Throw a rock in any direction in the B-movie pool and you’re bound to hit a rape-revenge thriller. Chances it will involve a hot lady robot with a master’s degree in disguise, however? Infinitesimal. That one-in-a-million shot is Steel and Lace. Praise be it is not one of a million.
On the night of her concert debut, on-the-rise pianist Gaily Morton (Clare Wren, Season of Fear) is raped in an alleyway by real-estate mogul Daniel Emerson (Michael Cerveris, Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant) while his four “musketeer” buddies watch and egg him on. At the trial, however, the balding, yet ponytailed Emerson is found not guilty. Crushed, Gaily ascends the courthouse stairwell to the roof and purposely plunges to her death. Crushed five years after the fact, her scientist brother, Albert (Bruce Davison, 1971’s Willard), uses his room of blip-de-bloop wall computers to recreate her as a sexy cyborg with instruments of death hiding in her killer bod.
Donning enough full face masks to outfit the next two Mission: Impossible installments, Gaily seduces her way through the quintet of womanizers, offing each in an unexpectedly gory manner. From drilling straight through one guy to decapitating another, her chintzy methods of disposal give Steel and Lace what little juice sits in its tank; she’s like Sharon Stone’s Basic Instinct murderess rebuilt as a Swiss Army Knife model of the Six Million Dollar Man.
Wren is appropriately cold and emotionless, devoting herself to the role with admirable commitment not shown by her fellow cast members — among them, An American Werewolf in London’s David Naughton as the cop who investigates the killings because he has to, Luther the Geek’s Stacy Haiduk as a chain-smoking courtroom sketch artist who investigates the killings because she’s nosy, and David L. Lander — once and forever Squiggy of TV’s Laverne & Shirley — as our comic relief (although he doesn’t come close to actually providing it).
For such an impressive CV as an FX artist and animator who’s worked for James Cameron and John Carpenter, debuting director Ernest D. Farino appears to have left his considerable day-job skills back at the office. Steel and Lace is cheap-looking trash that feels so creatively ill-invested, it’s amazing Farino went on to helm bigger and better things … psych! His only other features were parts one and five of Charles Band’s insufferable Josh Kirby … Time Warrior kidventures. —Rod Lott