10 Rillington Place

Three years after "the Boston strangler" ,Richard Fleischer brilliantly succeeds in transferring to the screen a horrible true story.The two movies do not look like each other though."Boston strangler" was spectacular,making the best use of the split screen I've ever seen."10 RP" is an austere bleak work ,all the more disturbing than its style is bald.Richard Attenborough(an extraordinary performance,on a par with Peter Lorre's"M") portrays one of those serial killers in the first half of last century.Two good examples :Landru ,whose character Charlie Chaplin used in "Monsieur Verdoux " and Claude Chabrol in his eponymous movie,or "Doctor Petiot" who was doing on a small scale (killing Jews to despoil them) what the Nazis were doing on a large one. Christie ,Landru and Petiot are close relatives.They seem harmless,mediocre little men .Not the serial killer we meet in today's thrillers.And Christie is given the adequate treatment by his director:the poor house,the crummy flats ,the pubs ,the no-future of an uneducated generation (Fleischer lays stress on the fact that Tim cannot read and write ).This illiteracy is partly responsible for Tim's unfair revolting fate.

Fleischer's style is plain;the trial scenes,when any director would have his actors overact is a lesson a lot of the current artists should pay attention to.The hanging could not be spookier.One cannot help but think that the last lines about Tim on the screen are a bit ironical.

Matching Attenborough's awesome portrayal,is John Hurt's remarkable Tim:definitely not Gregory Peck as his wife thinks,macho but pitiful,a not very handsome whining lad who cannot hold a candle to his maleficent owner.

You should see "the Boston strangler" and "10 Rillington place" one after the other

The zenith of British film making, 10 RILLINGTON PLACE (the location since re-named) is a true story. John Christie (who last time I was there was still a star exhibit at Madame Tussaud's waxworks museum in London) was the mega-ordinary, almost mousy south east Londoner who besides liking a good cuppa tea...killed people in his dingy little residence. Somewhat of a sexual predator (though this is hinted at, rather than depicted) Christie used his very basic scientific knowledge to offer "comfort" to such as pregnant young girls by way of his own in-house abortion that none actually survived. The case of young and fully dim-witted Timothy Evans (so brilliantly played by John Hurt) who comes to lodge and whose pretty young wife (Geeson) becomes another victim of the serial killer Christie represented the height of British injustice when Christie himself was able to manipulate the facts to point the finger of guilt at Evans himself and who was actually hanged for the murder of his wife and child. (The later-bestowed pardon would have been of little consequence I feel....the ultimate "too liitle too late")

The film's bleak depiction of immediate post-war Britain is just stunning, Attenborough deserved the Oscar for his amazing characterisation of Christie...a monster with a facade no-one thought to question. No clear-thinking and perceptive person could possibly watch this movie and not be affected in some way. The horror Is that there IS no horror, just a veneer of respectability and decency. I cannot offhand, nominate a more powerful or credible piece of film-making. We have this film in our library and watch it on average ever two years - it has never aged or been less impactful!

This is the story of serial killer John Christie, who between 1943 and 1953 murdered women and disposed of their bodies on his property at the titular 10 Rillington Place. Christie used his mild mannered demeanor to gain the confidence of women. He often falsely claimed to have medical knowledge and told them that if they came back to his flat he could take care of their migraines, bronchitis, etc. Once there, he killed them. He was never suspected because the women who disappeared had no known connection to him.

What becomes his undoing is when he becomes homicidally attracted to Beryl Evans, wife of one of his boarders, Tim Evans. Christie does a pretty good job of planning the killing, but he is rather reckless, telling his wife things that will be refuted later. Ultimately the victim's husband Tim is convicted of the murder of his wife and is executed. There were holes in the criminal investigation for sure, and Evans was illiterate and mildly intellectually handicapped as well, known for telling tall tales, so he was limited in how he could help his own defense. So when he truthfully does tell the police what happened, they do not believe him.

Richard Attenborough is very much the enigma as killer John Christie. You can easily find out why Christie probably did what he did with some quick internet research, but here no explanation is provided, and that helps add to the tension. Highly recommended.

There's a whole host of films from the great decade that was the seventies that have gone on to not get the praise that they so rightly deserve, and if one were to make a list of those films; 10 Rillington Place would feature in a prominent position. The film follows the true story of serial killer John Christie, who murdered a series of women in the late forties. His modus operandi is to murder his victims with gas, shortly before having sex with the corpse. Despite this shocking premise, the film always sees fit to focus more on the reality of the situation than the actual murders themselves. Despite not being graphic, this actually makes the film more shocking as we are constantly reminded of the things that go on behind what people allow us to know about ourselves. The murderer in this story is just a normal man. A nice man, in fact. People trust him, and even respect him; yet despite all this, the man is a stone cold killer. The realistic way that the story is approached, combined with the fact that these are real events ensures that 10 Rillington Place is a morbidly fascinating watch.

Richard Attenborough takes the lead role and does fantastically well with it. His calm mannerisms and nonthreatening demeanour clash well with the underlying evil of his character and we really can believe that this man is a maniac. The film was made in the United Kingdom, I'm proud to say, and this is obvious throughout. UK films have a certain atmosphere about them, and although I didn't know that this movie was homegrown before watching it; it soon became apparent. This style bodes well with the theme of the film, as it's downtrodden and makes sure that the film is firmly planted in the land in which the story took place. The idea of an innocent man not only going down, but being killed, for a crime he did not commit is shocking and the cold way that it is presented in this film reflects the fact that it actually happened and also gives it more of a degree of shock. On the whole, 10 Rillington Place is a film that shouldn't be missed by anyone. It's not all that well known, but this is unfair considering the quality of it and I wont hesitate to recommend this movie to people in the future.

This British thriller is one of the best films I have ever seen. It tells the story of John Christie, the serial killer whose "career" lasted from the middle 1940's until the early 1950's. The name is taken from the scene of the murders; 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London.

Chillingly portrayed by the great actor Richard Attenborough , Christie was a little mouse of a man who first lured his victims home on some pretext or other, usually by saying that he could perform some desired medical procedure on them, for example, an abortion, which was illegal at the time. Once there, he put them at ease by offering them a cup of tea, deceived them into breathing gas from the pipe, rendering them unconscious, then strangled them. He disposed of the bodies, at first by burying them in the garden, then putting them under the sink in the water closet, and finally by tearing up and replacing floorboards and papering over cupboards.

The primary reasons that Christie was able to do what he did for so long were first of all the war. London was undergoing the blitz, and people had a tendency to disappear during the bombing. Another reason was that he was able to turn the suspicions of the police from him to a not very bright truck driver named Timothy Evans, (played by John Hurt) who was convicted of the death of his baby daughter, and was also suspected in the murder of his wife, but due to English law could only be tried for one or the other of them. He was hanged in 1950. The scene in the film where Evans is hanged is chilling, and quite accurate.

Slow at first and shot on location at the actual scene of the murders, the film shows a dangerous manipulative killer hiding behind a bland, mild exterior. Because he appeared so mild, Christie was all the more terrifying. Attenborough brings this out expertly and the overall effect is very creepy.

This superbly-acted film is British cinema at its' very best.

Cup of tea, anyone?