The Hunt For The Ripper

Ever wondered why it took Yorkshire Police so long to catch Peter Sutcliffe? It certainly wasn't for want of trying. In this 1979 'World In Action' programme we get to see the headbanging complexity of a pre-IT investigation, and the repetitive, time consuming graft required to make even the most basic of connections. 

Inspector Bob Browne is the unlucky devil responsible for tying up thousands of false leads, red herrings and loose ends. Horribly, every thing they need to know about the killer is already in that room, but they just don't know where. Bob talks the reporter through one of the processes. He looks on the verge of tears.  

"Bob, what happens when a suspicious vehicle is reported by a member of the public or the police to you?"

"Well, if we had a partial number we would come to this vehicle index you can see here and this index is cross referenced so that we can trace a vehicle through make, colour and / or a partial registration. If for instance we were told that the car was a white Volvo and we had no registered number then we could check in the index and look under white Volvos.

All these cards in this system now relate to Volvos, and it would be a matter of looking through to see if we could find one of the relevant colour to start with. Having found the colour we could find the registered number from this card, then go to the relevant box and then we find the corresponding card which includes not only the vehicle number make and colour but the details of the owner by his name and address."

"So you have the vehicle and now you have the owner. Is there any way you can find out anything about the owner?" 

"By going to the master index at the other side of the room, the owner there should have another card on which we will have his personal particulars so far as this inquiry is concerned, i.e. whether he’s been seen or not and if so why, whether he was a witness, a suggestion and whether in fact he has been interviewed or not.

We have in the system at the moment somewhere in the region of 160, 000 vehicles. The names in the main index are in excess of a quarter of a million people."

My lovely wife, who works for (South) Yorkshire Police, tells me a partial plate enquiry on the national database now takes approximately two seconds from start to finish. Wherever he is, I hope Bob knows that. 

Chilling Story

Highly controversial on its release for being 'too soon'. 'The Black Panther' is an unadorned account of the true life and crimes of Donald Neilson, the robber, kidnapper and killer who was Britain's public enemy number one in the mid-seventies. A very capable man in some respects, Neilson was also a psychopath, and his long string of crimes reflect his love of violence and obsession with military planning and living in the woods like a proto-Rambo.

The film is deadpan, matter of fact - but the crimes themselves are bloody and cruel and, for all their advance planning, seem chaotic and impulsive. His most infamous deed, the kidnapping and eventual murder of seventeen year old heiress Lesley Whittle, is by necessity at the heart of the drama, but the real life complexity of the case is difficult to portray, and the film loses a little focus as it wades through the comedy of errors, coincidences and missed opportunities that led to her death (the high ranking detective in charge was subsequently reduced in rank to uniformed police constable). 

Neilson was finally arrested after vaingloriously trying to hijack a police car. There was a struggle, and the coppers and members of the public kicked the shit out of him as a crowd stood by watching and eating chips.  

Neilson served his life sentence, and died in Norwich prison in 2011.

The Black Panther

 

The Most Shocking Story Of The Century!

‘10 Rillington Place’ is a horrible film, as it should be: it deals with horrible things. Grimly documenting the squalid murders of John Reginald Christie, it achieves an almost documentary quality. It isn’t easy to watch, although it’s harder to turn away.

Richard Attenborough plays Christie as a whispering, wheedling, pathetic non-person who is only defined by his willingness to cause pain, to take life. I’m not a huge fan of Sir Dickie, but his performance here is extraordinary, not least because it is so enormously unsympathetic. There is nothing remotely likeable or even pitiable about Christie, and his murders, fuelled by rage and sexual aberration, are unforgiveable, especially as they led to the execution of an innocent man, Timothy Evans, played with heart-breaking incomprehension by John Hurt.

Whenever I think of Christie, I feel as if I want to wash my hands, and the film perfectly evokes the sleazy horror of his life and crimes, from the degraded, slum like conditions in which his crimes were perpetrated*, the mean, desperate lives of his victims and their awful post-mortem fate, shoved under floorboards and into cupboards to moulder away – and all of it conducted in the shadow of the noose – the eye for an eye which demeans any society that sanctions it.

