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i. made in 1971, on channel five last night
ii. the more or less accurate story of the notting hill serial killer john christie, hanged in 1953
iii. the mise-en-scene is repulsively and relentlessly dingy, everything including clothes and faces seemingly coated in a shitty gas-mantle brown
iv. this story has NO upside (a sequence of women are murdered; christie's low IQ lodger timothy evans wrongly convicted and hanged for the 1949 murder of hIs own wife and child, despite his protestations of innocence; when christie finally flees and turns tramp, the mere fact of his being out in the open air is the signal he's about to be caught)
v. the "star" = richard attenbury, playing a sinisterly shiny waxwork of himself; evans = john hurt, playing every letter of his own surname in inimatible open-wound style)
vi. not hollywoodised, not pinewoodised, not mined for social relevance or gothic affect or really ANYTHING to step it up out of what it is, the slug-ugly retelling of a horrible story (when i went as a child, christie wz the only figure in madame tussaud's with any kind of power to scare, and i think it wz less him, gaunt and bald, than the repellently shabby kitchen he was stood in, with a sar red checked tablecloth the only attempt to brighten up a room as grimly appalling as the inside of his head) (he secreted his victim's bodies inside the house — all his crappy DIY directed to this hiding alone, not a nail or a lick of paint aimed to make a home of a house, apparently)
vii. i can imagine a movie abt fred west, say (a fairly similar figure): but i can't imagine it being so thoroughly in synch with west's own attitude to the surroundings (there'd be contrasts and lines of flight, there's be the glamour of drama, there'd be "commentary" eg from one direction or another on west's relationship to 60s sexual freedoms blah blah, there'd be flourishes of "filmism", surely?) (even "deathline", which has a similar layer of grime across the camera lens, has highs and lows, roy kinnear comedy relief, and a kind of sad nobility cast across its ghastliness...)

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 15:28 (twenty-two years ago)

(there is a sub-hammer horror movie called "crucible of terror" with look that is even more unclean than "rillington place", but its story is way too fatuous to live up to its attempted aesthetic)

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 15:40 (twenty-two years ago)

r.attenburry = my affectionate name for r.attenborough obv

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 15:47 (twenty-two years ago)

THough obv a very different film in period and style, I think there is more than a few similarities with The Young Poisoners Handbook.

(Which reminds me, what happened to the bloke who made that).

― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 15:48 (twenty-two years ago)

but YPH had a definite "lives of a she devil"/"heathers"-style antic edge to it, surely?

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 15:53 (twenty-two years ago)

I suppose the nearest American equiv wld be 'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer', but even that makes use of a number of flashy narrative techniques that seem a world away from the kitchen sink stink of '10 Rillington Place' (which I haven't seen in years, and sadly missed last night - based on a bk by Gordon Honeycombe? or Ludovic Kennedy? Directed by Richard Fleischer? Maybe it needed an American director to avoid misty-eyed nostalgia abt the gd old days - I've certainly never seen another film that makes such a convincing case for legalised abortion) 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (obv. far less faithful to a 'true story') also has a gd feeling for grime-streaked windows, cramped lives, hidden horrors/secrets.

Gordon Burn's bk on the West murders is overlong, stylistically pretentious, even ghoulish, and (as in his bk abt the Yorkshire Ripper) not uncontaminated by a metropolitan fear of the non-urban other, but it does at least communicate some of the sheer awfulness of Fred and Rose - the banality of evil is just the half of it.

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 16:15 (twenty-two years ago)

haha gordon honeycombe possibly!!?? (why is that so funny? somehow it just is)

(i just assumed it wz the ludovic kennedy book, which i think wz the campaigning one, to get evans posthumously pardoned?)

henry and chainsaw both have verve and craft of a filmic type (i can't actually imagine a modern horror buff saying the 10RP is some kind of breakthough to what s/he thinks of a "modern"...)

i tht the extract of burns's book in the guardian worked better than the actual thing, bcz the pictures did a lot of the work he failed to bother to

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 16:20 (twenty-two years ago)

