Blood and Lace (1971)
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Not the Bava film, but an early 70's American chiller thriller B movie.
This ones about a young girl who ends up in an orphanage after someone took a hammer to her prostitute mum and a client, the girl arrives to find the place under strict rule by a stern woman and her drunk handyman.
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The small group of boys and girls are given tasks to do and small amounts of food, if they rebel they are punished by being tied up and are deprived of food and drink.
Understandably some want to escape only to be chased and killed,(obviously the deaths are kept hidden from them), the girl wants to escape to find her absent father and whilst attempting to unearths the places secrets.
Meanwhile a disfigured man wanders about the place with a hammer and also stalks the girl.
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This is pretty low budget film and has a kind of T.V feel to the way it is shot, also it seems to use some bizarre stock footage style music, but i found it entertaining.
The kills are not particularly gory but it makes up for it with a grubby vibe. (pretty much every adult character is unlikeable, being either sleazy and lecherous or totally nuts.)
Even though it feels grimy there is no nudity, but the performances of the girl and adult female leads are reasonable and these make the film work.
Also there are some strange plot points that are a bit bizarre,such as corpses being kept in the belief they will be brought back by science and a final twist that is pretty downbeat.
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Strangely i watched 'The house that screamed' last week, both films share many similar plot points and it is interesting to compare the styles, 'House..' is definitely the superior film though.
Still this film had enough good stuff going on to keep me interested.
I liked it. 7/10
