The origin of the slasher movie has always been of great interest to horror fans, who have long sought to pinpoint the film that launched one of horror’s most popular and enduring subgenres. For years, it was assumed that John Carpenter’s Halloween kicked off the movement, though in recent years that opinion has been widely revised to consider Bob Clark’s Black Christmas as patient zero. Now, Scream Factory has helped dig up 1971’s Blood and Lace, a movie that suggests the origins of the slasher film as we know it began three years before Black Christmas.
Opening with an extended POV sequence seen through the eyes of a killer as a sleeping couple is murdered with a hammer (seven years before Halloween would open in similar fashion, though still 11 years after Peeping Tom), the movie eventually follows Ellie Masters (Melodie Patterson), daughter of the murdered couple, who is sent to an orphanage run by sadists. With the help of a detective who has taken a special interest in her (played by Vic Tayback of Alice), Ellie has to find out if the same killer that left her without a mother is now after her before she’s the next victim.
The lone directorial effort of Philip Gilbert, Blood and Lace (not to be confused with Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace) isn’t what one would traditionally consider a “good” movie, but it is an eccentric and fascinating one—a film with its own weird personality and a couple of strong set pieces. It has a drive-in sleaziness that fans of ’70s exploitation films will appreciate and some plot twists that are so wacky that they’re impossible to predict. Melodie Patterson makes for a likable and sympathetic lead, while the opportunity to see Academy Award-winner Gloria Grahame slumming is worth the price of admission alone. The movie also has a supporting performance by Len Lesser—aka Seinfeld’s Uncle Leo—as Grahame’s partner in depravity. You can’t make this stuff up.
Therein lies the charm of Blood and Lace, a movie that will make you question what exactly it is you are watching all the way up to (and especially immediately preceding) its end credits. Exploitation movies of this period weren’t beholden to any narrative rules of what could or couldn’t be done, resulting in films that defy tradition either out of conscious choice on the part of the filmmakers or plain old-fashioned incompetence. Blood and Lace feels like a mix of both—a movie interested in subversive subject matter that ends up breaking rules because it doesn’t know any better.
Scream Factory’s Blu-ray of Blood and Lace offers a good looking, if somewhat faded and grainy, 1080p presentation of the film in its original 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio and a lossless 2.0 audio track that’s straightforward but gets the job done. The disc isn’t as packed with extra features as Scream Factory’s usual efforts, but does include a commentary track with historian Richard Harland Smith, a theatrical trailer and an alternate title sequence (the version of the film included on the Blu-ray appears in the opening credits under the title The Blood Secret). A standard definition DVD of the movie has also been included.
I’m not sure how much replay value there is in something like Blood and Lace, as it’s not a film that possesses any clues or secrets about the crazy stuff that’s going to happen, nor is it technically accomplished enough to revisit and observe the craft involved. It’s mostly a one-and-done, but still something any horror fan should experience at least once. There are so many generic and forgettable movies that clog the horror genre on a yearly basis that it’s nice to see something that stands apart from the rest. Whether he intended it or simply stumbled into it through sheer naiveté, Gilbert has made a movie that is weird and singular. It may not be great, but we’re lucky to have it.
Movie Score: 3/5, Disc Score: 3/5
Patrick lives in Chicago, where he has been writing about film since 2004. A member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Online Film Critics Society, Patrick's writing also appears on About.com, DVDVerdict.com and fthismovie.net, the site he runs and hosts a weekly podcast.
He has been an obsessive fan of horror and genre films his entire life, watching, re-watching and studying everything from the Universal Monsters of the '30s and '40s to the modern explosion of indie horror. Some of his favorites include Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1931), Dawn of the Dead (1978), John Carpenter's The Thing and The Funhouse. He is a lover of Tobe Hooper and his favorite Halloween film is part 4. He knows how you feel about that. He has a great wife and two cool kids, who he hopes to raise as horror nerds.
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