10 RILLINGTON PLACE, a flat in West London’s Notting Hill, is no longer there: it was demolished after the 1971 film with that title finished shooting. The male human who once occupied it, a warped nothing named John Christie, is no longer above ground either, sped  to fester in a corner of Hell in 1953 when a hangman dropped him off-world after he was convicted of a pair of homicides. Tragically, the noose solution came too late for at least seven women and a baby girl Christie murdered in the 1940s & 50s. The reveal of this fiend-next-flat—what he did and how—shocked England, as did a miscarriage of justice he orchestrated which sent an innocent man to the gallows for acts Christie committed. The same hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, did both jobs, and was a technical advisor on the movie, written by Clive Exton (Night Must Fall, Isadora), based on Ludovic Kennedy’s non-fiction book. Richard Fleischer directed, completing an unofficial foursome that dealt with infamous killers, linking The Girl In The Red Velvet Swing, Compulsion and The Boston Strangler. For the disturbing, splendidly acted 10 Rillington Place, box office in the States was low, $1,100,000 and 151st place: maybe because there was just too much murderous competition in 1971.*

“It’s the moral question that concerns me, the taking of life – no matter how rudimentary.”

The storyline runs from 1944 to 1953, the majority taking place in 1949-50 when a young newlywed couple move into 10 Rillington and are befriended by the downstairs neighbors, long-time residents in the prim, mousy form of 50-year-old clerk John Christie (Richard Attenborough) and Ethel (Pat Heywood), his docile wife. Both the hopeful couple and the unsuspecting spouse clueless about what lies beneath John’s quiet, ‘helpful’ and ‘civilized’ demeanor. The husband, 24-year-old lorry driver Timothy Evans (John Hurt), likes to boast about his plans but is illiterate and naive (his I.Q. was judged to be about 70), as is pretty wife Beryl, 20 (Judy Geeson), frantic when she discovers she’s pregnant—they already have an infant daughter. Christie, who tells them he has extensive medical experience, offers to perform a painless, in-house procedure that will terminate the pregnancy. Only one person is satisfied with how things turn out.

BERYL: “I’m ever so nervous Mr Christie.”   CHRISTIE: “There’s no need to be, no need at all. Do you have undergarments on?”  BERYL: “Yes.”  CHRISTIE: “Well just slip them off will you.”

Before it inexplicably nosedived in the mid-70s, Richard Fleischer’s directorial record bounced between big hits and major misses; this was one of his last top-quality efforts, adriotly managing dire straits material that could easily have been rendered as sensationalistic, balancing the bleak-toned atmosphere of time and place, the demanded discomfort, tension and fright and the detailed progression of the case trajectories. For happiness, look elsewhere, Rillington isn’t your ticket. For clear-eyed fascination and a microscope on sinister macabre, unflashy and hiding in plain sight, this nightmare pulls you down the rabbit hole. **

Front & center is Attenborough’s self-satisfied creep, his measured underplaying, aided by effective makeup, avoids flamboyant excess and as such, the blithe remorseless carries a more chilling punch. At 47, his acting career now moving from in front of the camera to behind it (he next directed his second film, about a vastly bigger man, Young Winston) he had long proven himself able to go full-on crackers; this portrait of amiability masking maleficence was preceded by his warped figures in Brighton Rock and Seance On A Wet Afternoon and later in Conduct Unbecoming.  

The intense Hurt, 30, and winsome Geeson, 22, had each been around for a while; this grim and gripping foray into darkness and betrayal was a particularly strong addition to their resumes. Hurt drew much praise for his anguished patsy, a pitiful fool whose bollixed pride, absent education and lack of common sense made him a perfect subject for managed confusion. Following the success of To Sir, With Love and a few ‘meh’ comedies and little-seen dramas, Geeson commenced a run of thrillers, in which she was always better than the material: her tragic victim in this real-life horror show easily the best of the lot: seeing her in mortal danger is a hard to watch.

Forty-five years later, the cinematic case was reopened in a 2016 BBC miniseries, Rillington Place, starring Tim Roth and Samantha Morton. ***

111 minutes, with Isobel Black, Robert Hardy, André Morell and Phyllis McMahon.

* Year of the Psychopath—the real deal awfulness of mild-mannered Mr. Christie had kept company in the darkened cinemas of 1971, with rapt audiences safely peering at mad men through the lenses of A Clockwork Orange, Dirty Harry, Klute, Play Misty For Me, Pretty Maids All In A Row and The Abominable Dr. Phibes.

** Fleischer: “Show too much and you run the risk of gratuitous sensationalism; show too little and falsify the nature of the murderer. After all, it’s easy to feel compassion for Christie or the Boston Strangler if you never see what they actually did.”

Attenborough: “I do not like playing the part, but I accepted it at once without seeing the script. I have never felt so totally involved in any part as this. It is a most devastating statement on capital punishment.”

*** In Calm Blood—it’s in dispute how many people Albert Pierrepoint (1905-1992) hanged: over 25 years it was between between 435 and 600.  Timothy Spall starred as Pierrepoint in a 2005 film. Nothing like a good quote: as Christie was about to be hung, he complained that his nose itched. Albert told him “It won’t bother you for long.”