Rillington Place

Plot synopsis:
The film begins in 1944 with John Christie murdering his neighbour Muriel Eady: he lures her to his flat in 10 Rillington Place by promising to cure her bronchitis with a "special mixture", then incapacitates her with carbon monoxide gas, strangles her with a piece of rope, and has (implied) sex with her corpse. He buries her in his flat block's communal garden, where a dog uncovers one of his previous victims.
In 1949, Tim and Beryl Evans move into 10 Rillington Place, west London, with their infant daughter Geraldine. Beryl is pregnant again and attempts an abortion by taking some pills. When she informs Tim, they have a violent argument, which Christie breaks up. Soon after, Christie offers to help Beryl terminate the pregnancy. He pretends to read a medical textbook one day in an effort to convince Tim of his expertise. Tim is essentially illiterate and cannot tell that Christie is lying. The Evanses agree to let Christie perform the procedure.
Christie occupies his wife, Ethel, by sending her to his office with some paperwork. He grabs his killing tools, makes a cup of tea, and hurries upstairs to Beryl. He is interrupted by a team of builders who are there to renovate the outbuilding. He lets them in, and when he sees they are well-occupied, he pours a new cup of tea and heads back upstairs. Beryl has a violent reaction to the gas, and Christie punches her in the face to knock her out. He then strangles and sexually assaults her.
When Tim returns, Christie tells him that Beryl died of complications from the procedure. Tim wants to go to the police, but Christie convinces him that he will be seen as an accessory before the fact. Christie suggests that Tim leave town that night, while Christie disposes of Beryl's body. He promises that he will place the baby in the care of a childless couple from East Acton. Tim reluctantly agrees, and leaves the house in the middle of the night. Christie then strangles Geraldine with a necktie.
Tim hides out with his aunt and uncle in Merthyr Tydfil, pretending that he is in town on business. He claims that Beryl and the baby are visiting her family in Brighton. Tim's relatives send a letter to Beryl's father, who telegraphs in response to say that he has not seen Beryl in months. When confronted by his relatives, Tim admits what (he believes) happened, and he visits the local police. He confesses to disposing of Beryl's body in the sewer after the botched abortion. Three London police officers lift the manhole, but do not find Beryl's body. A search of 10 Rillington Place eventually uncovers the bodies of Beryl and the baby in the bathroom, where Christie hid them.
When Tim is brought back to London, he is charged with the murders of his wife and daughter. In shock, and despondent over the news, he confesses to both crimes, though he is guilty of neither. During his trial, Christie is a key witness. Tim's defence shreds Christie's credibility by airing his previous criminal activity. Nevertheless, Tim is found guilty and hanged.
Two years after the trial, Ethel begins to fear her husband, and informs Christie she will move out to stay with relatives. When he begs her not to leave him, Ethel implies that he should be in prison. Christie murders her that night and hides her body under the floorboards. Later, he meets a woman suffering from a migraine in a restaurant. He pretends to be a medical expert and promises her a cure. He is next seen putting fresh wallpaper on a wall in his living room; it is implied that he has hidden the woman's body in the space behind the wall.
In 1953, Christie is living in a hostel. Meanwhile, new tenants are moving into the Christie's flat. They complain about the awful smell, and one of them peels off the wallpaper to find a space behind the wall, where they find three of Christie's victims. Soon after, Christie is noticed by a police officer in Putney and arrested. The film ends with an intertitle explaining that Tim Evans was posthumously pardoned and reinterred in consecrated ground.

Tags: murder

Review:
The suspense, mood, performances are the best thing I've seen for a very long time- including cinema, TV, or DVD.
Samantha Morton & Tim Roth, whom I've long admired, are nothing short of superb in their understanding of the characters, their tenuous daily existence, the era in which they lived and their relationship.
Samantha Morton's portrayal also speaks volumes about a 'woman's place' in society & in a marriage in those times.
Tim Roth had me recognising the complete lack of emotion that Christie masked, READILY, with appropriate & socially accepted comments and lies; and the ability to portray himself as the victim, as employed by true psychopaths.
If only to provide some contrast to the slightly negative reviews, I must say I thought this was a superb production.Roth's whispering was as intentional as was the shifting accent of a character who was wanting to 'fit in' with any environment he found himself in.A thoroughly unnerving performance by Roth, admirably supported by Morton's portrayal of a character seemingly unable to find her voice all contributed to a very unsettling, but rewarding viewing pleasure.It too lead me to Wiki for a round up of the historical facts and travesties of justice..
