John Christie, der Frauenwürger von London

There's a whole host of films from the great decade that was the seventies that have gone on to not get the praise that they so rightly deserve, and if one were to make a list of those films; 10 Rillington Place would feature in a prominent position. The film follows the true story of serial killer John Christie, who murdered a series of women in the late forties. His modus operandi is to murder his victims with gas, shortly before having sex with the corpse. Despite this shocking premise, the film always sees fit to focus more on the reality of the situation than the actual murders themselves. Despite not being graphic, this actually makes the film more shocking as we are constantly reminded of the things that go on behind what people allow us to know about ourselves. The murderer in this story is just a normal man. A nice man, in fact. People trust him, and even respect him; yet despite all this, the man is a stone cold killer. The realistic way that the story is approached, combined with the fact that these are real events ensures that 10 Rillington Place is a morbidly fascinating watch.

Richard Attenborough takes the lead role and does fantastically well with it. His calm mannerisms and nonthreatening demeanour clash well with the underlying evil of his character and we really can believe that this man is a maniac. The film was made in the United Kingdom, I'm proud to say, and this is obvious throughout. UK films have a certain atmosphere about them, and although I didn't know that this movie was homegrown before watching it; it soon became apparent. This style bodes well with the theme of the film, as it's downtrodden and makes sure that the film is firmly planted in the land in which the story took place. The idea of an innocent man not only going down, but being killed, for a crime he did not commit is shocking and the cold way that it is presented in this film reflects the fact that it actually happened and also gives it more of a degree of shock. On the whole, 10 Rillington Place is a film that shouldn't be missed by anyone. It's not all that well known, but this is unfair considering the quality of it and I wont hesitate to recommend this movie to people in the future.

10 Rillington Place is more than a classic film. It is frequently referred to whenever the call for the death penalty is made in Britain. The notorious miscarriage of justice i.e the hanging of Timothy Evans, an immature half-wit, for the murder of his wife and child when it is almost universally accepted that they perished at the hands of John "Reg" Christie, is one which will always haunt the British legal system. When Christie was found guilty and hanged as a serial killer of women, the body of Evans was exhumed and reburied in consecrated ground but this did nothing to hide the embarrassment of those who supported the death penalty.

The film itself is a dark and brooding masterpiece which depicts life in post-war London perfectly. The grim, dirty, rain-washed Rillington Place in Notting Hill was a seedy side-street which housed the poor but largely respectable families which had survived the blitz. John Christie had moved down from the North to find work in the capital but ill-health and a penchant for petty crime prevented him from being successful.

Richard Attenborough plays the downtrodden but curiously arrogant Christie to perfection. His voice almost a whisper as he lauds it over London's underclasses. In fact Christie was not a landlord, as many believe, he was merely a tenant who fancied himself to be a landlord and acted accordingly. He also dreamed of being a doctor, with devastating consequences. His treatment of the poor, subnormal Evans (John Hurt) and his beautiful but foolish young wife, Beryl, (Judy Geeson) was centred around their desire for an abortion - illegal in the UK until the late 1960s.

John Hurt is very good as the hapless Evans although his Welsh accent needed refining. His look of wide eyed horror and disbelief is a sight to behold. Geeson pouts and whinges and looks gorgeous: the kind of wife any man would desire and yet the kind destined to irritate intensely.

The key to appreciating 10 Rillington Place is to have some idea of its setting in British history. To wander in clueless will result in disappointment. There is no gore or x-rated content of any kind and its slow pace will infuriate many. Yet, as a snapshot of an England now gone and a reminder of the folly of capital punishment it is a timeless classic worthy of many viewings.

