Steel and Lace

When Gaily Morton (Claire Wren) is attacked and raped by a racketeer (Michael Cerveris) and his four thug friends, she seeks justice from the court. Losing the case, a distraught Gaily pitches herself off a rooftop, and the film flashes forward five years. Gaily is back, only now she's mostly robot thanks to her ex-NASA employed brother (Bruce Davison). With some killer software and a few extra body parts, Gaily heads out to take her revenge. One by one, she tracks down each of the five slime balls and stamps his ticket in a gruesome and usually creative way. Along the way, press artist Allison Reuger (Stacy Haiduk) picks up the trail and, together with her ex-boyfriend Detective Dunn (David Naughton), attempts to solve the mystery behind the brutal slayings. As a purely formula genre film, Steel and Lace does its job reasonably well. There's no food for thought here, but the 90 minutes does pass by relatively quickly. Credit is due to Cerveris, who plays a truly creepy yuppie head slime, and Haiduk, who both strongly resembles and often mimics the mannerisms of Kathleen Turner. In fact, the most interesting thing about the film is the number of look-alikes: one guy bears a strong resemblance to Richard Gere, another reminds one of Roddy McDowall, and lead Wren is a pretty good ringer for Carrie Snodgrass. Even so, as the film equivalent of something like "The Executioner" paperback series, this is strictly an optional purchase. (R. Pitman)