{"id":6748,"date":"2020-12-16T16:43:31","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T16:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/?p=6748"},"modified":"2023-01-12T16:47:34","modified_gmt":"2023-01-12T16:47:34","slug":"pete-walker-david-mcgillivray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/film\/pete-walker-david-mcgillivray\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A Very Serious Relapse\u2019: Pete Walker & David McGillivray\u2019s House of Whipcord, Frightmare and House of Mortal Sin"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Paul Lewis latest essay for Horrified is an extensive exploration of the work of director Pete Walker and his collaboration with screenwriter David McGillivray, focusing on three of the former’s best-known films…<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Pete Walker is a filmmaker whose once-controversial pictures have acquired a strong cult cache in the years since their original release. <\/b><\/p>

Taken in its entirety, his body of work runs the gamut from light sex comedies to grim terror pictures. The apotheosis of his career is, arguably, the three films he made with film critic-turned-screenwriter David McGillivray in the mid-1970s: House of Whipcord<\/b><\/i> (1974), Frightmare<\/em> <\/b>(1974) and House of Mortal Sin<\/b><\/em> (1976). Each of these films explores inter-generational conflict and takes aim at a repressive institution: in House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em>, the penal system; in Frightmare<\/b><\/em>, the family; and in House of Mortal<\/b> Sin<\/b><\/em>, the Church. Walker and McGillivray also collaborated on 1976\u2019s Schizo, a film that bears a number of similarities with the gialli all\u2019italiana (Italian-style thrillers) that were popular during that period \u2013 such as Dario Argento\u2019s 1975 Profondo rosso\/Deep Red<\/b><\/em> \u2013 and which anticipates the \u2018slasher\u2019 boom of the late-1970s. More conventionally plotted, though, with a fairly clever twist in its tail, Schizo sits slightly apart from the other Walker-McGillivray collaborations. (Notably, McGillivray also wrote two films \u2013 Satan\u2019s Slave<\/b><\/em> in 1976 and Terror<\/b><\/em> in 1978 \u2013 for Norman J Warren, a director whose career, in terms of his trajectory from sex films to horror pictures, bears some comparison with that of Walker.)<\/p>

Walker began his working life as a stand-up comic: his father, Syd Walker, had been a comedian, and his mother had been a showgirl. However, he \u2018retired\u2019 from comedy at the ripe old age of 19, and decided instead to pursue work as an actor. Eventually, he acquired the rights to a number of 8mm \u2018glamour\u2019 films and established another career distributing these, eventually moving into producing his own, with such descriptive titles as \u2018Soho Striptease<\/b><\/em>\u2019 (1960), \u2018Planned Seduction<\/b><\/em>\u2019 (1965) and \u2018Godiva Rides Again<\/b><\/em>\u2019 (1965). In the late 1960s, Walker progressed into making longer sex films (such as I Like Birds<\/b><\/em> in 1967, and School for Sex<\/b><\/em> in 1969), alternating the production of these with gangster films and thrillers \u2013 though Walker\u2019s gangster films also featured a heavy, easily marketable focus on sex. Of these, Man of Violence<\/b><\/em> (1970) is particularly interesting inasmuch it features a bisexual hero in the form of the underworld fixer Moon (played by Michael Latimer).<\/p>

With his creative foot firmly wedged in the door of feature film production, Walker soon made a name for himself as the director of feature-length softcore sex films such as Cool It, Carol!<\/em> <\/b>(1970) and The Four Dimensions of Greta<\/b><\/em> (1972). The second of these has been claimed by Walker as the first British film shot in 3D; the picture features a handful of 3D scenes, and Walker would resurrect this effect in his terror picture The Flesh and Blood Show<\/b><\/em> (also released in 1972), which featured a climax photographed in anaglyph 3D. (The 3D version of The Flesh and Blood Show<\/b><\/em> wasn\u2019t shown everywhere, however: a \u2018flat\u2019 version of the climax was also assembled, and Walker has admitted retrospectively that the 3D version wasn\u2019t a success \u2013 most audience members misplacing their anaglyph glasses by the time the film reached its final sequences.)<\/p>

In 1971, Walker made Die Screaming, Marianne<\/b><\/em>, a fairly straightforward thriller featuring Susan George as a young woman who is on the lam from her crooked father, a corrupt former judge played by Leo Genn. From here, Walker began making what he called \u2018terror\u2019 films, beginning with The Flesh and Blood Show<\/b><\/em>, briefly stepping away from the genre with the production of Tiffany Jones<\/b><\/em> in 1973, and Home Before Midnight<\/b><\/em> in 1979. Having established his own production company, through which all but one of his films were produced, Walker retained a sense of authorial control over his films, though this was mitigated in several instances by censor-imposed cuts.<\/p>

From his early filmmaking experiences, Walker learnt how to make films in the quickest way possible, with limited resources. In interviews, he has established a distinction between a film director \u2013 who he suggests is merely a technician that takes responsibility for the visualisation of the script (and Walker has suggested that the script is the key element of a film, not the work of the director) \u2013 and a \u2018filmmaker\u2019. The latter term, Walker has argued, denotes a greater responsibility for the finished product: a filmmaker, in Walker\u2019s words, \u2018starts with an idea [\u2026] He can manipulate the whole project [\u2026] and then he\u2019s got to get it funded, he\u2019s got to get it made [\u2026.] He\u2019s an overall creative businessman. That\u2019s the \u201cfilmmaker\u201d\u2019[1]<\/b>. Following this model, Walker would bankroll his own productions, using the profits from his previous films to finance the pictures through his own production company; the only exception to this was his last film, House of the Long Shadows<\/b><\/em>, which Walker made for Cannon Films in 1983. Walker would also initiate and take responsibility for developing the premises of his films in collaboration with his scriptwriters. (An exception seems to have been Frightmare<\/i><\/b>, which David McGillivray pitched to Walker, who initially baulked at the idea of making a picture about cannibalism.)<\/p>

