|||||| The Planet of Great Moviez ||||||||: 10 Rillington Place (DVDrip

London, 1944. John Reginald Christie (Richard Attenborough) is digging in his backyard when he comes across a woman’s leg. Unfazed, he covers up the leg and continues to bury the woman he just strangled in his kitchen. Three years later, Timothy Evans (John Hurt), along with his wife, Beryl Evans (Geeson), and their baby, rent an apartment in the same decrepit building - 10 Rillington Place. The young couple struggle to live on Timothy’s minuscule pay while Christie insidiously inserts himself into their lives. He manipulates the pregnant Beryl and the illiterate Timothy until they believe he will perform an abortion on Beryl. However, Christie has other plans...

10 Rillington Place is more than a classic film. It is frequently referred to whenever the call for the death penalty is made in Britain. The notorious miscarriage of justice i.e the hanging of Timothy Evans, an immature half-wit, for the murder of his wife and child when it is almost universally accepted that they perished at the hands of John "Reg" Christie, is one which will always haunt the British legal system. When Christie was found guilty and hanged as a serial killer of women, the body of Evans was exhumed and reburied in consecrated ground but this did nothing to hide the embarrassment of those who supported the death penalty.

The film itself is a dark and brooding masterpiece which depicts life in post-war London perfectly. The grim, dirty, rain-washed Rillington Place in Notting Hill was a seedy side-street which housed the poor but largely respectable families which had survived the blitz. John Christie had moved down from the North to find work in the capital but ill-health and a penchant for petty crime prevented him from being successful.

Richard Attenborough plays the downtrodden but curiously arrogant Christie to perfection. His voice almost a whisper as he lauds it over London's underclasses. In fact Christie was not a landlord, as many believe, he was merely a tenant who fancied himself to be a landlord and acted accordingly. He also dreamed of being a doctor, with devastating consequences. His treatment of the poor, subnormal Evans (John Hurt) and his beautiful but foolish young wife, Beryl, (Judy Geeson) was centred around their desire for an abortion - illegal in the UK until the late 1960s.

John Hurt is very good as the hapless Evans although his Welsh accent needed refining. His look of wide eyed horror and disbelief is a sight to behold. Geeson pouts and whinges and looks gorgeous: the kind of wife any man would desire and yet the kind destined to irritate intensely.
The key to appreciating 10 Rillington Place is to have some idea of its setting in British history. To wander in clueless will result in disappointment. There is no gore or x-rated content of any kind and its slow pace will infuriate many. Yet, as a snapshot of an England now gone and a reminder of the folly of capital punishment it is a timeless classic worthy of many viewings.

The film is a masterpiece in many ways, not the least in terms of the gripping performances of the leads and the stark atmosphere of shabby genteel poverty and hopelessness conveyed by Christy's depressing flat. Some have criticized the slowness of the film, but the pace only enhances the banal horror of Christy's mind as he manipulates the poor, ignorant, frightened creatures who become his victims. Attenborough plays this middle class murderer with consummate insight. Judy Geeson and John Hurt play off each other brilliantly, she the flighty sexpot with ambition to escape her miserable life, only too ready to believe Christy's pretensions of being a "medical man"; Hurt a dimwit whose only avenue to self-esteem seems to come from lording it over his young pregnant wife...until Christy comes along with his mind-games to dupe the poor sap into becoming vulnerable to a charge of murder. The miscarriage of justice is, of course, appalling, made worse by the ineptitude and indifference of the police. One can never forget the haunting plaintive cry of "Evans" as he proceeds to his fate: "Christy done it! Christy done it!"

In Spanish:

En el Londres de la posguerra una joven pareja (John Hurt y Judy Geeson) y su bebé alquilan un departamento en el número 10 de Rillington Place, una vivienda cuyo inquilino del piso inferior, John Reginald Christie (Richard Attenborough), resulta de lo más inquietante. Lo que desconocen ambos es su violento historial de asesinatos en serie de mujeres, impulsos criminales que Beryl (Geeson) acabará reavivando en su mente.

Los subs en castellano son míos, hechos para veinticuatrofps.com