This is a convincing account of the infamous serial killings of Christie, and the dreadful miscarriage of justice which led to the hanging of Timothy Evans, who would now be described as having a learning disability, for the murder of his wife. Richard Attenborough portrays the apparently respectable, colourless killer with insidious menace, through to his eventual disintegration and discovery. The house of horrors has now been demolished- who would want to live there? At this time serial killers were unusual in the UK, and there was little expectation of finding multiple corpses in a dreary lower middle class dwelling - Jack the Ripper had been regarded as the epitome of the worst humanity could be. The execution of Evans was and is an overwhelming condemnation of the existence of the death penalty in any society or state which has moral values or any claim to respect for justice or civilised mores.

I saw this in a theatre here in the United States in 1971, when I was eleven years old. I'd seen Richard Attenborough as the circus master in DOCTOR DOLITTLE and I wonder if I'd sold my mother on taking me to this one because I knew the name Richard Attenborough. In any case, this movie burned itself into my brain immediately and, for the next three decades I told many of my fellow American film-buffs that there was this British movie no American had ever heard about that was more blood-curdling than PSYCHO. I suspect the obviously limited release of this movie in the United States had something to do with the fact that one of its chief selling-points was that it was based on a murder not well-known to Americans. The Christie murders were famous in Britain, and, in fact, historic because of their effect on the elimination of the UK's death penalty. But the distributors in America had to market this on its qualities as a thriller. Attenborough had yet to make his name a household word here, GHANDI being about ten years in the future and the probable difficulty with accents couldn't have made people who did see it very eager to recommend it. On top of this, the movie is not a thriller but a truly disturbing exploration of evil. It makes the roughly contemporary FRENZY look like a sitcom. Movies became more realistic in the late sixties and early seventies than they have been before or since. 10 RILLINGTON PLACE may be the most realistic movie about a serial killer ever made. It may not be the scariest, but it's the most memorable. I haven't forgotten it, and I haven't seen it in more than a generation. It is a mournful movie for serious viewing.

No need to repeat consensus points already made. Instead, I'll try to touch on noteworthy aspects generally unmentioned.

The movie's not only a reflection on the death penalty, but on anti-abortion laws, as well. Those desperate women wouldn't have been driven into the clutches of the lunatic Cristie were abortion licensed and legal. That may not have stopped his madness, but he would have had to come up with a different ploy.

The movie focuses on one particular episode (the Evans killings) rather than the series of killings that actually covered a considerable time period. So, cooped up in the city, Cristie ends up hiding his many victims where he can (in the garden, in the washroom, in the walls). What surprises me is that no one, least of all, the wife, notices what must have been an atrocious smell.

Note the dispatch with which Evans is hanged, unlike the more ritualized American way. I assume the movie is an accurate depiction. He walks into an ordinary room, the hood is placed over his head, and plop, the trapdoor opens. And it takes just about that long. The suddenness really startled me.

Contrast two ends of the serial killer spectrum—the shy, unattractive Cristie and the charming, handsome Ted Bundy of 1970's America. Understandably, Bundy had no trouble luring girls to their doom; judging from the movie, however, Cristie's victims must have been truly desperate to let that little creep lay hands on them.

Not mentioned in the movie, but in one of the books that I recall, is that Cristie kept swatches of pubic hair as trophies.

Like any good document on serial killers, the film presents a glimpse of lives and social levels that otherwise go unnoticed. Here we get a sense of a decaying part of London and the dreary lives hanging on there. A good movie or book is like a knife slicing through a cake, exposing layers that otherwise remain hidden. That's the particular strength of this film.

My only reservation is the casting of Judy Geeson as Evans' wife. She seems too pretty and smart to be hooked up with a dead-ender like Evans. Still and all, Geeson's performance is excellent— note her subtle expressions on first meeting the creepy Cristie. Nonetheless, I suspect her casting was the one concession the producers made to commercial appeal.

All in all, it's a grim, ugly film-- as it should be. We may not get much sense of why Cristie has taken the warped, monstrous turn he has. But then such dark matters may be beyond us, anyway. Above all, the movie should not be viewed in a depressed state or if you're looking for a room to rent.