Walker\u2019s terror pictures can roughly be divided into collaborations with specific writers. The film critic and budding scriptwriter David McGillivray built a relationship with Walker after interviewing the director for Films and Filming<\/b><\/em>, and the pair collaborated on the four pictures that arguably form the core of Walker\u2019s filmography: House of Whipcord, Frightmare<\/b>, House of Mortal Sin<\/b><\/em> and Schizo<\/b><\/em>. The Flesh and Blood Show<\/b><\/em> had been written by veteran scriptwriter Alfred Shaughnessy, who also scripted Walker\u2019s Tiffany Jones<\/b><\/em> in 1973; an adaptation of the well-known comic strip by Pat Tourret, Tiffany Jones<\/b><\/em> marked Walker\u2019s brief return to the sex comedy before he dived head-first into the nihilistic world of his collaborations with McGillivray. The Comeback<\/b><\/em> (1978) was written by Murray Smith, who had also written Die Screaming, Marianne<\/b><\/em> for Walker, along with the sex pictures Cool It, Carol!<\/b><\/em> and The Four Dimensions of Greta<\/b><\/em>. Murray Smith also wrote Walker\u2019s 1979 film Home Before Midnight<\/b><\/em>, a picture about a writer of pop ditties (Mike Beresford, played by James Aubrey) who strikes up a sexual relationship with a hitchhiker, Ginny Wilshire (Alison Elliott), unaware that she is only 14 years old. Home Before Midnight<\/b><\/em> is a film that has achieved a striking retrospective relevance when viewed in the context of the revelations of sexual misconduct by various figures involved in the pop music biz during the 1970s. Walker\u2019s final picture before retiring from filmmaking, House of the Long Shadows<\/b><\/em> was scripted by veteran filmmaker Michael Armstrong and stands out in Walker\u2019s filmography for several reasons: as mentioned above, it was bankrolled by Cannon Films; and unlike Walker\u2019s other films (barring Tiffany Jones<\/b><\/em>), it was also an adaptation of a pre-existing text, Earl Derr Biggers\u2019 1913 novel Seven Keys to Baldpate<\/b><\/em>, a book that has been adapted for the big screen on several occasions.<\/p>

Bringing Terror into the Present<\/b><\/h5>

With their contemporary settings, Pete Walker\u2019s terror films stood in stark contrast to the dominant paradigms of British horror cinema that had been established via Hammer\u2019s horror pictures in the wake of Terence Fisher\u2019s one-two-three hit of The Curse of Frankenstein<\/b><\/em> (1958), Dracula<\/b><\/em> (1958) and The Mummy<\/b><\/em> (1959) \u2013 in other words, Gothic horror films featuring supernatural (or man-made) monsters in a period setting. In the 1970s, with its agonal gasps, Hammer tried to drag what was arguably its most profitable monster, Christopher Lee\u2019s Dracula, into the modern-day in Dracula A.D. 1972<\/b><\/a><\/em> (Alan Gibson, 1972) and its sequel, The Satanic Rites of Dracula<\/b><\/em> (Alan Gibson, 1973). Though both of these films have acquired a cult reputation in the years since their original release, it\u2019s fair to say that they received a mixed reception at the time \u2013 their attempts to tap into a youth market, particularly through the depiction of Swinging London in Dracula A.D. 1972<\/b><\/em>, seeming quite desperate and, ironically, more disconnected from present-day reality than Hammer\u2019s period pictures of the 1950s and 1960s. (Incidentally, The Satanic Rites of Dracula<\/b><\/em> is notable as the last film that Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee would make together \u2013 until Pete Walker\u2019s 1983 picture House of the Long Shadows<\/b><\/em>.)<\/p>

In contrast, Walker\u2019s horror films were resolutely of the \u2018now\u2019, though very much about a Britain \u2013 or specifically, England \u2013 that remained shackled to the past, as represented through various repressive institutions: in House of Whipcord<\/i><\/b>, the penal system; in Frightmare<\/b><\/em>, the family; in House of Mortal Sin<\/b><\/em>, the Church. In fact, Walker has always preferred to call his films \u2018terror\u2019 \u2013 rather than \u2018horror\u2019 \u2013 films, to differentiate them from the Gothic, supernatural, period-set Hammer horror pictures of the era. \u2018I don\u2019t think I ever made horror movies\u2019, Walker has claimed, \u2018I made terror movies. Hammer made horror movies [\u2026] Mine were thrillers, I felt. They were graphic thrillers, perhaps\u2019[2]<\/b>. Elsewhere, he has argued, \u2018I was making contemporary thrillers, really\u2019[3]<\/b>. The distinction is a subtle one; and along with their contemporary settings, Walker\u2019s films\u2019 focus on grue and taboo subject matter (particularly corrupt family units) aligned his mid-1970s terror films more closely with some US-made horror pictures of the period, such as Wes Craven\u2019s The Last House on the Left<\/em> <\/b>(1972) and Tobe Hooper\u2019s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre<\/b><\/em> (1974).<\/p>

Walker\u2019s films of this era establish a curious sense of English Gothic, shorn of the period costumes and historical settings associated with the genre \u2013 focusing instead on brutal \u2018new town\u2019 environments, faded coastal resorts and their piers, fairgrounds, quaint cottages, high streets, roadside cafes and ageing Victorian prisons that function as symbols of the present\u2019s ties with (and fixation on) the past. Where Die Screaming, Marianne<\/b><\/em> had featured an early sequence with some nouvelle vague-style influences \u2013 a conversation being held in voiceover, above a disconnected montage of a car driving through the Spanish countryside \u2013 Walker\u2019s terror films of the mid-1970s are more in tune with the social realism of British \u2018New Wave\u2019 cinema. (It\u2019s worth noting that all of Walker\u2019s terror films, barring House of the Long Shadows<\/b><\/em>, had the same director of photography, Peter Jenner.) With their largely un-showy aesthetic and recognisable, frequently unspectacular environments, Walker\u2019s terror pictures are draped in a veneer of social realism beneath which a fetid underground lake of perversion and cruelty bubbles. The films\u2019 narratives frequently focus on journeys to isolated locales in which this underground lake swells and rises to the surface: the isolated Victorian prison in House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em>; the cottage in which Dorothy and Edmund reside in Frightmare<\/b><\/em>; the lonely presbytery in House of Mortal Sin<\/b><\/em>. In Walker\u2019s dedication to breaking free from the Gothic trappings of Hammer\u2019s horror films, Walker\u2019s terror pictures represent a profound shift away from escapist supernatural horrors to something much more grounded and nihilistic.<\/p>

