10 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 name is taken from the scene of the murders; 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London.Chillingly portrayed by the great actor Richard Attenborough , Christie was a little mouse of a man who first lured his victims home on some pretext or other, usually by saying that he could perform some desired medical procedure on them, for example, an abortion, which was illegal at the time.
Another reason was that he was able to turn the suspicions of the police from him to a not very bright truck driver named Timothy Evans, (played by John Hurt)  who was convicted of the death of his baby daughter, and was also suspected in the murder of his wife, but due to English law could only be tried for one or the other of them.
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 case of young and fully dim-witted Timothy Evans (so brilliantly played by John Hurt) who comes to lodge and whose pretty young wife (Geeson) becomes another victim of the serial killer Christie represented the height of British injustice when Christie himself was able to manipulate the facts to point the finger of guilt at Evans himself and who was actually hanged for the murder of his wife and child.
Three years after "the Boston strangler" ,Richard Fleischer brilliantly succeeds in transferring to the screen a horrible true story.The two movies do not look like each other though."Boston strangler" was spectacular,making the best use of the split screen I've ever seen."10 RP" is an austere bleak work ,all the more disturbing than its style is bald.Richard Attenborough(an extraordinary performance,on a par with Peter Lorre's"M") portrays one of those serial killers in the first half of last century.Two good examples :Landru ,whose character Charlie Chaplin used in "Monsieur Verdoux " and Claude Chabrol in his eponymous movie,or "Doctor Petiot" who was doing on a small scale (killing Jews to despoil them) what the Nazis were doing on a large one.
Christie ,Landru and Petiot are close relatives.They seem harmless,mediocre little men .Not the serial killer we meet in today's thrillers.And Christie is given the adequate treatment by his director:the poor house,the crummy flats ,the pubs ,the no-future of an uneducated generation (Fleischer lays stress on the fact that Tim cannot read and write ).This illiteracy is partly responsible for Tim's unfair revolting fate.Fleischer's style is plain;the trial scenes,when any director would have his actors overact is a lesson a lot of the current artists should pay attention to.The hanging could not be spookier.One cannot help but think that the last lines about Tim on the screen are a bit ironical.Matching Attenborough's awesome portrayal,is John Hurt's remarkable Tim:definitely not Gregory Peck as his wife thinks,macho but pitiful,a not very handsome whining lad who cannot hold a candle to his maleficent owner.You should see "the Boston strangler" and "10 Rillington place" one after the other.
Director Richard Fleischer is not portraying a serial killer monster like Hannibal Lector, but rather a boring and nice guy who turning to a mentally disturbed and brutal serial killer.The atmosphere in the dirty London suburbs is photographed in a very dark and intense way, as most of the scenes take place in Christie's old back street house.
Richard Fleischer directed several films dramatising real-life murders; '10 Rillington Place' is his re-enactment of John Christie's murders, adapted by Ludovic Kennedy from his book on the case.
He and his late wife Moira Shearer sometimes invited me to their home in Avebury.) This film, shot largely in the actual locations, benefits from note-perfect reconstruction of England and Wales in the ration-book days of meat-safes and doss-houses.I'm almost but not quite old enough to remember first-hand the scandal of Christie's murders, the false conviction and execution of Timothy Evans, and Christie's trial and execution.
10 Rillington Place is a creepy, eerie film about the true story of an innocent man, Timothy Evans, played by the wonderful John Hurt (who should be Knighted by now) is framed by his landlord, John Reginald Christie played the fabulous Lord Richard Attenborough, for the murder of his pregnant wife, Beryl, and infant daughter, Geraldine.
Both these women incorporate the faults (Beryl Evans is an inadequate mother and homemaker, Ethyl Christie won't tell the truth to save Tim Evans) for a complete performance.Just a couple of quibbles: In many scenes John Hurt is shown almost a full head taller than Richard Attenborough.
Brilliant underatted film about injustice.It tells two stories the life of serial killer John Reginald Christie and that of wrongly convicted and condemned Timothy Evans.Both of their characters are very well depicted in this very true and disturbing story.The film shows how the simple poor Timothy Evans was easily manipulated by the cleverer cold and cunning Christie.This is the only film that has given me nightmares,i think mainly because the film aims to be as realistic as possible.I never realised that they used the real 10 Rillington Place,i can understand now why the atmosphere of the film is so eerie and creepy,you've got to admit no other film is so convincing in giving you this effect,in the way this film does.The Shinning comes close,but then that was a much more expensive film and you know its really fiction.Dickie and John Hurt play their parts brilliantly,John Hurts Welsh accent is good and convincing,it shows how good an actor he really is.When Christy was eventually caught,he confessed to all his murders and later went on to confess to killing Beryl Evans,but always denied killing baby Geraldine,this is why Timothy Evans was not immediately given a pardon.No one was ever tried for killing baby Geraldine,so her death still remains unsolved.The chances are Christie was hoping to escape the death penalty by pleading insanity as it became established that Christies motives for murder were purely sexual ones,he had necrophillia,if he admitted killing baby Geraldine it would have blown his chances {he thought}.This would have proved him to be the cold blooded cunning psychopath capable of randomly killing anyone who got in his way.The film supports this view,this man was capable of anything,after all you cant believe a word of anyone who lies under oath in a court of law to let someone else go to the gallows for a murder that they had committed themselves.This is a brilliant anti capital punishment film,and along with the Derek Bently case which was a couple of years later shows just how easily an innocent person can be executed.This is a film that makes you think..
