House of Whipcord

HOUSE OF WHIPCORD

Aspect ratio: 1.75:1

Sound format: Mono

A French exchange student (Penny Irving) is lured to an old house in the English countryside where she's incarcerated by a senile old judge (Patrick Barr) and his crazy wife (Barbara Markham), who seek to punish impure young women for 'crimes against morality'.

This was British director Pete Walker's first collaboration with legendary exploitation scriptwriter David McGillivray (HOUSE OF MORTAL SIN, SATAN'S SLAVE, etc.), spawned from a pre-determined ad campaign showing a screaming, half-naked starlet framed by a hangman's noose. The result is a minor classic in which part-time nude model Irving is lured into captivity by her creepy new boyfriend (Robert Tayman, from VAMPIRE CIRCUS) and imprisoned by Barr and Markham. Unwilling to take her predicament lying down, Irving plots escape with her fellow inmates and suffers all manner of indignities at the hands of cruel warder Sheila Keith and her equally depraved second-in-command (Dorothy Gordon).

Cleverly written and cheaply produced in response to an upsurge of activity by the UK's Christian Right in the wake of several controversial film releases - most notably A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, STRAW DOGS, THE DEVILS (all 1971) and LAST TANGO IN Paris (1972) - "Whipcord" opens with a now-famous dedication "...to those who are disturbed by today's lax moral codes and who eagerly await the return of corporal and capital punishment...." Though contemporary critics railed against the threadbare production values and softcore nudity, it's apparent that much of their outrage was prompted by Walker's brazen challenge to the Christian moralists, whose over-zealous rhetoric has always enjoyed a disproportionate measure of representation in the British media.

The film is deliberately crude and confrontational, with a vulnerable heroine - played as an infuriating wimp by relative newcomer Irving, sporting one of the worst French accents in movie history ("'Ow did zey bring you 'ere?") - struggling to survive against all the odds, while Markham's brutal staff indulge their deepest puritan impulses. Keith is especially good in this regard ("I'm going to make you ashamed of your body, de Vernay. I'm going to see to that... personally!"), manifesting the corrupt zeal of a True Believer with little regard for pity or compassion. The sleaze quotient is high for a British shocker of this vintage, but neither McGillivray's script nor Walker's laidback direction comes close to matching the debauched atrocities which distinguished the 'prison camp' subgenre during the 1970's and early 80s, exemplified by the likes of ILSA: SHE WOLF OF THE SS (1974) in America, BARBED WIRE DOLLS (1975) in mainland Europe, and Asian shockers like BAMBOO HOUSE OF DOLLS (1973), LOST SOULS (1980) and WAR VICTIMS (1983). Still, HOUSE OF WHIPCORD is an effective relic, and it led directly to Walker's next offering, FRIGHTMARE (1974), reuniting him with McGillivray and Keith for one of their finest collaborations to date.

I didn't go into this film with very high expectations because I didn't like Pete Walker's Frightmare very much; but House of Whipcord is a vastly superior film and, to be honest, I'm shocked that this doesn't get mentioned more often! Pete Walker's film is both a sleazy seventies exploitation classic and a striking indictment of the justice system. The film serves as a warning against what would happen if private institutions were given the power to decide what is apt punishment for certain crimes, and the dedication of the film to all those who believe in capital punishment shows Pete Walker's love for controversy. The plot takes place in an old house, which doubles up as a private institution ran by a senile judge, his unforgiving partner; the female warden of the prison and two equally vile female orderlies. They punish girls for crimes committed that weren't, in their eyes, properly punished by the corrupt British courts. We pick the story up when a young French girl is inducted into the institution.

The atmosphere of the film is brilliant; Pete Walker always ensures that the action is sleazy, and yet oddly erotic at the same time. The film is very matriarchal, and it's the female characters that are the protagonists while the men exist in background roles. However, the film isn't feminist; and, in fact, is the exact opposite; as the director ensures that none of the women are portrayed in a favourable light. The film benefits from a handful of great performances; the best of which coming from Barbara Markham, who gives a powerhouse performance in the role of the head of the institution. Frightmare star Sheila Keith, and Dorothy Gordon are the orderlies, while Patrick Barr is brilliantly understated in his role as the ineffective Justice of the prison. Penny Irving is the young French victim at the centre of the story; but her performance is brought down by her ridiculous French accent! The story is another major strong point for this film, as Pete Walker ensures that it always moves well and although you wouldn't expect it from a Euroshock movie like this - he also makes it easy to care about the characters and what happens to them. On the whole, this is a vastly underrated and under seen seventies gem that must be seen by anyone who gets the chance to see it!

A young French model (Penny Irving), resident in London having just completed a controversial photo shoot for a men's magazine, is approached at a party by a charismatic oddball calling himself Mark E. Desade (geddit?) whose dating techniques are strange, to say the least. He invites her to meet his parents, and she foolishly agrees - turns out the old couple (he's blind and senile, she's a sadistic retired prison warder) are running their own private prison in the middle of nowhere with the aim of punishing 'immoral' behaviour with beatings, solitary confinement, humiliations and compulsory Bible lessons. A couple of equally deranged guards are on hand to guide these wayward young things back onto the straight and narrow, along with several menacing rats. Don't ask. HOUSE OF WHIPCORD poured napalm on troubled waters with its original release in 1974, when the hang-'em-and-flog-'em brigade were at their most vocal and the likes of Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford ("Lord Porn", according to Private Eye magazine) were keeping a beady eye on the increasing amount of sex, violence and bad language on television and in the movies. Pete Walker's bleak and disturbing take on vigilante justice gets the flesh crawling and the nerves jangling like precious few British horror flicks before or since, offering little comfort to the viewer as a series of ghastly coincidences, shocking deaths and unexpected twists take us ever closer to the resolutely downbeat ending. Ironically (hopefully) dedicated to the vocal minority who find sentencing too soft and the law largely impotent, WHIPCORD isn't for everyone - the faint of heart should steer well clear - but offers an upsetting glimpse into the heart of darkness for the curious. Ann Michelle and Penny Irving are surprisingly good in their dramatic roles, but the film is stolen by Barbara Markham, Patrick Barr and Sheila Keith, chewing the scenery as the governess, the helpless judge and the most zealous warden respectively. Ray Brooks (the voice of MR BENN) has a few good scenes as Michelle's sex-mad boyfriend.