House of Whipcord (1974)<\/b><\/h5>

House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em> opens on a dark and stormy night. A young woman, Anne-Marie (Penny Irving), is found by a truck driver and begs for his help. He takes her for a victim of sexual assault and promises to drive her to help.<\/p>

An extended flashback follows. Anne-Marie, a model, meets the slick but ever-so-creepy Mark E DeSade (Robert Tayman) at a party. (The name should have been enough of a warning as to his intentions, to be fair.) DeSade\u2019s interest is piqued when Anne-Marie is mocked by the other attendees for her part in a nude photoshoot that was interrupted by the police, a story that has made headlines. After a restaurant date, DeSade promises to take Anne-Marie to visit his mother in the countryside. However, he takes her to an isolated Victorian prison where she is stripped and booked by two wardens, Walker (Sheila Keith) and Bates (Dorothy Gordon).<\/p>

The prison, it turns out, is run by Mark\u2019s mother, Mrs Wakehurst (Barbara Markham). Wakehurst is a former prison governess who was dismissed after one of the inmates in her prison was found dead. (Wakehurst, it seems, murdered her, though was found not guilty of the crime.) Subsequently, Wakehurst established her own reformatory with the assistance of her lover, a former High Court judge, the blind and senile Justice Bailey (Patrick Barr); this \u2018institution\u2019 is focused on punishing young women, who are kidnapped by Wakehurst and her cronies, for perceived immoral behaviour. Wakehurst uses Bailey to provide validation for her cruel treatment of the women she abducts, incarcerates, tortures and, occasionally, kills.<\/p>

\"house<\/p>

Meanwhile, Anne-Marie\u2019s friend Julia (Ann Michelle), who is having an affair with married Tony (Ray Brooks), notices Anne-Marie\u2019s disappearance; Julia and Tony attempt to track down Anne-Marie\u2019s whereabouts.<\/p>

There are some delicious ironies in the film\u2019s opening sequence. Jack (Ivor Salter), the truck driver who rescues Anne-Marie, assumes her to be the victim of a sexual assault, and also assumes that her attacker is male. \u2018Who did that to you, love?\u2019, he asks her, utterly appalled: \u2018He deserves to swing for it. Don\u2019t worry. He won\u2019t get away with it [\u2026.] Some of these blokes, it makes you wonder how their minds work\u2019. The trucker\u2019s casual suggestion that the culprit should \u2018swing\u2019 for the attack on Anne-Marie subtly suggests that Wakehurst\u2019s cruel treatment of \u2018wayward\u2019 young women is simply an exaggerated element within a society that, more broadly, still values capital and corporal punishment \u2013 even years after both were abolished. It also foreshadows the hanging of Anne-Marie that takes place later in the narrative.<\/p>

Walker\u2019s collaborations with McGillivray foreground intergenerational conflict, an older \u2018parent\u2019 generation seeking to repress more liberal youth through abhorrent acts of violence. (In House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em>, the repressive \u2018parent\u2019 generation is represented through Wakehurst and Bailey, her not-entirely-willing accomplice, who is largely kept in the dark about the cruelties inflicted by Wakehurst, Walker and Bates.) Taken as a whole, the films have a persistent, almost pathological focus on corrupt figures of authority. Perhaps some of this comes from Walker\u2019s own background: discussing House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em>, Walker has suggested that the premise of the film drew on his Catholic school upbringing and \u2018the great piousness of these priests and brothers who were teaching me. But they were quite evil people, some of them\u2019[4]<\/b>.<\/p>

\"house<\/p>

House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em> opens with an onscreen title declaring, \u2018This film is dedicated to those who are disturbed by today\u2019s lax moral codes and who eagerly await the return of corporal and capital punishment\u2019. Some commentators have seen parallels between Barbara Markham\u2019s appearance and performance as Mrs Wakehurst, and Margaret Thatcher, who at the time of the film\u2019s production was Secretary of State for Education. In 1961, Thatcher had, of course, memorably voted to restore birching as a punishment and deterrent for criminals, using language that would make Mrs Wakehurst tremble at the knees: \u2018I do not agree that crime is a symptom of mental disease\u2019, Thatcher had told the House of Commons, \u2018Psychological treatment certainly has a place, but in the case of the hardened type of vicious young criminal it might be to the community’s disadvantage to encourage the thought in him that the crime was not his fault but was due to something in his background and that he was therefore justified in what he did. If, instead of giving him a short, sharp lesson, we encourage in him a feeling of self-justification, we may completely blot out all feeling of guilt or shame\u2019[5]<\/b>. Justice Bailey\u2019s words in the film, outlining to Anne-Marie the function of Wakehurt\u2019s institution, use similar rhetoric: Wakehurst\u2019s \u2018house of correction\u2019 exists, Bailey says, \u2018to cast what we regard as proper sentence on depraved females of every category on whom the effete and misguided courts of Great Britain today have been too lenient [\u2026.] This, young woman, is a real prison and a proper house of correction\u2019. (It\u2019s easy to forget that corporal punishment in British schools was only outlawed in 1986; prior to that, I vividly remember seeing one particular schoolfriend of mine being struck with a ruler so regularly that it became an almost daily part of the class routine, and my late father often recalled being beaten by the teachers at his rural school for nothing worse than coming from the \u2018wrong\u2019 village.)<\/p>

