Director: Philip S. Gilbert
Cast: Gloria Grahame, Melody Patterson, Milton Selzer

As you may have guessed by the many movies I have reviewed for this web site, I don't have a problem with most movies containing content that might irk more prudish viewers. In fact, I often like seeing such stuff. So as you might guess, I am happy to be living in this day and age when movies with such content are freely available. Censorship and ratings restrictions in movies have sure been ridiculous over the decades. One of the funniest attacks against the Production Code I have seen came from the publication MAD, when it was still a comic book in the 1950s. In one issue, they published an article called Book! Movie!, illustrated by the great Jack Davis. The beginning of the article portrayed a story from a bleak novel, with ample salacious content ranging from sex to violence. In the second half of the article, they repeated the same story, only to illustrate how it was cleaned up for the movie screen. The changes ranged from married couples now sleeping in separate beds to women not being allowed to be shot by guns. It was very funny, because it was not that far from the truth. (You can read all of the comic book article here.) Anyway, when the production code was lifted and replaced with a rating system, it was still not smooth sailing for filmmakers. Let me give you an example. In the 1970s, when schlock filmmaker Lloyd Kaufman of Troma Films submitted his sexy softball comedy Squeeze Play to the Motion Picture Association of America, the ratings board slapped an X rating on the movie. There were three things the board objected to: A scene of a man holding a cucumber in a suggestive manner, another scene of someone pulling a straw out of their nose, and a third scene of a baseball flying in the air and landing in the crack of someone's naked rear end.

What Kaufman did after that happened makes me smile. He took out the so-called objectionable material and resubmitted it to the MPAA to get an R rating... then put back the cut material and released the intact Squeeze Play to theaters with no one the wiser. Anyway, more than thirty years later, I think you would agree that the MPAA has lightened up in many different ways; I am sure that the uncut Squeeze Play would get an R rating today, despite being an independent production and not a major studio effort. (The MPAA has very often been harder on independent productions.) However, I have noticed in recent years that in some aspects, the MPAA has become somewhat harsher. Let me give you some examples. When it comes to family movies, the MPAA hardly gives out any G ratings anymore. Even if a movie has something tame like "mild peril" or "rude humor", that is enough for the movie to get a PG rating - at least. Compare that to the 1970s, where family movies routinely got G ratings despite content that today would be considered more objectionable. (Against A Crooked Sky, for example, got a G rating despite having nudity.) Maybe the MPAA has gotten stricter in some areas because of some past ratings decisions that today would be considered embarrassing. The John Wayne movie The Green Berets incredibly got a G rating back in 1968, despite battlefield violence scenes that would by today's standards get the movie at least a PG-13 rating today. The original 1968 Planet Of The Apes had nudity, mild language, and violence, but still got a G rating at the time. And the 1983 Chuck Norris movie Lone Wolf McQuade got a PG rating despite plenty of brutal violence and foul language. (Actually, the movie initially got an R rating, but Chuck Norris himself appealed to the MPAA to lower the rating, which they eventually did.)

With the fact in mind that the MPAA has gotten tougher in some aspects when it comes to rating new movies nowadays, what I don't understand is a recent trend where older movies are resubmitted to the rating board when it's a certainty that they will get a tougher rating. One example of this can be seen with Valdez Is Coming. The western got the equivalent of a PG rating back in the 1970s, but years later, Metro Goldwyn Mayer - for reasons I haven't been able to figure out - resubmitted the movie to the MPAA, and the rating was bumped up to PG-13. Why did MGM do this? Did they want their movie to appear tougher and more violent to today's audiences? Were they afraid today's family audiences might get angry seeing a movie they thought would be not so violent because of its PG equivalent rating? I have no idea. (If you have any answers, please e-mail me.) Anyway, I recently found a movie with a bigger leap with its re-rating, the movie Blood And Lace. It got a PG rating back in 1971 (when the rating was temporarily known as GP), but after being resubmitted several years ago, the MPAA bumped it up to an R rating. That kind of raised my eyebrows, so I knew I had to give the movie a look. The central figure of the movie is a teenage girl named Ellie (Melody Patterson, F Troop), who is unlucky enough to have her mother making a living being a prostitute. But things turn even bleaker for Ellie when her mother and one of her customers are beaten to death with a hammer wielded by an unidentified maniac. Ellie afterwards is sent to an orphanage which is run by a woman named Deere (Gloria Grahame, Mansion Of The Doomed) with assistance from her handyman Tom (Len Lesser, Take This Job And Shove It). Both Deere and Tom subject backbreaking work and various other kinds of abuse to Ellie and the other children at the orphanage, even resorting to murder so they can stay out of trouble from investigating policeman Calvin Carruthers (Vic Tayback, Weekend Warriors) and keep their profitable venture. Eventually the body count starts to grow even larger, not just from Deere's and Tom's actions, but what appears to be a return of the maniac that killed Ellie's mother.

