His intense working methods, amplified by the real locations, certainly paid off. As war breaks out, the fractures in their relationship reappear beneath the thin veneer of married respectability. Authenticity was vital to Fleischer, so he went full tilt in his production. His service was satisfactory, but he suffered a mustard gas attack at one point that put him in the hospital for a month. Fleischer's attention to detail didn't stop at the locations. 10 Rillington Place is a 1971 crime thriller film directed by Richard Fleischer, starring Richard Attenborough and John Hurt.. Attenborough plays notorious Real Life Serial Killer John Christie. This myth persists to the present day, even though there is absolutely zero evidence that he engaged in sexual intercourse with any of his victims after their deaths. However, Christie is different in that he didn’t commence killing until he was in his 40s. Little in the way of gratuity is needed when dealing with a story such as John Christie's; the sheer horror of what he did speaks for itself. I think it's so effective in conjuring up an atmosphere of evil and malaise that I find it far scarier than any so-called horror film I've ever seen." For a summary of the events see my review of The … After 9 years apart, John Reginald Christie and his estranged wife Ethel reunite and move into 10 Rillington Place. Police guarding 10 Rillington Place while the manhunt for Christie was underway (Image: Getty) 10 Rillington Place was demolished in 1970 during the local council's slum removal works. He did not have the range, I don't think, of Alec Guinness. However, in 1934, the couple were reunited – and then in 1938, moved into the downstairs flat at the now-infamous address in West London that became the scene of his crimes. With the help of screenwriter Clive Exton, Fleischer achieved an incredibly difficult balance between the macabre and the moral, one that is still astonishing 50 years on. The same banal horror disturbed the cast too, especially Attenborough. On or about this day in 1943, Ruth Fuerst, Christie’s first known victim was murdered at 10 Rillington Place. The result is a film that is quiet yet undeniably horrific. Number 10 is the house with the white door at about 30 seconds in. Albert Pierrepoint had been a state hangman like his father and grandfather before him, claiming to have been Britain's most prolific. "Much like Joseph Heller's Something Happened," he tells BBC Culture, "I think 10 Rillington Place is a masterpiece that I have no desire to ever revisit. An excellent web site describes the area at www.10-rillington-place.co.uk The line of the road is now further north. "I do not like playing the part," he told The Times in 1970, "but I accepted it at once without seeing the script. In 2016, the BBC retold the story in a three-part TV drama starring Jodie Comer as Beryl Evans (Credit: BBC). Kennedy's book, 10 Rillington Place, published in January 1961, was the result of a year's painstaking review of the Evans and Christie cases. Nearly seventy years on, Christie, Evans and 10 Rillington Place continue to fascinate. The film, however, is as much about the era as it is about murder. A service station stands on the site of the white building at the end of the road in image rill003 and is behind the buildings and trees in the centre of the picture. Christie’s second victim was a woman that he met at his new job at a radio factory. It was difficult to research as it was a subject deliberately kept out of the public eye. John Reginald Halliday Christie (8 April 1899 – 15 July 1953) was an English serial killer active during the 1940s and early 1950s. 10 Rillington Place is different to other films about murderers of the era. Christie noted many other ailment throughout his life, most of which turned out to be little more than his imagination. Beginning in the Blitz, 10 Rillington Place dares to show the era's hardship, turning London into a grim, barren realm where figures like Christie prey on vulnerable people, shaken of their senses by the bombs raining down. Browse through the content of the latest streaming services and the chances are you will be quickly recommended something related to true crime. by: FreeMoviesHere. Yet 10 Rillington Place stood apart from these works, because Fleischer was being totally honest about the nature of murder: killing was far from pulp or escapist melodrama. It was in March 1953, after Christie had moved out of the property, that a new tenant, trying to put a bracket on the wall, first discovered a number of bodies, hidden in a small alcove and covered over with wallpaper. With a noticeable trend for cheap, exploitative documentaries in particular, it's easy to forget that a number of films do treat such material with a temperament of care and truth. John Reginald Halliday Christie (8 April 1899 – 15 July 1953), known to his family and friends as Reg Christie, was an English serial killer and alleged necrophile active during the 1940s and early 1950s. Then, on the morning of December 14th, 1952, John Christie strangled his wife to death in their bed. She began her career in a state hospital for the criminally insane, moved to the prisons, and currently supervises risk assessments across the state. Attenborough's Christie is someone who uses a busybody, old-fashioned respectability to manipulate people and hide his true malice: to lure victims home, he pretends to be someone who can help them with their various medical ailments. But Christie denied any wrongdoing, and gave police plenty of sordid details about arguments he’d reportedly overheard between Timothy and Beryl during the time that they’d occupied the upstairs apartment. The 10 Rillington Place murders are among the most notorious in British legal history, not least because of the complications involving conflicting confessions, witness statements and interpretations of the evidence. He murdered at least eight people—including his wife, Ethel—by strangling them in his flat at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London. He then joined the War Reserve Police at the beginning of the second World War (he was reportedly accepted to this position because his criminal record wasn’t checked). As Eady inhaled the tincture, Christie inserted another tube into the jar that hooked up to the domestic gas pipe in his flat. In the 1940s/1950s, John Reginald Halliday Christie strangled at least eight women including his wife, Ethel and hid their bodies at 10 Rillington Place where he lived. category: Drama. 