More specifically, House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em> had relevance for the era of Mary Whitehouse and the Nationwide Festival of Light, who during September of 1971 had held a couple of high profile rallies, in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square, against perceived permissiveness in the media landscape. Walker and McGillivray\u2019s original intentions were to make a WIP (Women in Prison) film but this eventually \u2018started to veer towards [a satire of] the Festival of Light\u2019, Walker has said, and the notion of \u2018\u201cright\u201d people taking a \u201crighteous\u201d stand but [who] were just more evil than the people they were criticising\u2019[6]<\/b>. Walker saw the picture as an opportunity to poke fun at the hypocrisies of the ruling classes, Mrs Wakehurst and Justice Bailey functioning as caricatures of moral crusaders such as Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford. (Walker has suggested that the BBFC Secretary, Stephen Murphy, recognised House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em> as a satirical depiction of Whitehouse and Longford, with the result that he passed the film with minimal cuts.)<\/p>

There are some clumsy elements, to be sure: for example, the name of Mark E DeSade, which one might reasonably assume would be enough of a warning for Anne-Marie. Walker also displays no qualms about incorporating some salacious nudity, with Sheila Keith\u2019s Walker demanding that Anne-Marie strip naked, in her arrival at the prison, so that she may \u2018be bathed and checked for vermin\u2019. (Walker \u2013 the director Pete Walker, that is, rather than Sheila Keith\u2019s character in the picture \u2013 has stated that his days as a stand-up comic taught him the commercial potential of female nudity.)<\/p>

\"house<\/p>

What works very well is how the narrative sets the present-day, with its apparent licentiousness (Anne-Marie\u2019s status as a nude model; Julia\u2019s affair with the married Tony), at odds with Wakehurst\u2019s world, which seems to exist in the past. Travelling to Wakehurst\u2019s institution is almost like a journey into an earlier time. After discussing the whereabouts of Anne-Marie, to get to the prison\/reformatory Julia and Tony must travel from modern London to a quaint village, where they are offered vague directions by a rural policeman. The institution itself is very Victorian, with huge portcullis-like gates and puke-green walls. (The exteriors were shot at Littledean Jail, which was completed in 1791 and closed as a prison in 1854; thereafter it was used as a police station and magistrate\u2019s court, and since 2003 has been the site of a rather controversial museum of crime.) The juxtaposition between the present and the past, represented by the prison, is most evident when Anne-Marie is taken there by Mark, her modish, playful suede jumpsuit at odds with the setting. These two worlds are often connected through some clever cross-cutting: there is a particularly memorable cut from the bars of Anne-Marie\u2019s room in Wakehurst\u2019s \u2018house of correction\u2019 to the criss-cross pattern of the bamboo headboard of Julia\u2019s bed, where Julia is making pillow talk with her married lover, Tony.<\/p>

What also works delightfully is Sheila Keith\u2019s performance as the sadistic Walker, who takes great delight in punishing the young women who have been incarcerated\/abducted by Wakehurst. \u2018There\u2019s nobody to flaunt yourself at here. Nobody to tease\u2019, she tells Anne-Marie, \u2018I\u2019m going to make you ashamed of your body [\u2026.] I\u2019m going to see to that personally\u2019. Keith\u2019s Walker is keen to escalate the girls\u2019 punishment from the first-tier (solitary confinement) to the second tier (flogging), whereas Wakehurst seems to take personal pleasure in the third tier punishment (execution by hanging). Keith\u2019s Walker takes great delight in lashing Anne-Marie, telling her, \u2018I think you\u2019re dying [\u2026] Little by little. First, we will kill your vanity, then the rest dies of its own accord\u2019. That night, Walker enters Anne-Marie\u2019s cell and fetishistically strokes the wounds on her back.<\/p>

As Walker, Sheila Keith arguably steals the show, out-villaining the film\u2019s chief antagonist, Mrs Wakehurst. It\u2019s easy to see why she was given a more prominent in Walker\u2019s next terror film, Frightmare<\/b><\/em>.<\/p>

Frightmare (1974)<\/b><\/h5>

Frightmare<\/b><\/em> opens with a black-and-white sequence set in 1957. In this sequence, Barry Nichols (Andrew Sachs) wanders through a fairground and enters the trailer of a fortune teller. There, he is murdered, his skull split apart. Thereafter, married couple Dorothy and Edmund Yates (Sheila Keith and Rupert Davies) are sentenced for the murder (and others besides); they are committed to a mental institution. (Dorothy, it is later revealed, is a cannibal; Edmund has assisted in covering up her crimes.)<\/p>

In the present day, wayward teenager Debbie (Kim Butcher) is in the care of her older, more responsible half-sister Jackie (Deborah Fairfax). Though she has had minimal to zero contact with her parents, Debbie is the daughter of Dorothy and Edmund; Jackie is Edmund\u2019s daughter from a previous marriage. (What happened to Jackie\u2019s mother is never specified.)<\/p>

Dorothy and Edmund have been released from the mental institution in which they were incarcerated; and whilst Jackie has kept Debbie away from Dorothy and Edmund, Jackie has been assisting Edmund by providing him with raw meat. Edmund feeds this meat to his wife, hoping to quell her cannibalistic impulses.<\/p>

\"frightmare<\/p>

At a dinner party, Jackie meets Graham (Paul Greenwood), a psychiatrist. The two quickly form a relationship, despite Graham\u2019s clumsiness with the opposite sex. However, it becomes increasingly clear to Jackie that Dorothy has returned to her murderous, cannibalistic ways; and Debbie\u2019s challenging, sometimes violent behaviour is escalating too. Graham becomes committed to using his skills as a psychiatrist to help address Debbie\u2019s issues, leading both Jackie and Graham into a confrontation with Edmund and Dorothy\u2026 and Debbie, who has found her way into the heart of this peculiar family.<\/p>

\u2018They fuck you up, your mum and dad \/ They may not mean to, but they do \/ They fill you with the faults they had \/ And add some extra, just for you\u2019, wrote poet Philip Larkin in \u2018This Be the Verse<\/em>\u2019, a poem that appeared first in print in New Humanist<\/b><\/em> in 1971, and was published in Larkin\u2019s 1974 volume High Windows<\/b><\/em>. The poem has stark relevance for Walker\u2019s Frightmare<\/i><\/b>, released during the Christmas period at the end of 1974. Christmas is a festival of family and feasting, and Walker\u2019s film is about both of these \u2013 if, by \u2018family\u2019, you mean the most dysfunctional, murderous household in England; and if by \u2018feasting\u2019, you include the cannibalistic consumption of human cerebral matter.<\/p>

