House of Whipcord

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 early 70's classic from Pete Walker is essentially a classic sexploitation exercise wrapped in a horror packaging.

A dark and disturbing piece, this film is set in a creepy and foreboding house where a couple are running an illegal and immoral correction centre. Young females seen by the old school as sluts are lured to the house, imprisoned and eventually flogged and hanged for their sins.

There is no gore on show here; instead the unsettling feeling is delivered by the cold green filtered scenes and the real underlying menace that Walker manages to inject into the film. The plot is pretty good with some nice twists throughout.

Ultimate fear is slightly diminished by the fact that one of the lead characters is familiar for being the narrator of the 70's childrens TV programme, "Mr Benn".

"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.

An old, blind judge, his crazy wife who once was a wardeness of a prison but dismissed for her complicity in a girl's death, two guards from said prison as retainers of some type, and a son with a "CLOSE" love for his mother who goes out in public as Mark E. Dessard(something like that)round out the antagonists in this interesting, exploitative, misogynistic treatment by British director Peter Walker. The protagonists are, of course, scantily clad girls being flogged, humiliated, and hanged in an old run-down prison in the English countryside. The girls are brought there by the son who finds girls of an indecent nature(flashing in public and the like)where they are then sentenced and mistreated. Boy, would there really be prison over-crowding today! The film has a very dark edge to it without any humanity. The brutality used toward the women is cold and has a decidedly anti-women flair to it. What I did like about it was its obvious atmosphere. Walker has some skill as a director to be sure. His tense scenes in the prison with the veiled lighting and austere setting propel this feature from just another female prison movie to something quite different. Whether that is good or not is for you to decide. I am really not sure how I feel. The acting also helps as everyone involved is at the very least adequate. Ms. Irving, as the French girl, is quite fetching and does a credible job in the lead. The girl playing her roommate is an even brighter highlight(very lovely!). Barbara Markham makes as cold a wardeness as I have ever seen. For me the acting highlight belongs to Shelia Keith as the primary guard. She is able somehow to add a relaxedness to her role while even a touch(admittedly a rather small touch) of sympathy(the scene where she goes to get some lotion for the wounds she inflicted).

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!