Another look at the Christie serial killer saga starring Tim Roth and Samantha Morton - what could possibly go wrong?
Quite a lot as it turns out mostly connected to the name of Craig Viveiros the director.
The acting throughout was fine but the director decided to make the whole enterprise in the mode of a horror movie complete with dark lighting, dark sinister music and slo-mo sequences with yet more dark sinister soundscapes.
The scenes that worked best had no music at all and were quite sinister enough because of the work and effort the actors had invested in them.
Why Mr Viveiros decided that the audience would find it necessary to add a music track and film techniques to tell us what to think is beyond me?
After the second episode I was compelled to look up Wikipedia and learned more in five minutes than I had in two hours.
I persevered with the third episode partly so as not to waste the previous two hours but also because I was enticed by Tim Roth and Samantha Morton's performances.
But in spite of them the whole experience still left me wishing I'd watched the movie with Richard Attenborough instead.
The slow pace of this is like that of a snail leaving a trail of slime.The lighting is dark.
Squalid but normal given the time and place.Tim Roth is so convincingly creepy and his speech, whispery and spare, so steeped in threat, it's a task just to undertake to watch each next horrible installment.
Horrible as in effective.There is no actual violence and yet it is as if every single second of the entire production is violent.I'd give it a higher rating, in that I think it is so evocative, but the subject matter is too dark and I prefer to save high marks for work that stimulates us to loftier places.Still, simply as art, all the skills are wonderful.
Many are saying this is slow and it is, but its done in a masterful way which builds to the end that we all know.
Excellent series.
Wow Tim Roth and Samantha Morton are just brilliant in this series based on real events, believe me you'll want to watch the whole series in one go, its so well worth it.
Tim Roth is creepy but so damn good at it..
One aspect of making a drama based on actual events is that we mostly know what's going to happen.
This has the disadvantage of removing some of the apprehension needed to make good dramas work but it has the benefit of letting the viewer focus on other things.And in this case, there are plenty of 'other things' to absorb.
The exquisite attention to detail on the sets, the (sometimes odd) writing, the inconsistent accents of some cast members and the masterful performances of Tim Roth and Samantha Morton.For some viewers (like me) it's worth re-familiarizing yourself with a little backstory about these characters and the events that happened, as they give some reason and motivation behind some of the strange decisions that are made.There is probably too little material for a three-hour miniseries to satisfy a young audience and the violence of the events that unfold are implied rather than displayed...
which leaves the drama somewhat lacking in suspense...
especially in a story where such inventive ways were used to dispatch the victims.In the end, this BBC drama is drab, uneventful and too long.
Long, slow, and not worth spending time on..
While the acting of the principal actors is fine, especially Tim Roth.
The way they have set up the narrative is odd and it just plods along.
The story is mildly interesting because it was the mishandling of the case against Timothy Evans and his subsequent execution that eventually led to the abolition of the death penalty in the UK.
The series is very dark and the ending is abrupt.
I wouldn't recommend it to anyone despite the fact that it is from the BBC which has produced a lot of fine programming.
Since this story has been told several times before, I am not sure why another telling was necessary..
Being a TV series Rillington Place can (and does) go into so much more detail.
Unlike the film, this is also about the life of his poor wife Ethel and the ill-fated Timothy Evans.
The squalid area of Notting Hill and the dimly lit streets, look like something out of the darkest Victorian times and the conditions are almost inhuman.
The feel and vibe is very creepy and leaves a lot to the imagination, right up the the final third of the last episode (of three).
Depressing but a gripping true story.
Tim Roth is magnificent and Just like the original movie, this will burn deeply, disturbing your mind..
Bone-chilling performance.
Tim Roth plays the notorious serial killer John "Reg" Christie with bone-chilling eeriness, a masterly performance to no small extent aided by the cinematography and lighting, which would have had Hitchcock nodding in approval, and which borders as closely on the exagerrated as it gets without overstepping the line (in my opinion).
The set design provides the appropriately grim backdrop of the poorer areas of 1940s and 1950s London, and the soundtrack is certainly enough to make anybody lie awake wondering what might be lurking under the floorboards of the house you just moved into.
The story is very well told, leaving enough for the viewer's imagination to add to the horror as the ghastly details creep into your mind.
But there is a piece missing at the very end, as if the director suddenly realised that the allotted running time was quickly running out, and had to cut out a large chunk without forethought.
