
first client. *thud*
That
was my jaw again; sorry.
In
fact, he was the first person to have sex
with her.
Omigod...this
film has reached a new substrata of
vileness.
Yup,
that's right: Caruthers is Ellie's father.
Upon this revelation, Ellie starts to
laugh, maniacally; Caruthers doesn't get
it, yet, and her dissonant laughter takes
us to...
The
End
Wow.
We honestly should have seen some of this
coming. I figured
that disfigured character was really
Caruthers, but the revelation came in the
exact opposite way than you'd usually
expect. We
never got a good look at the man's face at
the beginning before it got Black-n-Deker'd
and I figured that was Caruthers. I was
wrong.
Which is why I also wrongly figured he
would lull Ellie into sense of trust and
then pull of his face mask, revealing the
scarred visage underneath, and then try to
kill her after she confessed to attacking
him and killing her mom.
But then the disfigured guy couldn't have
been the murderer, right? He was getting
his head caved in before he got burned.
Which would explain why he was after
Ellie; for revenge. But then we still
don't know who killed Ellie's mom, even
though all evidence really points back to
her. But we're so used to the concept of a
final girl, it's quite a shock when we
find out the final girl was the killer all
along.
That's
the thing with this movie, though. The
normal rules of the slasher film don't
apply at all; which is easy to explain
because, technically, the slasher film
hadn't been invented yet. Films like Blood
and Lace
had a heavy influence on those that
followed, though: the graphic violence,
all those psychological hiccups and
especially the twists at the end. So,
technically, this isn't a slasher movie.
It is what we called it before, in every
sense, an old-school fairy tale gone
horribly, horribly wrong; morbid, murky
and vile that bridges the gap between
"old school horror shocks" and
the graphic whodunit bloodbaths that were
destined to follow.
Man,
this film is so blasé in it's browbeating
cynicism and wretched, sleazy characters (there
are no good guys here) that you
really feel the need for a shower after
it's over. It's
plagued with bad sound and murky visuals
-- due to poor lighting, with one too many
filters used during the laughable day for
night shots -- but I still loved every
stinky minute of it. Especially that
ending. You'd expect that even in a
fractured fairy tale like this, Ellie
would find her father, the good parent,
and live happily ever after. But the film
gets us twice. Burning us first by
revealing that Ellie is a killer, and then
blowing it completely up in our face when
it reveals who the "good" parent
really is. Ugh.
It's
a weird, strange and a bugaboo of a movie.
I'd hesitate to call it great, but I'd
recommend it to any genre fan who wants to
see the slasher film work through some
growing pains with a movie that is so
rightfully dubbed, and should be
celebrated as, the sickest PG-rated movie
ever made.
Enjoy.
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