Rent House of Whipcord (1974)

Whip Crackaway - House of Whipcord review by Spoons

Pete Walker's House Of Whipcord is nowhere near as sordid as the title suggests but that doesn't stop it from being a damn fine piece of entertainment. Worth watching for the brilliant unhinged performance (yet again) of Sheila Keith. 70's British horror at it's best. Recommended.

Spoilers follow ... - House of Whipcord review by NP

Penny Irving, for many years a sexy maid or secretary in no end of UK sit-coms, here plays French Ann-Marie Di Verney, the unfortunate heroine in this story. Producer, director and co-writer Pete Walker - who made a series of provocative films during the '70s and '80s in order to 'ruffle a few feathers' - has said that Irving needed a lot of direction. The results prove all was worth it - she turns in a terrific performance, and makes me sad she didn't pursue more serious roles.

The question is, did House of Whipcord inspire the mighty Australian drama Prisoner Cell Block H? It stands a chance,; although this is hardly the first 'women in prison' film, it's one of the most powerful. SDadistiuc warders, a corrupt system, innocents being incarcerated, sadism and repressed sexuality in the form of discipline: it's all here.

The cast is excellent, the story simple but powerful, and the writing is tighter than on some of Walker's other projects. All performances are terrific, but special mention should go to Barbara Markham , Patrick Barr, Robert Tayman and Sheila Keith as the wonderful antagonists.

‘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 ….’

Victorian Values - House of Whipcord review by Count Otto Black

Made just after "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", this film was obviously greatly influenced by it, right down to including one huge lift from it which is then subverted by a particularly cruel twist of fate. But it's a genteel, very British take on a similar subject. The barely human grave-robbing cannibals are replaced by people who are, or at any rate used to be, thoroughly respectable "pillars of the establishment", and the regime they impose on the inmates of their private prison bears more than a passing resemblance to the sadistically irrational world inhabited by the schoolboys in "If...."

As in "Chainsaw", the horror derives from what is literally a nightmare situation: somebody goes for what seems to be an innocent drive in the country, and, for what amounts to no reason at all, is suddenly imprisoned in a madhouse where the lunatics are definitely running the asylum! Though since these awful people were rejected by the mainstream establishment for going too far almost thirty years before the events in the film take place, and have since been acting secretly and illegally, the satirical point the film is trying very hard to make gets a little bit blurred. However, it certainly manages to remind us that in repressive societies, power usually ends up in the hands of deranged monsters who hypocritically abuse the very laws they claim to be upholding.

Although much of the early part of the movie seems to promise us the sexploitation Peter Walker tends to be associated with, giving us gratuitous glimpses of female nudity and a protagonist too daffy to realise that going off for the weekend with a man she hardly knows who makes jokes about cutting her face with a steak knife and calls himself "Mark E. DeSade" is a really bad idea, once he gets down to business, Walker is wise enough to concentrate on the decidedly unsexy villains instead of the prettier but much less interesting victims and their friends, most of whom can't act too well. And, unlike a truly exploitative director such as Jesús Franco, Walker never tries to make the torture of women titillating. What happens to the unfortunate girls is surprisingly un-explicit, with just enough shown for us to get the idea (though the censor may have had something to do with that).

Although it's poorly paced, relentlessly grim, and sometimes mean-spirited, and the scenes outside the prison often look as though they might veer into soft porn at any moment, the large part of the film that takes place inside the titular establishment has real if crude power, thanks very largely to the performance of Sheila Keith, a good enough actress to add subtle undercurrents to what might easily have been a one-dimensional rôle. The villains are victims of their own cruelty almost as much as the women they torment, obsessively sticking to the letter of meaningless rules they constantly twist but can't break in a desperate attempt to maintain the crumbling illusion that they're doing the right thing for the right reasons. Keith in particular, without saying or doing anything to make it explicit, conveys that the twisted joyless monster she has become is the result of a lifetime denying to herself that she's a lesbian, and she's punishing pretty girls for making her feel sinfully attracted to them.

This movie isn't the masterpiece some people say it is, and it's not "fun" on any level, but it's several orders of magnitude above almost all other "psychos torture helpless women" movies, and it really is trying to make a good point, albeit clumsily. It's certainly an interesting take on a clichéd situation, and well worth a look if you're a horror buff. By the way, if you think Sheila Keith is good in this, you should see her pulling all the stops out in "Frightmare" as a sweet old lady with a very nasty secret indeed...