At his best working a low-budget in tight quarters (see NARROW MARGIN/’52), director Richard Fleischer had just fumbled the three biggest films of his career (DOCTOR DOLITTLE; CHE!; TORA! TORA! TORA!) when he scaled back for this remarkably dark serial killer film, taken from the sensational, real-life ‘Christie Murders.’ In a grim, London neighborhood of featureless row houses, young couple with child John Hurt & Judy Geeson rent a nauseating two-room flat from quietly creepy tenant manager Richard Attenborough, a man we already know from the prologue to have committed his first strangulation. Taking advantage of circumstances (a marital spat, an unwanted pregnancy, an illiterate husband’s simple ways), Attenborough offers trust, protection and his services as a cheap, silent abortionist before starting to murder again; then pinning his crimes on the husband. Played out like some inexorable proletariat Greek tragedy, the film would be all but unbearable to watch, if only you could tear your eyes away. Alternating between a carefully framed show-no-more-than-needed compositional technique and near docu-drama style (with no music), its one-foot-before-the-other approach develops serious cumulative power. With little traction Stateside (the case much better known in Britain), Fleischer never dared dig so deep again. Intense and unforgettable.
DOUBLE-BILL: A year on, Hitchcock’s FRENZY/72 was, in his preferred style, a ‘slice of cake’ serial killer story. Set in a frozen in time Covent Garden, London to fit Hitch’s memories, the film was a success everywhere but Britain. OR: A 2016 BBC three-parter take on the same Rillington tale (with Tim Roth & Samantha Morton) drops documentary style for horror film tropes that coddle the story.
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