Following the success of House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em>, wanting to rush another film into production, McGillivray approached Walker with the raw idea for what became Frightmare<\/b><\/em>, but Walker\u2019s initial response was to shy away from the notion of making a film about cannibalism, believing it would only appeal to \u2018perverted minds\u2019[7]<\/b>. In comparison with her part as Walker in House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em>, Sheila Keith was given a more prominent role as the film\u2019s \u2018monster\u2019: housewife Dorothy, who uses her talent as a reader of Tarot cards to lure victims to her before dispatching them in brutal ways and using a power drill to extract their brains \u2013 which she then eats. It was a role that was relished by Keith, who had reputedly felt stifled in the stereotypical roles she had previously been given in television dramas and serials. Certainly, she performs with gusto. The key image from Frightmare<\/b><\/em>, referenced on the poster and various other promotional material for the film, is a point-of-view shot from one of Dorothy\u2019s victims as a leering Dorothy advances towards the camera, mania in her eyes, holding a power drill (fitted with a wood drill bit); the drill bites into flesh, and blood splashes onto the increasingly excited Dorothy\u2019s face. (This is, of course, approximately five years before Abel Ferrara\u2019s 1979 \u2018video nasty\u2019 Driller Killer<\/b><\/em> would employ strikingly similar iconography.)<\/p>

\"frightmare<\/p>

As in House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em>, Frightmare<\/b><\/em> juxtaposes the past and the present. Dorothy and Edmund are an outwardly polite, stereotypically English couple. They reside in a cottage which Edmund has secured as part of his newfound employment as a chauffeur. In contrast, their daughter Debbie, a makeup artist at the BBC, lives a very contemporary life as a young, middle-class professional: she is introduced holding a dinner party in her swanky flat. At one point in the film, Jackie has a nightmare: travelling in a train carriage, she is confronted by Dorothy, seated across from her, staring. Dorothy\u2019s face is pasty, the flesh around her eyes a vivid red; she holds a bloody parcel, wrapped in brown paper. Dorothy nears Jackie, blood dripping from her lips onto the pages of the book Jackie has been reading. This nightmare sequence seems to suggest, symbolically, that Jackie is frightened of her respectability being tainted by Dorothy\u2019s past.<\/p>

Edmund has enlisted Jackie in enabling Dorothy\u2019s behaviour (by providing packets of raw meat for her to consume), though he tells his daughter that Dorothy has \u2018taken to just standing, listening. I don\u2019t know why [\u2026.] It could be my imagination, but I have a feeling that she\u2019s trying to make me believe that she is better\u2019. For her part, Dorothy informs Jackie that \u2018I think I left all my headaches and my problems behind when I left the\u2026 other place\u2019.<\/p>

House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em> had featured an interesting power dynamic, from the perspective of gender stereotypes, with Mrs Wakehurst presiding over the mock penitentiary; the doddering Justice Bailey was used by Wakehurst as little more than a puppet, his authority as a former High Court judge offering legitimacy to her acts of cruelty by providing the weight of his signature on the documentation she produced to support the punishments meted out to the incarcerated young women. (Who this documentation is intended for, is never explained.) There are perhaps parallels to be made with the American film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre<\/b><\/em> (released in the US the same year as House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em>, but denied a certificate by the BBFC when submitted in 1975), and the manner in which the cannibalistic family kowtow to the decrepit, seemingly partially mummified Grandpa.<\/p>

\"frightmare<\/p>

This inversion of patriarchy, for want of a better phrase, is carried through to Frightmare<\/b><\/em>, where it is foregrounded in the relationship between Dorothy and her husband Edmund. Edmund is fully aware of what Dorothy is capable of, and in the wake of the murder depicted in the opening flashback, he is convicted alongside her. Upon the couple\u2019s release, Edmund enlists his oldest daughter, Jackie \u2013 Dorothy\u2019s stepdaughter \u2013 to source raw meat for Dorothy to consume, hoping to quell her cannibalistic urges. (\u2018You seriously thought you could diminish her killing instincts by pretending to do it for her?\u2019, a disbelieving Graham asks Jackie when he discovers, later in the film, that Jackie has been providing Dorothy with packages of raw meat.) However, the canny Dorothy is up to her old tricks, luring victims to the cottage with a newspaper advert foregrounding her skills as a fortune teller, before dispatching them brutally, cannibalising their corpses and storing what remains of the bodies in a disused stable adjacent to the cottage in which the couple live.<\/p>

At an undisclosed point in the narrative, Dorothy makes contact with and recruits her biological daughter, Jackie\u2019s younger sister Debbie, whose sadistic, eventually murderous behaviour \u2013 despite being raised in an institution whilst her mother was incarcerated \u2013 suggests an innate predilection for violence. When the passive Edmund discovers this, he becomes little more than an enabler \u2013 turning a blind eye to Dorothy\u2019s (and, eventually, Debbie\u2019s) most curious peccadillo, and assisting in the murder of Graham and Jackie that takes place in Frightmare<\/b><\/i>\u2019s final scenes. Edmund\u2019s quiet complicity in his wife\u2019s curious fascination, to the extent that he would help Dorothy to kill Jackie and Graham, is established earlier in the film. Though Edmund appears harmless, his seeming inability to prevent Dorothy\u2019s murderous behaviour (presumably because he fears reprisals from his wife) is gradually suggested to be something much more complicit – a pathological refusal to intervene, perhaps, or possibly even a precarious\/voyeuristic pleasure in her activities. In other words, Edmund is just as dangerous as his wife. Earlier in the film, Jackie speaks with Edmund, noting that Dorothy has \u2018been in an asylum for 15 years. She must be cured\u2019. In response, Edmund reminds Jackie, \u2018We\u2019ve both been in an asylum, Jackie\u2019. The viewer might be reminded of the aphorism often (mis)attributed to Edmund Burke: \u2018The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing\u2019. Or, to couch it in a biblical reference of the kind Walker uses in both House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em> and House of Mortal Sin<\/b><\/em>, \u2018Rescue those being led away to death, and restrain those stumbling toward the slaughter\u2019 (Proverbs 24:11).<\/p>