'Cruising', 'When a Stranger Calls', '8mm' are all good if you're tired of shiny happy sugarshit

― dave q, Tuesday, 1 July 2003 18:08 (twenty-two years ago)

10 Rillington Place is a film I like very much, largely to do with the sordid air that pervades it. Plus I like anything about real-life serial killers (at the same time I hate anything about fictitious ones). But I think what you're talking about Mark is pretty much a central intention of the film - to show the world where these things happened as being cruel and repellent. And perhaps there was a sense in 1971 of those times being disgusting (certainly grey and ground down - 'austerity' etc.) and very much pre any brave new world of the 60s and 70s, whereas now they're far more distant and less threatening to us, perhaps, and more exotic.

Apart from the huge stylistic changes in film making since then I can see other reasons why a Fred West film would have to be different. West was more extrovert. He was, I think, a quite sociable individual who engaged with the outside world in lots of ways (including befriending victims of course). There's an element of humour to that whole set up. Christie OTOH was more solitary. He didn't seem to do much apart from killing a series of women who happened to cross his path as tenants.

― David (David), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 23:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Sadly i missed it the other night but from my recolection the grime streaked houses and lifes do give this film a sense of the realness of the crimes.

As a film trend i think the serial killer film has had its day, although i would like to see the bloke who played Mr Claypole in rent-a-ghost play Fred West, with Angus Deaytons wife in one foot in the grave as Rosa.

http://www.culttelly.co.uk/top100/12_003.jpg
http://users.ev1.net/~ehcalk/wfg/jane.jpg

― james (james), Wednesday, 2 July 2003 06:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Rosa = Rose

― james (james), Wednesday, 2 July 2003 06:37 (twenty-two years ago)

is it on vhs or dvd, i would like to see it.

― anthony easton (anthony), Wednesday, 2 July 2003 08:01 (twenty-two years ago)

Unfortunately mr T.Claypole Esq is dead. (not just cos he's a ghost, but in real life. He died of similar causes to Freddie Mercury - ie having a dodgy moustache).

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 2 July 2003 08:18 (twenty-two years ago)

I saw the start of it, cause it was on after The 10 Best Stately Homes In Britain (what do you MEAN Chatsworth is better than Hatfield House or Penshurt Place? You LIE!!! Philistines!) and I couldn't watch more than about ten minutes of it, it upset me so. I saw the end of it about 3 or 4 years ago, and could not change the channel.

It's astonishing how it manages to convey an atmosphere of utter, creeping horribleness without ever being gorey or ghastly.

I remember looking up Rillington Place in the A to Z, and couldn't find it. Has the name been changed?

― kate (kate), Wednesday, 2 July 2003 08:22 (twenty-two years ago)

I think they did change the name of the road.

No I'll admit Mark re YPH that there is an OTT antic air about it, but it struck me that it had such an odd tone which is partially what I think you are getting at here. A different tone mind (and just wanted to remind people cos it is a triffic movie).

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 2 July 2003 08:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Unfortunately mr T.Claypole Esq is dead. (not just cos he's a ghost, but in real life. He died of similar causes to Freddie Mercury - ie having a dodgy moustache).

OH MY GOD

― james (james), Wednesday, 2 July 2003 08:29 (twenty-two years ago)

rillington place became rustyn close, but i think that's gone too — it was off st mark's rd, w11

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 2 July 2003 08:36 (twenty-two years ago)

What about Roddington Place?

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 2 July 2003 15:33 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought that it would be Carsmile who asked that question first.

― Mooro (Mooro), Wednesday, 2 July 2003 15:52 (twenty-two years ago)

I watched a tiny bit of this film in a guesthouse in Brighton.

I was struck by how stylised it was, in terms of camera angles and stuff, even though what was happening in it was very kitchen sink. It's a film I'd like to see all of.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Thursday, 3 July 2003 20:37 (twenty-two years ago)

I was just about to cave and raise the Roddington option but I see I no longer have to.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 3 July 2003 22:19 (twenty-two years ago)

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10 Rillington Place: wd it be possible to make a movie like this today?

OH MY GOD