Nevertheless, it's well worth a watch - you'll never look at your balding uncle the same way again..
This was a very stylised dramatisation of the life and heinous crimes of serial-killer John Reginald Christie who besides killing seven women, his wife included and almost certainly a baby girl (to which he never confessed, right to the end), also caused the execution of one of the victim's husband, the hapless Timothy Evans, who was given a Royal Pardon in 1966 some 16 years after his hanging.
Stylised in that the filming itself is low-key and washed-out in appearance, while the direction makes use of slow-motion shots, unusual camera-angles and a strangely disembodied soundtrack of contemporary songs, most notably "Whispering Grass".Then there's Tim Roth's turn as Christie, where he reminds me of none so much as Leonard Rossiter's classic comedy creation of Rigsby, another sleazy landlord-type but with a less murderous bent.
Roth speaks in a hissing whisper, walks with a shambling gait in his miles-too-big overcoat and hides his evil behind a pair of National Health spectacles.
Almost everywhere he goes, creepy background music surrounds him.
I also found it strange that each episode started with a scene after his arrests, such as the discovery of the bodies in his bricked-up kitchen, before abruptly stepping back in time to depict the lead-up to the murders.Interestingly, there are almost no graphic recreations of his killings, rare but welcome in modern TV and cinema, indeed there's no murder shown in episode one at all, plus we only start the story after he's killed his first two victims, before the doomed Evans family arrive as upstairs neighbours.
As I indicated, Roth's mannered acting dominates proceedings, not completely to the production's advantage, but there is good support from Nico Mirallegro as Evans and Samantha Morton as Christie's long-suffering wife.
However, I never really felt at any point that Roth's Christie was truly evil, for example, there are only the vaguest hints of his necrophilia and while I can imagine the difficulty in compressing eight murders into a three hour duration, can't help but feeling the concentration on the Evans murders detracts from the fact that the man was an evil serial killer as well as showing a disrespect for his previous victims.
Arguably, the key murder was the first one, which set him on his grisly path, yet we get no real indication it ever happened and are thus given no real motive as to how this lecherous little man could be driven to his terrible crimes.Naturally, those of us with longer memories will compare this dramatisation with the excellent feature film from the 1970's starring Richard Attenborough, where I sensed the aura of evil much more than Roth emanates here.
Perhaps that was partly due to effective casting against type, but in the end I felt that the depiction of Christie was misguided here and that this, plus the strained direction ultimately detracted from the dramatic impact of the piece as a whole..
I felt this telling of the story was brilliantly acted.
Notting Hill looked grim enough but probably not as grim as it would have been in reality back then.I must have enjoyed it so much that is was not aware of any soundtrack.
To think that there were workmen coming and going at 10 Rillington Place while the murder of Beryl Evans was committed.
To realise that her body was in the middle floor flat for 3 days while Timothy Evans was still living there prior to moving off to Wales.
There were so many bits of luck for Christie to not getting caught.Chilling..
The subject matter and atmosphere, are excellent but the story is plodding and flat.
It is to a degree impressive that Tim Roth is unrecognizable and credit should be given for an excellent convincing accent, which often proves to be the downfall of many an A-lister trying to do serious Drama.
But therein lies the issue, there never feels like there is much serious Drama, it is a dark and brooding subject matter but it comes across as meandering and lethargic.
The audio is variable, often needing subtitles as the set pieces of dialogue were often breathy or quiet.Interesting, but did not live up to, or make the most of it's potential..
John Christie was a monstrous example of the banality of evil, the kind of funny little man found in every street and apartment block in the world.
Most of them are just that, funny little men who are perfectly harmless and eventually pass off to their reward without doing a single mischief to anyone.
John Christie was one such, operating in button-down post WWII England, and the whole, shocking story could have made a chilling series.
Indeed, Tim Roth's portrayal of the murderer is desperately creepy and utterly believable, but the whole thing doesn't rise to the level of the 1971 Richard Attenborough effort, 10 Rillington Place.
This can be put down to a single sentence - political correctness at the BBC.
Everything before the pill was dark and dank and hellish, and always accompanied by sinister music.
This just ruins the performances of a stellar cast working at the tops of their game.
Next time somebody films this story, let's hope it's someone who isn't intent on turning it into politics..
Tim Roth's whispery characterisation of the early 20th century serial killer is extraordinary but the dark, smokey interiors and the hard edits across timelines make it pretty hard going.