'Mind Behind Murder' was a series for TWW (Television Wales and West) in the Sixties. Young John was born the 6th of seven children near Halifax in England in 1899. "During lunchtime, I went to my room and sat alone. Born in Yorkshire, Christie fought in World War One and survived with injuries, including damage to his throat, which accounted for his noted whisper of a voice. Male attests to the shape-shifting mastery of Attenborough's performance. In 1916, young John was called up by the British Army to serve as an infantryman. He was found guilty and sentenced to hang…which he did in March of 1950. His modus operandi is to act as a person with a medical background, lure unsuspecting women to his apartment on the pretense of … Christie was caught at the end of March 1953, tried in June and executed in July. Between January and March of 1953, Christie invited at least three more prostitutes to Rillington Place, gassed them, raped them, and strangled them to death. The film was initially conceived in the 1960s by British producer Leslie Linder, who approached Fleischer to adapt Ludovic Kennedy's book about Christie's crimes, also called 10 Rillington Place (1961). Starring Richard Attenborough as Christie, the film portrays his crimes during the 1940s and early 1950s, when he is estimated to have murdered at least eight women by strangulation, including his wife Ethel. When looking at true crime from the period of 10 Rillington Place, it has a mostly US flavour. He was described as a “quiet lad” by his peers in school – a boy who didn’t socialize much with others, and wasn’t very popular. The “back garden” at 10 Rillington Place with a constable standing guard. Attenborough himself was acutely aware that this was more than just a crime film, though one he had mixed feelings about. Unusually, instead of odd numbers on one side of the street and even numbers on the other, the north side of Rillington Place was numbered 11-20 and the south side 1-10. Even though he eventually married Ethel Simpson, he was often unable to perform sexually with her either. Subscribe to our monthly newsletter! Though true crime as a genre has spanned a range of media for many years, it has never been in such high demand as it is today. Music and film critic Andrew Male knows this only too well. Number ten was cheek-by-jowl with the wall dividing the end of the street from the works. One thing that marked out the film was its Britishness. 10 Rillington Place was John and Ethel Christie’s house from 1938, and the scene of at least eight murders and eight concealed corpses during the 1940s and 1950s. He was known as “Can’t-Do-It-Christie” during his late adolescent years for his inability to sustain an erection. The couple struggled as Christie rotated in and out of prison for the next decade on convictions for various crimes including stealing postal orders, larceny, and assault. Want to be notified of updates to The Criminal Code? Christie was tracked down, arrested, and then tried for murder – principally of his wife, Ethel. 10 Rillington Place (1971, Richard Fleischer) A biography on the life of John Reginald Christie, the serial killer. The wrongful conviction of Timothy Evans is considered one of the great failings of British justice and a factor in the subsequent abolition of the death penalty for murder in the UK, achieved through MP Sydney Silverman's private member's bill in 1965 and made permanent in 1969. But by late 1949, both Beryl and Geraldine had gone missing. At least eight women were murdered by Christie in the flat. "I never spoke to anybody broadly when we were shooting," he told Henderson's Film Industries. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday. The measure and standard of this temperament, in Britain at least, was set back in 1971 when US director Richard Fleischer brought the crimes of British serial killer John Christie to the big screen in the stunning 10 Rillington Place. Rillington Place, renamed Ruston Close in 1954, was demolished late in 1970 as part of the general slum clearance in the area but not before it served as the location for the Richard Fleischer film 10 Rillington Place starring Richard Attenborough, Judy Geeson and John Hurt. The 1901 census lists a Bartle family as living at no 3 Rillington Place. "In Attenborough," he suggests, "I recognise nothing of that actor. Required fields are marked *. The same executioner that put Timothy Evans to death was there for John Christie’s hanging. "I seek out great horror films," Male concludes, "I like being scared, but I don't like whatever 10 Rillington Place is doing to me. She was a prostitute that he invited back to his home on the eve of August 24th, 1943 (when Christie himself was 44-years-old). But at 10 Rillington Place, March 24 also put the Evans murders back in the public eye. More like this: – Ten films to watch in February – The troubling obsession with the sexy psychopath – How we got hooked on grisly true crime. Based on the real-life case of the British serial killer John Christie, and what happened to his neighbors Tim and Beryl Evans. With interest in true crime never greater, it's unsurprising to find the story of 10 Rillington Place still drawing curiosity. The decrepit nature of the street feels like a time capsule, one containing the traumas of the post-war years in its darkened bricks and mortar. Tw… (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Want to be notified when a new article is published? Apr 28, 2017 - Explore Mitch Woodland's board "10 Rillington Place" on Pinterest. He presented a dense, detailed reconsideration of the facts, which took in a wide range of material: for example, Christie's childhood and early adult traumas and illnesses, Evans's mental state, and the circumstances surrounding his ‘confession’. He claimed that this attack left him unable to speak loudly (little more than a whisper) for the rest of his life. Christie’s second victim was a woman that he met at his new job at a radio factory. He did – but after they expired, Christie’s interest in them stopped, and he was very clear about this fact. Join BBC Culture Film and TV Club on Facebook, a community for cinephiles all over the world. Luckily, Christie wasn’t as fastidious about his body disposal methods as he was about his health, and his years of slaughter ended as abruptly as they had begun, with him anxiously pondering another ailment before a tightened rope once again brought silence. John Hurt gives a formidable performance as Timothy Evans, who was wrongly hanged for his wife’s murder (Credit: Alamy). Whether the deaths on screen are caused by an individual or the state, Fleischer makes certain that their unbearable reality is unavoidable. And, at other times it’s through offering insight to the victims, the families, and to the public. Christie stated that he impulsively strangled her with a length of rope (his wife was off visiting relatives at the time). One of the strange feelings I had was that I couldn't rid myself of the picture for quite a long time." In addition to his strange health-related obsessions, Christie gained some ‘notoriety’ as a necrophiliac. Richard Attenborough helps to create the eery atmosphere of this movie with his excellent acting as the creepy landlord and serial killer. In Christie, Fleischer had finally found a British subject dark enough to match his home-grown ones.