I haven’t always been anti-death penalty, by the way. When I was younger it seemed a perfectly sensible solution to the problem. Then I saw this film.

*The film was made on location, but at number 7 as the tenants of 10 didn’t want to move out. In a way, I’m relieved – the film is macabre enough as it is. The whole street was demolished soon afterwards.

10 Rillington Place

Death Has A Ginger Beard

‘Sightseers’ is, in many ways, the perfect ‘Island of Terror’ film. It’s dark and funny and its locations are camp sites, roadside cafes, ruined abbeys, viaducts, slate mines, owl sanctuaries, tram and pencil museums, show caves and stone circles. I got excited just typing that. It’s also very good, not perfect, but something that I am more than happy to recommend to anybody who likes the idea of a film that combines sudden death and National Trust properties.

Angry Tina and ginger faced Chris are a couple of downtrodden misfits who set out on a ‘sexual odyssey’/ road trip across the North of England.  In a caravan. Compulsive knitter Tina (Alice Lowe) is happy to escape her oppressive and manipulative mother, who blames her for the death of their beloved dog, Poppy. Heavily bearded plastics nerd Chris (Steve Oram) is apparently writing a book, and Tina is to be his muse. As they set off, Tina says ‘show me your world’, barely realising that Chris’ world is a strange and violent one, and that he uses murder as a way of getting his own back on litterers, snobs and people who are more successful than him.

Mordantly funny, extravagantly bloody, the film was scripted by Lowe and Oram but many of the scenes are improvised, and this lends immediacy and realism to the film, an approach consolidated by director Ben Wheatley, who shoots on the hoof, capturing some wonderful scenery and, in particular, some truly awful weather, both of which add immeasurably to both the veracity and the atmosphere (it never rains, but it pours, and when it isn’t pouring, it’s hailing). It’s rare to see Britain presented like this, but I like it: the banality and beauty of our sceptered isle in all its damp glory – an ancient and primeval landscape criss crossed by motorways and studded with brown heritage road signs indicating points of (selective) interest.  

If you’ve ever wanted to see a woman write a letter with a four foot long pencil, or see crotchless knitted lingerie, then you won’t be disappointed. A great little film, I love it.

Incidentally, Ben Wheatley’s next film is called ‘A Field In England’, and is, apparently, a tale of hallucogenic drugs and necromancy set during the English Civil War. I can’t wait.

Sightseers

Strange And Perverse

'The Night Digger' (aka 'The Road Builder') is an effective, atmospheric thriller in which a young man (Nicholas Clay) blags his way into a falling apart mansion in Windsor and forms relationships with the occupants, a downtrodden, middle aged spinster (Patricia Neal) and her blind, manipulative adoptive mother (Pamela Brown).

The young man is very handy around the house and garden but, as a school kid, he was traumatised by being unable to perform when sexually assaulted by some voracious, elderly gypsy ladies (yes, really), so now he's a sex case who uses a long leather strap to get his kicks, before killing and dumping the bodies of his female victims in the foundations of a motorway.   

With music by Bernard Hermann, 'The Night Digger' is actually rather good in a slightly slow way. Nice cast (including the ever barking Graham Crowden), and a fair few dark twists and turns courtesy of scriptwriter Roald Dahl (Neal's husband) make this an interesting tale of the (mostly) unexpected.

The Night Digger

Turned On

‘The Sorcerers’ was Michael Reeves second film, and the first to have any kind of budget and distribution. Starring Boris Karloff and Reeves’ alter ego / fantasy figure Ian Olgilvy it tells of an elderly man who, aided and abetted by his even more cracked wife, invents a new form of hypnosis which allows the ageing and infirm couple to experience excitement and emotion through a much younger and more active subject (Olgilvy) who they manipulate like a lanky puppet. This being 1967, of course, there are many vicarious thrills to be had, including groovy dancing, making it with dolly birds, fast driving, drinking, drug taking, pushing girls off diving boards and, as kicks get harder to come by, violence and murder.  

It all ends badly, and Professor Marcus Montserrat (fantastic name) and his Missus soon learn that evil acts have consequences, even if you get a tall posh bloke to do them for you.

The Sorcerers