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House of Whipcord (1974)

Dir: Pete Walker.

One of Walker's best films and a tour de force of ripe, mania driven acting.

Mark E.Desade (think about that name for a second!), played in a suitably sinister way by Robert Tayman of "Vampire Circus" fame, though here using his real voice, chats up pretty French model Anne-Marie (Penny Irving from Lindsay Shonteff's "Big Zapper") and invites her into the Country to visit his Mother.

Rushing away Anne-Marie does not give any details to her flat mate Julia (Ann Michelle who famously got very naked with her more famous Sister Vicki in "Virgin Witch") about where she is going or who's she going with.

Once in the car Mark hardly speaks and speeds her to a large, forbidding building with bars on the windows, that's surrounded by a huge wall.
She is led into the building by a cold, harsh Woman called Bates (Dorothy Gordon, far away from the classic comedy of "Hobson's Choice") and to her horror is locked in a room. Another Woman, Walker (Pete Walker regular Sheila Keith giving her best performance in a truly memorable and mad role) comes in and Anne-Marie is made to strip.

She is brought before an old, blind Judge (Patrick Barr, a veteran British actor who appeared in everything from "The Dambusters" to Walker's "Flesh and Blood Show") and the psychotic Mrs Wakehurst (a wonderfully deranged, yet tragic, performance by Barbara Markham) who run the 'prison'.
She is told she is being imprisoned because of her nude, public modelling work. A lurid sin in the eyes of these maniacal puritans, that the Courts did not deal strongly enough with.

She learns that inmates are given three chances. Break the rules once and it's solitary, a second time and it's a severe flogging, a third time and it's death by hanging…..

 

Although containing a lot of nudity (even brief full frontal) Walker does not go down the Jess Franco route of extreme exploitation. Instead he uses the atmosphere of the film (and the foreboding prison) combined with some excellent acting to put over the feeling of horror and degradation. And in the case of the flogging scenes, the lack of explicit detail actually makes for a harsher viewing experience, as the way they are filmed means we don't have any obviously false and restrained whip/body contact shots. Here the strikes look (and above all sound) very real.

The blood curdling screams of the punished, the silhouette of the ever ready noose, the broken, whipped bodies of the prisoners and the severe mental breakdowns they experience, all these visual/audio ingredients are expertly crafted together to make a very powerful, dark and disturbing look at what horrors the Human mind can create when fanatical beliefs mix with outright psychosis.

Mrs Wakehurst's past misfortunes have so scarred her she is forever punishing her own past nightmares, The ailing Judge is now just a shadow of himself with only the rare lucid moment where he sees how twisted his once honourable, but misguided, intentions have become.
Bates is a weakling who takes pleasure in punishing weaker Women but is obviously not much more than a lap dog to the severe, viscous Walker, a truly nasty, twisted character so expertly played by Keith.
Mark, we later learn, seems to be even more twisted than we first thought and shows a subdued pleasure at the screams of the Women being flogged.

That Penny Irving (hard to understand at times, false French accent aside) is able to make an impression while having to compete with such brilliantly played villains is testament to her fine performance as the strong willed, brave Anne-Marie.
Ann Michelle has only really a secondary role (along with Ray Brooks, as her boyfriend, also from Walkers "Flesh and Blood Show" and "Daleks: Invasion Earth") but she does some good work during the finale.

Walker and his regular writing partner David McGillivray have created a bleak, grim slice of British cinema, that still packs a punch (due in no small part to some nasty plot turns) even today, and is a fine example of 1970's British Exploitation movie making.