It is with Frightmare<\/b><\/em>, particularly, that Walker achieved a reputation as a maker of exploitation films featuring strong women and weak men. The parallels between Wakehurst and Bailey in House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em>, and Dorothy and Edmund in Frightmare<\/b><\/em>, are reinforced in a line delivered in House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em> by Wakehurst\u2019s son, Mark: \u2018They\u2019re insane\u2019, he tells Anne-Marie in reference to his parents, \u2018Can\u2019t you see that? They\u2019re not really criminals. They need treatment\u2019. Of course, in Frightmare<\/b><\/em>, Dorothy and Edmund have been released after such \u2018treatment\u2019 \u2013 and Walker seems to show how flawed that premise is.<\/p>

\"frightmare<\/p>

Frightmare<\/b><\/em> opens with the murder of Barry Nichols in 1957, photographed in black and white. Dorothy and Edmund are sentenced for this crime by a judge who admits that, \u2018In 22 years on the bench, I have not found a more sickening case\u2019. Committing the pair to a mental institution, the judge asserts, \u2018And let the members of the public be assured that you will remain in this mental institution until there can be no doubt whatsoever that you are fit and able to take your place in society again\u2019. However, in the present day, the couple are declared sane and released \u2013 only for Dorothy to suffer what Edmund describes as \u2018a very serious relapse\u2019. (After the film\u2019s climax, in which Jackie and Graham are murdered by Dorothy, Walker presents the judge\u2019s words on the soundtrack once again; at this point in the story, the audience will no doubt be shaking their heads at the naivete of the judge\u2019s declarations and implicit belief in the concept of rehabilitation \u2013 having seen the extent to which Dorothy and Edmund have, since their release, simply reverted to their old, murderous ways.)<\/p>

When Graham investigates the incarceration of Jackie\u2019s parents, intending to help Debbie, he discovers to his astonishment, given the nature of their crimes, that they have been released. He speaks to a psychiatrist, Matthew Lawrence (Gerald Flood), at the mental hospital where Dorothy was committed. Lawrence tells Graham that when Dorothy was a child during the Depression, her parents used her pet rabbit for food; Lawrence says that she was \u2018in such shock that she twisted the horror of the situation into something pleasurable\u2019. Dorothy\u2019s case \u2018was the first case of cannibanthropy on record in this country\u2019. When Graham expresses shock at the fact that Dorothy and Edmund have been released, Lawrence tells him, \u2018We didn\u2019t kick them out for the fun of it. They\u2019re completely cured. As sane as you or I\u2019. Walker undercuts Lawrence\u2019s words immediately, by cutting to Dorothy and Edmund with the corpse of one of Dorothy\u2019s victims. \u2018You won\u2019t tell anyone, will you, Eddie?\u2019, she pleads. \u2018These people, they have no relations, no friends. No-one will miss them\u2019.<\/p>

Frightmare<\/b><\/em> was criticised by those who felt Walker\u2019s film was validating the idea that those responsible for extreme criminal acts, like Dorothy in the film, cannot be rehabilitated and that in most cases, recidivism is inevitable. (One might remember Margaret Thatcher\u2019s 1961 defence of birching, quoted above in discussion of House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em>). \u2018The liberal press just took it [the film] apart\u2019, Walker has said[8].<\/p>

\"frightmare<\/p>

Although Debbie has had minimal or zero contact with her parents, she shares her mother\u2019s proclivity for sadism. Debbie is introduced arriving with a group of bikers at a nightclub, where she causes havoc by telling her boyfriend, Alec (Edward Kalinski), that the barman, who has refused to serve her a drink (she is underage), called her a \u2018tart\u2019. She intends to provoke a fight and relish in the ensuing violence. Alec and his cronies wait outside the nightclub and attack the barman. After they leave, Debbie murders the barman by whipping him across the face with a chain; later, she leads Alec to the body and suggests that he and his friends killed the barman accidentally, thus persuading him to hide the corpse. Already. Debbie is displaying her mother\u2019s ability to manipulate her lover into covering up her crimes. Both Dorothy and Debbie exhibit manipulative behaviour \u2013 employing, to get their own way, everything from threats and violence to tears and self-pity. The similarities between the behaviours of Dorothy and Debbie is suggested throughout the film by cross-cutting from one to another. When Edmund confronts Dorothy about her murders, Dorothy launches into a sob story about being \u2018so lonely\u2019: \u2018Can\u2019t I have my interests?\u2019, she pleads. (After Edmund catches her in the aftermath of another murder, Dorothy \u2013 a pitiful expression on her face \u2013 declares weakly, \u2018I had to do it\u2019.)<\/p>

Through the character of Debbie, Frightmare<\/b><\/em> suggests that violent behaviour is to some extent innate. Debbie is a source of consternation for Jackie, who has taken responsibility for her after her release from an unspecified institution \u2013 most likely an orphanage, but given Debbie\u2019s behaviour, perhaps a reformatory. (In the nightclub, before the incident with the barman, Alec is warned by one of his mates that \u2018You\u2019ll get done. She\u2019s underage. She\u2019s just out of a convent\u2019, to which Debbie responds, \u2018It wasn\u2019t a convent!\u2019) To her respectable, middle-class friends, Jackie tries to excuse her sister\u2019s wayward behaviour by commenting simply that \u2018My sister\u2019s a bit of an extrovert\u2019.<\/p>

Surprisingly, given Walker\u2019s background in sex pictures \u2013 which bubbled under the surface of House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em>, a film that featured ample female nudity \u2013 there is little to no sex in Frightmare<\/b><\/em>. In fact, the film has a very puritanical point-of-view. Walker\u2019s next terror picture, however, would feature a heavier focus on sex offset by a relationship that has been made deeply unhealthy by the repression of sexual desire over a long period, and a narrative which foregrounds puritanical attitudes towards sex through the words and deeds of its chief antagonist, a priest.<\/p>

