Two film archivists are deep in a former salt mine, cataloging film canisters stored deep underground there.
“Hey, what are these reels? The Blood Secret? What the hell is that?”
“Let me see that. I bet these are the reels for 1971’s Blood and Lace, a low-budget proto-slasher starring Gloria Grahame and F-Troop’s Melody Patterson. Films like this were released under different names back then, usually re-released under different title so unsuspecting grindhouse theaters and drive-ins would rent it again unknowingly.”
[flips through pages on clipboard] “This is owned by…” [flip flip flip] “…MGM?!”
“Yeah, who knows how they came to get something like this, but I keep finding stuff like this they own. Probably acquisitions of companies that bought companies that bought small distributors, etc. Even with all the movies MGM made as a studio, most of their library is probably crap like this.”
“Is this the movie that begins us seeing everything from the killer’s perspective? Like in Halloween? The killer grabs a hammer from a drawer and goes through the house with the head of it right in front of the camera…”
“Yeah, that’s the one. And the killer uses the claw end to bash in the heads of a sleeping prostitute who looks like Tammy Faye Baker, only younger and thinner than I’ve ever seen her. Same amount of make-up, though.”
“Oh yeah! That was sick! And then the killer does the same to the john next to her in bed, and then the killer lights the curtains on fire and burns the house down…”
“Yeah. It’s hard to believe that was a PG movie—well, technically “GP”, as it was called back then. Then it was rerated as R when they put it out on DVD. That was a bit of an overreaction. I mean, there isn’t any nudity in it.”
“Wasn’t there some with that girl Terri Messina…”
“You’re probably thinking of the inevitable catfight between her and Patterson because they both lust after Ron Taft, but all you see are Messina’s panties.”
“But doesn’t Messina sleep with Taft and we see some back nudity?”
“If you think a bare back warrants an R rating. Also, they somehow apparently had sex together with her panties still on, even in that scene.”
“I don’t remember why those people are where they are.”
“It’s the orphanage run by the evil Grahame and handyman-slash-co-conspirator Len Lesser. It’s basically a scam to get the state money for each kid. I remember him saying, ‘You get $150 a month, and all I get is a hernia’.”
“Maybe he should renegotiate his pay, and she could starting giving him a hernia-and-a-half each month.”
“Maybe. Anywho, Patterson was sent there because she is now parentless and, despite looking to be in her mid-twenties, is supposedly young enough to be put in that facility.”
“Aren’t they killing the kids?”
“Well, Lesser apparently kills the ones who try to escape, like that kid we see trying to do that and Lesser chases him with a meat cleaver. I don’t know if the kid had issues or what, but he tries to hide behind a tree about half as wide as he is and he wraps his arms around it.”
“The original tree hugger!”
“Right…and Lesser throws the cleaver, and his throw is somehow so impossible perfect that the cleaver cleanly cuts off the kid’s hand and yada yada yada.”
“You would think the authorities would notice the kids disappearing.”
“You would, except Grahame exchanges sexual favors with the doctor played by Milton Selzer when comes around to do his monthly inspection. She puts the corpses they’ve kept in the freezer into beds in the sick room, and she tells Selzer he might get whatever they have, he might get.”
“…and so he doesn’t get too close and…”
“Exactly. And nosey Patterson gets in there and notices the ‘sick patients’ are bluer than that Hare Krishna zombie from Dawn of the Dead and then the notices one of them bleeding from a head wound…”
“Wait—a corpse was bleeding?”
“Yeah, that’s how stupid this whole thing is. At least, I assume they were supposed to be dead at this point, though Grahame has been keeping the bodies in the freezer because she thinks science will become so advanced at some point in the future that they can be resuscitated. She’s also done the same thing with the body of her dead husband.”
“I see–shades of Psycho. So, I obviously don’t remember much of it. I don’t even remember if it was any good.”
“It isn’t good in any real sense, but it is funny as fuck, even if that wasn’t the intention. It’s the kind of thing where there’s so much grossness but it is too stupid to be believed. I don’t know why, but I’m still laughing about the ‘hospital’ Petterson is in when we first see her. First, she wakes up screaming from a recurring nightmare where she sees a grotesque man murdering her mother, who was the prostitute from the opening scene. A nurse storms in, all pissed off the girl is screaming, which you’d think she’d be used to if she works in a hospital. Then it turns out Patterson has the voice of legendary cartoon voiceover artist June Foray, for God only knows what reason. Her voice will be totally her own after that scene, and I have no idea why they did that.”
“Is there anything deliberately funny?”
“Some kid gets some good comic relief in. He looks a bit like a young Thurston Moore and he’s always hungry. There’s a bit towards the end where all the characters are somewhere else in the house and he takes the opportunity to raid the fridge.”
“NOT to run away, right?”
“Right. And the performances largely aren’t that bad. Patterson is good—I’d say even better than the material. Grahame hams it up a bit, but she definitely believes herself better than the script. Even if it was just a paycheck, you kinda wish she’d take things a bit more seriously.”
“Like Joan Crawford in Trog?”
“Exactly. But, even with her obvious disdain for the film, Grahame is still fun to watch. Most of the other actors are, too. A whole bunch of people you’d recognize from old TV shows. Selzer and Lesser probably have more than 200 TV appearances between them. Vic Tayback has a large role as the detective investigating the murder of Patterson’s mom.”
“Oh yeah. Isn’t there something skeezy about him?”
“He has an odd conversation with Glazer early on in a bar, where he reveals his romantic interest in the Patterson. I think he says something like ‘When a man gets a certain age, he starts thinking about getting married…looking for good breeding stock’.”
“Breeding stock?”
“Yep.”
“That is all kinds of ick. Oh, speaking of ick, I think I remember the ending now…”
“I…oh. I forgot about that…”
“…that last line…”
“I…oh God”
“Should we just forget we found these reels? Maybe misfile them?”
“Nah. We’ll reach out to Kino. They’ll release anything on their Kino Cult imprint.”
Dir: Philip Gilbert
Starring Melody Patterson, Gloria Grahame, Len Lesser, Vic Tayback
Watched on Kino Cult blu-ray