For me, the ponderous pace would be fine if it felt like the slow burn was winding up to something but there's an extraordinary lack of light and shade.
What it did capture was the bleak existence of the working poor and cracking performances from Roth and Samantha Morton.
For my money, those performances weren't enough to make a great production and I was left wanting more..
Tim Roth was excellent in this role and at times I wanted to strangle him because of his whispering, which I was still able to understand.His long-suffering wife also had be pulling my hair out.
I found this show by accident on Netflix and was really glad I did because this is my type of show - British dramas with a mixture of crime in it..
I have wondered for many years why there had been no attempt to retell the grizzly story of the goings on at number 10 Rillington Place.
The fabulous 1971 version featuring the marvellous Richard Attenborough will live on as a classic forever.
So once again, well done BBC for retelling a story in such a thorough and compelling way.The three hour format worked well, it allowed the story to develop naturally, at no point did it feel rushed, each character was given time to deliver.Tim Roth was sensational in the role of Christie, softly spoken, calm, yet monstrous and conniving, I believed utterly in the character he portrayed.
It feels unkind to say that Samantha Morton is a safe pair of hands, but that she is, an actress of immense talent, who always seems to deliver the goods, a super performance as Mrs Christie.This drama made me curious about the case, and I've picked up a book for some further reading.If I was brutally honest, I'd say Part 1 was a little too slow, and felt like it had been padded out, twenty minutes into the second part though it takes a very sinister turn, and transforms into something nasty, but enthralling.Harsh, unnerving, but very impressive.
True serial killers are mercifully rare.
But Reginald Christie strangled six women for no good motive, and an innocent man, Timonthy Evans, was sentenced to death for one of those before Christie's guilt became unarguable.
In 'Rillington Place', Tim Roth is excellent as the mass murderer, a sad little man for whom you might feel sorry if not for his method of relieving his frustrations.
Overall, however, the drama is mostly painful, and while this is probably inevitable, what is lacking is a sense of ordinary life going on around the sad world of the Christie family.
Instead, we see a world only of smog, austerity, and a mood of unremitting gloom - if London was really as dreary as this, it's a wonder there weren't thousands of Christies, not just one..
Mind to murder.
Rillington Place is a three part drama based on the events of the 1940s and 50s when John Christie (Tim Roth) is said to have murdered at least eight women in his dinghy and dank Notting Hill flat.
One of the victims was his wife.The first episode was from the point of view of Ethel Christie (Samantha Morton.) The Christie's have had a turbulent marriage where they have separated in the past and they have moved to London from Yorkshire.
There is distrust as she suspects her husband cavorting with prostitutes in seedy pubs.The second episode focuses on dim Tim Evans, the young man in over his head as his wife dies during a botched abortion and daughter later disappears and he is framed for their deaths.The final episode really goes in for the kill, the lies John Christie tells at Evan's trial and then we see him get rid of his wife and others before the authorities figure out that they might have executed the wrong man.The series really is dark and depressing as the grim post war years.
Roth speaks in a quiet voice, he admits to almost emulating writer Alan Bennett in his tone of voice.
However this is a chilling, devious man, involved in criminal activities throughout his life ranging from stealing to assaulting a woman with a bat.Roth had a hard act to follow, Richard Attenborough played John Christie in the film 10 Rillington Place.
Here Roth is hemmed in by the script because it builds up slowly to Christie's murderous spree and because it wants to approach the drama through different perspectives.While I admire the period setting, all dimly lit and rather squalid.
The BBC comes a cropper once again.
RILLINGTON PLACE once again sees the BBC come a cropper with their reworking of period-set drama.
To my mind, the Richard Attenborough film version of 1971 is pretty much untouchable, an acting masterclass with matter-of-fact direction that makes the depicted events all the more shocking thanks to their gritty realism.
By comparison, this 3 hour marathon is all about directorial style: ominous music, gloomy interiors, desperate attempts to build suspense.
And none of it works.The only person who comes out of this with any shred of credibility is Tim Roth.
No patch on Attenborough, of course, but at least he's acting.
Samantha Morton isn't bad either, but given very little to do aside from the usual 'downtrodden' role she so often plays.
The pace is languid and unhurried, and the depicted events are played out surprisingly subtle.
The entire first episode does nothing aside from setting up the main characters, and the film version contains about ten times the amount of atmosphere, realism, and power.