"This film is dedicated to those who are disturbed by today's lax moral codes and who eagerly await the return of corporal and capital punishment". So reads the foreword at the beginning of "House of Whipcord". With a title like that, it's pretty obvious what the viewer is in for. Right? Wrong. Although this film was promoted as a standard women's prison sleaze-fest, there is much more to it than that. In a way, the dedication (which is very tongue-in-cheek) is as good a description of the plot as any. Young French model Anne-Marie Devernay (Penny Irving of "Are You Being Served?" fame) is nominally fined for posing nude in a public place. At a party, she meets a charismatic stranger named Mark E. Dessart (Robert Tayman) who takes more than a passing interest in her. Because Our Heroine is rather dim-witted (to say the least), not only does she disregard his oddly familiar-sounding name and puts up with his very weird mind games, she agrees to accompany him out of town to meet his parents. No sooner is she in the car than he takes off like a bat out of (or headed for) Hell. Upon arriving at his parent's VERY ominous country home, he disappears, leaving Anne-Marie at the mercy of two formidable middle aged women, Walker and Bates (Sheila Keith and Dorothy Gordon) who appear to be prison guards. And indeed, it's not long before the girl is thrust in front of Mark's father, retired Justice Bailey (Patrick Barr) and his mother (Barbara Markham) a former prison warden dismissed for her cruelty to the inmates. These four demented individuals (and Dessart, their "procurer") take it upon themselves to punish any young women whom they feel have escaped the law, and have set up their own "House of Corrections" for that purpose. Anne-Marie is promptly sentenced and thrown into a cell, where she is informed by another luckless inmate that nobody ever leaves and three strikes against you and you're dead. Things quickly get tougher from there.Meanwhile, Anne-Marie's roommate Julia (Anne Michelle) and her boyfriend Tony (Ray Brooks) are searching for her. This serves as the premise for an atmospheric and chilling British film which is also a parody of the repressive former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (the warden's name is Margaret Wakehurst) and her ilk. Producer/director Pete Walker, known for his string of low-budget horror/suspense films, does an excellent job invoking the nightmarish prison and he has gotten fine performances from his cast, especially Keith, (a Walker regular) as the creepiest guard. Unfortunately, Irving, sporting an incomprehensible French accent(a plot device which could easily have been dispensed with), tends to be more laughable than sympathetic. Nevertheless, the grim story and pervading atmosphere of doom render the picture eerily convincing. The film was originally released in England in 1974, and it was spottily distributed in the US by American International Pictures a year later. But, other than a few television showings in the late '80's, it has gone largely unseen in the States.

"House of Whipcord", which was previously available on a DVD from Image Entertainment, has been recently re-released by Media Blasters/Shreik Show. Their DVD not only adds trailers, a photo gallery and a truly fascinating commentary from producer/director Walker (who has a cameo as a bicyclist) but a greatly improved anamorphically enhanced print. Though the prison scenes are still dark, this is the way the picture was made, and the bigger the screen it is viewed on, the better it probably looks. The score by Stanley Myers ("The Deer Hunter", "No Way to Treat a Lady") perfectly matches the brooding visuals and the title theme is memorable. Sadly, no subtitles have been added which really would have been a plus when listening to Irving babbling in Faux-French. Nevertheless, the picture is highly recommended and if it's still regarded as a "women's prison movie" it's one for a more discriminating viewer.

One of Britsploitation master Pete Walker's most infamous films, House of Whipcord is a highly disturbing project that may be too unpleasant for casual viewers to enjoy. The plot finds enigmatic writer Mark E. Desade (Robert Tayman) taking a beautiful, slightly dim French model in funky platform shoes (Penny Irving) home to meet Mum. She discovers too late that Mum is the deranged, moralistic Mrs. Wakehurst (Barbara Markham), and that the family mansion is really an unauthorized private prison for girls that Mum considers wicked sluts. What follows isn't as explicit as you might expect, but the proceedings are so horrifyingly cruel and oppressively bleak that it's often hard to watch.

The acting is top-notch all around, especially Sheila Keith as a whip-wielding barbarian guard. Pete Walker slowly wrings every bit of clammy tension out of the unsavory story. For instance, despite an attractive cast, interesting fashions, and potentially gorgeous locales, everything is presented in a damp grayish tone that makes you want to put on a sweater. He keeps things very unpredictable; when you least expect it, you're hit by an oh-my-God twist that leaves the situation even more hopeless. The pace is slow, there's some unobtrusively clever editing to be found, and the color looks appropriately filthy. This babes-behind-bars horror amalgam really is powerful, but don't make Anne-Marie's mistake: Know where you're heading before you set out.