I am sure that the aspect of Blood And Lace that you are most curious to learn about is the aspect that intrigued me the most when I sat down to watch the movie. That being if the movie in this day and age deserved to have its MPAA rating to be increased. After watching the movie, I feel fairly confident in saying that I think the MPAA overreacted a little in its rewatching of the movie. In my opinion, I think a PG-13 rating in this day and age would be more appropriate. When it comes to the bloody stuff, I don't think that most viewers will be moved all that much. There are a few bloody bodies on display here and there, but their sight isn't terribly graphic compared to what's found in horror movies being made in the modern times we are now in, one reason being that the blood itself is often in that "red paint" style that for some reason was really popular in movies of this period. As for the actual horror sequences, such as when characters get the chop and subsequently display the red paint, I think most viewers will give them a shrug as well. The opening sequence where Ellie's mother and her customer are bludgeoned to death, is I admit very well done. A really creepy feeling is generated by the music in the background being very low key, so when the two people are being bloodily hammered, it comes off as surprisingly disturbing. This almost casual attitude to the horror is also done effectively elsewhere a few other times, such as when someone's hand is chopped off. But for the most part, there isn't a great feeling of horror when someone is being killed or even being in danger. Most of the horror sequences feel so tame and are directed in such a familiar manner that viewers will be quite bored, and will instead urge the movie to end the horror sequences quickly and return to the story and the characters.

As it turned out, the screenplay doesn't quite make it in those two aforementioned areas. In its defense, I will admit that sometimes it makes up for the relatively low-key horror with plot turns and elements that come across as somewhat depraved and sick at times. (Warning: spoilers ahead.) There are a couple of male adults lusting for the underaged Ellie, Deere and Tom keep dead bodies of children in their walk-in freezer so they can be used whenever the authorities do a head count, and one teenager is kept chained up in the attic without adequate food and water as a punishment. The final sequence (which I will not spoil) ends on a note that will have most viewers dropping their jaws in shock. Additional praise for the script can be given to the fact that at the beginning the set-up and the characters are introduced and explained in a manner that doesn't feel forced, while unfolding in a non-straightforward manner that isn't confusing. However, after this promising opening, the story quickly loses its way. Ellie isn't properly settled in the orphanage until more than a third of the movie has passed. That part of the movie is certainly slow at times, but afterwards things get to be even more slow, and it becomes clear that there is pretty much no advancement in the story or ambitions of the characters until near the end of the movie. It shouldn't come as any surprise then that director Philip S. Gilbert can't do much on his end to liven up the proceedings. Certainly, he was working with a very low budget that often makes a scene look like it was hastily set dressed and hastily rehearsed just before filming actually occurred. Also, the camera almost always seems to be a few feet away from the actors, giving the movie a feeling that is very often more claustrophobic than actually creepy.

As for handling the movie's cast, director Gilbert does a little better in that department. While most of the roles were filled with a then amateur cast, including a young Dennis Christopher (Fade To Black) as one of the child orphans, Gilbert does manage to have his players give a little snap and crackle with their performances. While actress Melody Patterson looks a little too old to be a teenager and sometimes performs a little stiffly, when her character has to show deep emotion like anger or fear, she grabs your attention. Also, Gloria Grahame and Len Lesser, as the two heads of the orphanage, manage to be delightfully (yet believably) cruel. You'll be wanting both of them to get their comeuppance. Though as it turns out, the actors do more for the production than what the screenplay actually offers them to do. Some of the characters (such as police detective Calvin) disappear for very long periods of time, enough that you almost forget that they play important parts of this story. Also, among the main characters at least, there is not one character you can hang on to and hope that he or she will live through the entire ordeal; even the character of Ellie has too much hostility within her to be sympathetic. I must admit that at the end of the movie, part of me was wondering why I entirely watched a movie where I could not identify with any of the main characters. I guess one reason may have been that it would give me the chance to see actor Dennis Christopher in an early role, though I am pretty sure that he doesn't put Blood And Lace on his resume these days.

(Posted September 6, 2023)