House of Mortal Sin (1976)<\/b><\/h5>

Returning to his old stomping ground after entering the priesthood, Father Bernard Cutler (Norman Eshley) has a chance encounter with a former friend, Jenny Welch (Susan Penhaligon). Jenny is in the process of opening an antique shop with her sister, Vanessa (Stephanie Beacham). Jenny and Vanessa live in a flat about their shop, and when Bernard reveals that he has no place to stay, Jenny suggests he should move in with them for the time being. At the same time, following an argument, Jenny\u2019s boyfriend, Terry Wyatt (Stewart Bevan), is in the process of moving out of Jenny\u2019s space.<\/p>

One day, Jenny wanders into a Catholic church, looking for Bernard. She doesn\u2019t find him but decides to give confession. She tells the priest that she had an abortion; in response, the priest, Father Meldrum (Anthony Sharp), asks increasingly prying questions about her sex life with Terry. When Jenny exits the church, she leaves behind her keys; and using these, Meldrum, who in reality is a murderous maniac, visits Jenny\u2019s flat whilst Jenny is out. There he encounters Jenny\u2019s friend Bob (John Yule). Believing Bob to be Jenny\u2019s boyfriend Terry, Meldrum attacks him brutally, throwing boiling water from a stovetop kettle into his face. When Jenny returns home, she finds Bob unconscious. (Meldrum has fled the scene.) Bob is hospitalised.<\/p>

The next day, Meldrum telephones Jenny and tells her that he has her keys, which he claims she left in the church. He invites her to come to the presbytery to collect them. There, she meets Meldrum\u2019s housekeeper, Miss Brabazon (Sheila Keith). Brabazon is responsible for caring for Meldrum\u2019s elderly mother (Hilda Barry); but each time Meldrum leaves, Brabazon treats the old lady cruelly.<\/p>

\"house<\/p>

Meldrum plays for Jenny a recording he has made of her confession, hoping to blackmail her with its contents (the revelation that she had a secret abortion) into becoming his \u2018pupil\u2019 at the presbytery. Jenny tells Vanessa and Father Cutler about the recording, but when they confront Meldrum he plays for them another, seemingly innocent recording of his case notes, suggesting that it was this that angered Jenny. When Meldrum kills Terry, Jenny struggles to find anyone who will believe her claims about the sinister behaviour of the murderous priest.<\/p>

Made a couple of years after the success of William Friedkin\u2019s The Exorcist<\/b><\/em> (1973) spawned a slew of horror films focusing on the priesthood, House of Mortal Sin<\/b><\/em> is also somewhat similar to Robert Hartford-Davis\u2019 1972 film The Fiend<\/b><\/em> (aka Beware My Brethren<\/b><\/em>). Hartford-Davis\u2019 picture focused on a fundamentalist group named \u2018the Brethren\u2019, led by Patrick Magee\u2019s charismatic Minister. Inspired by the Minister\u2019s puritanical sermons, youthful Kenny Wemys (Tony Beckley) \u2013 a Norman Bates-alike who lives with his overbearing mother \u2013 embarks on a killing spree, murdering young women whom he perceives to be immoral. The similarities between The Fiend<\/b><\/em> and House of Mortal Sin<\/b><\/em> are self-evident, and both films take aim at the hypocrisy of the Church \u2013 though, in Walker\u2019s film, the murders are committed directly by a man of the cloth, Father Meldrum. When Jenny tries to expose Meldrum\u2019s wicked ways, by telling Vanessa and Cutler of the recording Meldrum made during confession, Meldrum plays for Vanessa and Cutler a different, far more innocent recording of his case notes. \u2018She\u2019s a disturbed girl\u2019, Meldrum tells Cutler, \u2018who is still in what I believe is termed a \u201cstate of shock.\u201d Given Meldrum\u2019s position as a priest, both Vanessa and Cutler believe him and begin to doubt Jenny\u2019s sanity, thinking that she might be paranoid.<\/p>

House of Mortal Sin<\/b><\/em> opens with a young woman, Valerie Davey (Kim Butcher), returning home to her parents\u2019 house. She goes to her bedroom and packs her things; her parents hear her cry out, and discover she has fallen to her death from her bedroom window. In her room, pages from a Bible are shown blowing in the wind that enters the room from the open window. Through this symbolism, the film\u2019s mise-en-sc\u00e8ne connects her death to her association with Meldrum \u2013 something which doesn\u2019t come to the foreground of the narrative until much later in the film.<\/p>

\"house<\/p>

House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em> had ended with a quote from Deuteronomy 25:1, delivered via voiceover: \u2018If there be a controversy between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges may judge them; then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked. And it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face, according to his fault, by a certain number. Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee\u2019. As noted in the discussion of House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em> above, Walker has suggested that the film was informed by his Catholic school upbringing and how this heightened his awareness of the hypocrisies of the Church and the self-righteous. House of Mortal Sin<\/b><\/em> tackles this motif in Walker\u2019s collaborations with McGillivray more directly, taking as its central point of focus Christianity \u2013 specifically, Catholicism and the repression (and desublimation) of desire.<\/p>

Father Meldrum\u2019s \u2018problems\u2019 stem, it seems, from his sexual repression. The narrative slowly makes it clear that Meldrum ran into the priesthood at the behest of his mother, in response to both his murderous impulses and a relationship in his youth with Miss Brabazon. There\u2019s the hint of a festering Psycho\u00ad\u00ad-like Oedipal complex behind Meldrum\u2019s actions, Meldrum\u2019s once overbearing mother now stripped of her mobility and voice by the ageing process. \u2018You guided me away from temptation, into God\u2019s service\u2019, Meldrum tells his invalid mother, \u2018But I need your help again, mother. The old temptations, they\u2019ve returned. They\u2019ve been growing for some time\u2019. In the years since, Brabazon has refused to leave Meldrum\u2019s side; though their relationship is not sexual, Brabazon is clearly devoted to Meldrum, telling him that she followed him int the Church \u2018because I was happy to share your house even if I couldn\u2019t share your bed\u2019.<\/p>

