After her mother’s horrific murder, Ellie Masters (Melody Patterson), now devoid of a legal guardian, reluctantly finds her new home in a local orphanage. Owned by Dorothy Deere (the frightening Gloria Grahame), the orphanage is run as ruthlessly as any prison camp, where under-aged children are exploited by hard labor by their fearsome matriarch. Her assistant, the boozy Tom Kredge (Len Lesser) also has his hands full hunting down and punishing any children who try to escape. And when she’s not busy working the children Mrs. Deere spends her time covering up the various murders that have been occurring in the orphanage.

"Shock after shock after shock!" the hysterical ad-lines read, and very few viewers will have a hard time disagreeing with this claim, for BLOOD AND LACE remains one of the most unapologetically grisly films from the early 70’s. Director Phillip Gilbert pulls no punches in portraying Mrs. Deere’s most unhealthy orphanage, granting verisimilitude to another infamous claim of the film’s ad-lines, "the sickest PG movie ever made!". Because of this unrelenting atmosphere of doom and gloom, BLOOD AND LACE is already assured a place in the halls of 70’s horror, but it is Gilbert’s unlikely literary inspiration, that of Charles Dickens, that truly qualifies the film as a small classic.

Gilbert’s film most closely resembles Dickens’ classic Oliver Twist in its portrayal of children and, of course, the orphanage itself. Ellie can be viewed as a female version of Oliver, in both trivial and more profound parallels. Ellie and Oliver are both orphans who wish to know of their true parents (Ellie clings to the hope that her biological father will provide her with peace of mind and closure, whereas Oliver’s intense desire to know his true parents concludes with his storybook salvation) and both face tremendous adversity in state-sanctioned facilities for children (the orphanages). One scene in particular vividly recalls young Oliver’s trials and tribulations: the dinner scene. Although it is given less significance in Gilbert’s film than in Dickens’ novel, the emotional impact remains the same. The orphans of the Deere orphanage try to enjoy a somber dinner with a hawk-like Mrs. Deere (taking over the Mr. Bumble role in Dickens’ scenario) bitching at the children to ration their food, unless they want to starve for the following week. Another sequence, in which Ellie trespasses through the catacombs of the orphanage’s basement, taking in the various ghastly sites, is strongly reminiscent of Oliver’s fright at his foster parents’ morbid home that doubled as a funeralparlor.

But it’s when Gilbert begins to tweak the Dickens mold to his own unsavory liking that the film really begins to shine. Taking the Victorian view that children should be seen, not heard, and that children are simply smaller adults, Gilbert takes his adult characters to the logical extreme. Whereas Dickens’ adults had no hesitation in exploiting youths in the most heinous of work (such as chimney sweeping), Gilbert proposes a far more exploitative adult world, one of child rape and murder. Gilbert’s adults simply have no capacity to understand the fundamental differences between adult and child, and thus he introduces an authority figure, policeman Calvin Carruthers (Vic Tayback), as a seedy, potential child molester, who openly salivates over Ellie’s shapely teenage physique. He certainly isn’t alone, as Tom, in a particularly depressing sequence, tricks Ellie into following him into the basement for an impromptu sex session. However, Mrs. Deere is the towering figure of evil here. In one scene, she ties a young girl to a post in the abandoned attic for days, depriving her of water and food. After taunting the poor girl with her freedom, she takes great pleasure in downing a cool, refreshing glass of water in front of the famished child. There is also an interesting element of yet another famous Dickens character-Ms. Havisham of Great Expectations- woven into Grahame’s character. It appears that Ellie’s mother had the shameful profession of prostitution, and Mrs. Deere’s husband was one of her clients and soon left his wife. Unsurprisingly, Deere puts the blame exclusively upon Ellie, and her bitterness about her old age (and Ellie’s sparkling good, youthful looks) strongly recalls Dickens’ Ms. Havisham, the personification of loss and bitterness.

Besides Gilbert’s interpretation of Dickens’ motifs, BLOOD AND LACE has, of course, plenty of carnage and shocking behavior to offer in its scant eighty-seven minutes. Just as Dickens was paid by the word, it appears that Gilbert earned his pension by each successive unsavory situation. The film begins with a horrific hammer-blow murder, which is quite graphic, and the grotesque highlights keep coming, including Tom cutting a fugitive orphan’s hand off with a butcher knife, only to freeze the body later in the orphanage’s meat locker.

Even with all that BLOOD AND LACE has to offer, however, it still falters somewhat due to some superfluous characters. In particular, the character of Walter (Ronald Taft), the twenty something heartthrob of the orphanage, appears disposable. His forbidden romp with an underage girl goes nowhere and his various scenes with Ellie are either annoyingly saccharine or trite, and occupy too much running time.

The film thankfully finishes strong with a wicked, genuinely surprising twist. Suffice it to say that Ellie does not follow upon the happy path of young Oliver! The film’s ironic, sucker-punch ending perfectly cauterizes any chance for a typically sappy Dickens-esque happy ending, much to the credit of Gilbert’s calculated, devious storytelling.