It creates a definitive 'world' in which the film can take place  a world which seems very real and is put across through thanks to feelings that anything could happen and that anybody could run into anybody; this creates a very unpredictable and uncomfortable atmosphere, especially if you're like me and you didn't know the full story about the real life events of John Christie.The film is also shot in a way that makes it look very grimy and very bleak  London in the 1940s and 50s is a perfect setting as run down houses and depressing to look at streets litter the exterior shots of the film when murder is in the air.
Also, the way in which these are shot is highly effective  Christie talks to the victims in a calm and logistical way; convincing them it'll be alright and for a time, it seems like it will be; it's only when they start struggling after realising something's wrong that the tension really begins and the build up pays off.When the film finishes its little first chapter which is dominated by realistic dialogue, fabulous cinematography and a blinding performance from Attenborough as Christie; it then goes down another route which brings the character of Evans more into play.
The film remains dark, brooding and there is definitely an uneasy feeling as you watch some later scenes which I'm sure you know of yet I shall not spoil but the predictability that it was at the time regarding 'bad guys' and 'justice' is followed through in a rather easy and unsatisfying manner although the film DID stick true to what happened in real life.I think 10 Rillington Place is one of those films that will remain etched into British film and into film in general as if there was ever a template to somehow work around when making a thriller/horror like this one, 10 Rillington Place is perhaps the first place you'd look..
Judy Geeson is excellent as Beryl Evans, as is her screen husband John Hurt; Richard Attenborough similarly turns in a blistering performance as their sinister yet cunning landlord Christie.
Christie then uses his excellent wit against Evans to kill Beryl and Geraldine, and get Evans wrongfully sent to the gallows for the murders.I find it very hard to sit through movies over 90 minutes long, but 10 Rillington Place kept me hooked all through it's 2 hour running time.
Richard Attenborough (who most people my age will probably only recognise as the old bloke from Jurassic Park) puts in an exceptional performance in the true life story of John Reginal Christie and the murders at 10 Rillington Place.
From what i have read of Christie, Attenborough acts him out perfectly as the quiet, unassuming and nonthreatening landlord, whilst at the same time managing to hold a creepy undertone throughout.A young couple Timothy and Beryl Evans (played by John Hurt and Judy Gleeson) choose to stay at rundown 10 Rillington Place as Tim's big dreams of becoming a somebody have not yet come into fruition (quite possibly because he is a very slow and very stupid dreamer that will never amount to anything.) Tim knows he has done well in managing to persuade Beryl to not only live with him, but to also have his first child.
It would appear in the film that the sex life he had with his wife died a death many years ago so he took to preying on innocent women - those that had the misfortune of renting a room in his seedy, dark and creepy house.Through the film it is clear that Christie's wife had at least a good idea as to what her sick and twisted husband was up to and this is why she went to stay with her family in Sheffield - she simply couldn't face up to the horrific truth of what her husband really was while at the same time she couldn't bring herself to bringing it to the attention of the Police through loyalty to her husband, no matter how sick he was.Nothing gave me greater joy to see Christie captured by the Thames and then to go on to suffer the same fate as the innocent Evans, even though I am against capital punishment.It goes to demonstrate that, back in those dark days it was quite easy to con the Police if you had a decent intelligence and let an innocent take the flack for your terrible crimes.The film is deeply disturbing, upsetting and tragic.
The darkness of the times, the grim and gritty environment are masterfully recreated, and the cast could not have been better chosen: John Hurt, as the naive Evans, and Richard Attenborough, as the sinister Christie, give truly impressive performances.These two actors are in quite a few of my favorite films.
10 Rillington Place is a movie about John Reginald Christie, portrayed by a frightening Richard Attenborough, who was one of Britain's most controversial serial killers.
It's portrayal of John Reginald Christie as a serial killer haunted me back at my first viewing and continues to haunt me to this day.As we watch the film we see the the careful and evil planning of the murders and believe me it's just dark....it does make your skin crawl.
In the post WWII years in London, Christie rents out a flat to a struggling young couple, Timothy and Beryl Evans (John Hurt and lovely Judy Geeson).
