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This movie could have been typical 70's exploitation porn but director Peter Walker turns it around and makes it a grimy desadean attack on the ruling classes. The scene in which the blind judge continues making a solemn speech well after the prisoners have all left the room is worthy of Bunuel. It's all a bit heavy handed and obvious and it seems as though this movie should have been more shocking for it too really work but the bizzare grimy sepia tone of the whole thing really makes it much better than anyone could have expected.

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.

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.

If I had to use a single word to describe this film, that word would likely be "grim". Most of these "women in prison" type movies are kind of a fun time and a guilty pleasure, if you know what I mean. This one's different and actually manages to leave a bit of a depressive feeling in me, not because of extreme physical content or anything (there isn't much of that compared with some other entries in this dubious genre), but because of its sheer, unrelenting drabness and hopelessness.

And you know, this is a very British film. It's not Jesus Franco and the point isn't to titillate with heaps of female flesh on display. This is the country that gave us Mary Whitehouse and plenty of other questionable "moral guardians", and it's that culture that's reflected here. The way it starts with a dedication to those who "eagerly await the return of corporal and capital punishment" is engenious. Remember all those old movies, the ones about drugs and delinquent youths, for instance, that really turned out to be exploitation? you could get away with a fair bit by claiming that your film was really an educational experience, and if there were some snickers in the audience, they were probably from the sort of louts the thing was intended for in the first place, and they'd learn the truth of the message, oh yes they would! Here we have a movie pushing the boundaries of good taste and revealing the corruption and evil of so-called "moral guardians", while at the same time, it might also be possible to read it as a condemnation of moral lassitude. Ok, so it's clear what side director Pete Walker falls on, I think, and this is doubly true if you've seen the somewhat-more-fun "House of Mortal Sin". But still, the question is there, and it creates an interesting dichotomy within the viewing experience.

It's also a fact that our model character, Anne-Marie, is desperately cute. Maybe she's not all too bright sometimes, and that accent the very-not-french-sounding Penny irving is putting on is hilarious, but you hate to see bad things happen to her and really want her to be ok. The thing that gets her into trouble is so small and harmless, and the punishment so absurdly severe, one can't help but rail at the total injustice. it's all terribly severe, cold, and, like I said, grim. That woman who runs the joint is utterly terrifying in her implacable, self-righteous severity and evil.

So yeah. If you want to have fun, watch "The Big Bird Cage", I guess. But if the idea of a somewhat "different" WIP film; one with something to say and a serious demeanour, give this a try.