American director Richard Fleischer could sometimes ham up his films but shows a sure footing here showing a shabby, dishevelled post war London in this film chronicling a notorious miscarriage of justice, one which took an important step in the abolition of capital punishment from the British statute books.Richard Attenborough is chilling as the softly spoken charlatan John Christie, who claimed to know it all and who enticed women to his home in the pretext of inducing an abortion but who used his gas set up to murder women and then it is hinted, committed sexual acts on their dead bodies before hiding the corpses.John Hurt plays the dim braggart Timothy Evans who moves in as a tenant in the house along with his wife and baby daughter.
Hence, there are a couple of artistic licences taken with this true-crime story, but the film maintains a vice-like mind grip with its atmosphere of fear, a tactic with which director Fleischer had already successfully dabbled in his earlier serial killer flick, "The Boston Strangler".Judy Geeson plays Hurt's ill-fated young wife, while Pat Heywood is Attenborough's ignorant spouse and the remaining cast includes Isobel Black, Andre Morell, Robert Hardy, Basil Dignam, Rudolph Walker and Reg Lye all in very minor roles.
Never glorifying in the subject but likewise, never shying away from how the devious and conniving Christie wormed his way into people's desperate lives, the main thrust of the narrative is about new tenants, illiterate Welsh Valley's Timothy Evans (a young, utterly superb John Hurt, sporting a fine accent) and his wife, Beryl (Judy Geeson).With the couple in arrears with their rent at Rillington Place, Beryl finds that she is, again pregnant.
This is the kind of Film that can be Used to Argue that one Need Not Fill the Screen with Blood and Gore to make a Disturbing, Horrific Movie that will leave Audiences Gasping, coupled with Sleepless Nights and Shivering Spines.Richard Attenborough and John Hurt along with a Fine Supporting Cast give Richard Fleischer's No Nonsense Direction a True Crime Film that can Stand Alongside Any in the Genre.It is Creepy, Unnerving, and Gut-Wrenching the way it uses Real Locations and Strangles the Viewer with Claustrophobic Sets and Enclosed Environs.
A Must See for True Crime Fans and Movie Lovers who Relish the same Old Story with a completely Different Edge.Note...The real life serial killings portrayed in this Film that lead to the subsequent trial and false conviction and execution of the wrong Man helped in the abolition of the death penalty in Britain..
on which this film is based, the real life British serial killer John Reginald Christie.The film is the story of a young couple, Timothy and his wife Beryl, who move into the flat above Mr. Christie's at 10 Rillington Place and befriend him, having no idea of the tragedy he will bring upon them.It is nicely paced, and there isn't much action.
This is the one film that deflects some attention from 'Jack the Ripper' occasionally, within the genre of flicks on serial killers.It focuses on the murders of John Reginald Halliday Christie at his notorious 'House of Horrors', which has become synonomous with the address in our minds, in 1940's-50's Notting Hill, West London.A pathetic character , Christie, played by Richard Attenborough, has an air of the respectable neighbourly clerk, when in fact at the start of the film, we can see him burying bodies - the result of his sex-crazed killings, in the back garden.Yet this story does not end there.
Some writers actually believe Evans was guilty of this murder or that of his wife, whatever the posthumous pardon may state, that was given for the murder of his baby.This debate goes on to today and helped along the abolition of the death penalty in the UK.A fine, grisly atmospheric film, portrayed well by Richard Attenborough as Christie, John Hurt as Evans, Judy Geeson as Beryl and Pat Heywood as Ethel Christie..
"10 Rillington Place" tells the true story of one of Britain's most infamous serial killers, John Reginald Halliday Christie, who between 1943 and 1953 murdered seven women, including his own wife, and one young child.
A number of masterful acting performances dominate this production of Ludovic Kennedy's novel.A deceitful and manipulative Christie is portrayed by Attenborough as he continually dupes the gullible Evanses played by Judy Geeson and John Hurt.He convinces Timothy Evans to rent an apartment which Beryl Evans is clearly unsure about playing upon his competitive nature as a Welshman saying he has another offer from an Irish couple.This seems to set the scene for Christie's continual control over Evans which eventually leads to him confessing to a crime that a vast amount of evidence points to Christie having committed.There are a number of ironic statements in the dialog such as "I don't want this house getting a name" when telling Beryl and Tim off for shouting at each other frequently.Evans tells Christie that he expects to be promoted to manager soon to which Christie replies "don't you need to be able to read and write for that?" Christie continually mocks Evans even after his wife's death.
Timothy Evans (John Hurt) and his wife Beryl (Judy Geeson) move into 10 Rillington Place near middle-aged John Christie (Richard Attenborough).
It wasn't until a couple moved in downstairs that the true evil of John Christie became known.Timothy Evans and his pregnant wife Beryl moved in to 10 Rillington Place in 1949.
Three years after Evans was executed, it was discovered that the murderer was actually John Christie and that he was a serial killer who had killed six other women (including his wife) in 10 Rillington Place since 1943.
Timothy John Evans (BAFTA nominated John Hurt) with his wife Beryl (Judy Geeson) and their baby move in to the upstairs flats of 10 Rillington Place owned by John Reginald Christie (Lord Sir Richard Attenborough).