Where in Frightmare<\/b><\/em>, Edmund was Dorothy\u2019s \u2018enabler\u2019, in House of Mortal Sin<\/b><\/em> the gender roles are reversed and Brabazon enables the murderous Meldrum in the enactment of his murderous fantasies, also helping him to cover these up. In her role as Miss Brabazon, Sheila Keith is again a delight. She wears an eyepatch and spectacles for much of the film; towards the end of the picture, she removes the eyepatch to remind Meldrum of her deformed eye socket, which caused her to be ridiculed as a child. It\u2019s subtly suggested that the manner in which Brabazon was mocked and bullied by her peers has led her to become deeply cruel in adulthood. Her cruelty manifests itself in her encounters with Meldrum\u2019s ailing, decrepit mother, who Brabazon taunts verbally and physically: for example, by force-feeding her a cup of tea. (\u2018He\u2019s gone out again, I\u2019m afraid\u2019, Brabazon threatens Meldrum\u2019s mother at one point, \u2018You\u2019re all alone again\u2026 with me\u2019.)<\/p>

\"house<\/p>

The murders that Meldrum commits are suggested to be a form of desublimation. His victims are those labelled by him as immoral. He pursues Jenny after she wanders into his church, looking for Bernard, and decides to give confession. During this scene, Meldrum listens patiently as Jenny tells him that she had an abortion. But his questions become increasingly intrusive and focused on Jenny\u2019s sex life, actor Anthony Sharp investing them with a quiet sense of desperation. \u2018I want to help you\u2019, he pleads, trying to urge her into giving him more details, \u2018You must let me try [\u2026.] Together we will seek God\u2019s help\u2019. Jenny is clearly unnerved but, having not given confession since childhood, seems willing to give Meldrum the benefit of the doubt.<\/p>

When Jenny visits the presbytery the next day, to collect her keys, she is unaware that it was Meldrum who attacked Bob. Meldrum speaks to Jenny with the officious rhetoric of the pious. \u2018Think of the spiritual rewards we will find, Jenny\u2019, Meldrum tells her, trying to persuade her to return to the presbytery for \u2018guidance\u2019: \u2018This man, he\u2019s corrupting you. Let me show you the way to true happiness [\u2026.] I have many pupils, you know, and I always quote them a line from the Book of Numbers, Chapter 22: \u201cBe sure your sins will find you out\u201d\u2019. Meldrum plays for Jenny a recording he has made on cassette of her confession, hoping to be able to blackmail her into becoming another of his \u2018pupils\u2019 \u2013 like Valerie, whose death we saw in the film\u2019s opening scene. \u2018You have no right\u2019, Jenny protests. \u2018I have every right!\u2019, Meldrum asserts, \u2018I was put on this earth to combat sin, and I shall use every available means to do so [\u2026.] You cannot survive without me\u2019.<\/p>

In each of Walker\u2019s collaborations with McGillivray, we find characters who know how to use language and rhetorical strategies to manipulate the listener, and to achieve their own ends. In House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em>, of course, we have Wakehurst and Bailey, who use the rhetoric of the law to justify their cruel treatment of the girls in their \u2018house of correction\u2019. In Frightmare<\/b><\/em>, Dorothy uses language to present herself to Edmund as helpless and regretful. Frightmare<\/b><\/em> also features prominent use of discourse associated with mental health professionals, the value and sincerity of which Walker mocks. This is particularly evident in the conversation Graham has with Matthew Lawrence, whose declaration that Dorothy and Edmund are \u2018as sane as you and I\u2019 is undercut immediately by a cut to Dorothy and Edmund trying to hide the body of one of her victims. Here, in House of Mortal Sin<\/b><\/em>, Meldrum uses the rhetoric of the Church to justify his voyeuristic recording of Jenny\u2019s confession, and his use of murder to eradicate those whom he perceives to be sinful.<\/p>

\"house<\/p>

It\u2019s clear that Meldrum gains a voyeuristic thrill in recording Jenny\u2019s confession, and we may safely presume that he has recorded numerous confessions \u2013 perhaps all of them. \u2018Be sure your sins will find you out\u2019, he tells Jenny, unaware of the fact that his quoting of this passage from the Book of Numbers<\/em> is deeply ironic. (By the end of the narrative, Meldrum\u2019s sins have indeed \u2018found him out\u2019.) Through Meldrum\u2019s actions, we might also be reminded of another quote by a clergyman: Reverend Sydney Smith\u2019s assertion, in his 1809 article against the Society for the Suppression of Vice, that \u2018Men, whose trade is rat-catching, love to catch rats; the bug-destroyer seizes on his bug with delight; and the suppressor is gratified by finding his vice. The last soon becomes a mere tradesman like the others\u2019.<\/p>

Certainly, Meldrum applies the tools of his trade (the priesthood) in stamping out perceived immorality. The first moment of onscreen violence in the film (leaving aside Valerie\u2019s death in the opening scene, which takes place behind closed doors) is against Bob, prowling over the shoulder shots depicting Meldrum entering Jenny and Vanessa\u2019s shop, then climbing the stairs before hurling the pot of boiling water over Bob\u2019s head. (The staging of this moment, with its use of over the shoulder shots communicating Meldrum\u2019s point-of-view, resembles the scenes of murder in a number of Italian thrillers \u2013 particularly those of Dario Argento, such as 1970\u2019s L\u2019uccello dalle piume di cristallo\/The Bird with the Crystal Plumage<\/b><\/em> \u2013 whilst anticipating the use of prowling point-of-view shots in later American slasher movies.) Later, when Terry confronts Meldrum in the church, Meldrum attacks Terry with a thurible, swinging the lit incense burner by its chain at Terry\u2019s face\u2026 again\u2026 and again\u2026 and again. Meldrum also dispatches Valerie\u2019s mother, who makes contact with Jenny and seems about to spill the beans on Meldrum\u2019s depravity, by use of a poisoned wafer which he places in her mouth at Holy Communion.<\/p>

Again, the film offers an intergenerational conflict similar to those found in House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em> and Frightmare<\/b><\/em>; here, the contrast between young Father Cutler and the older Father Meldrum enables the script to construct a dialogue between a liberal and conservative understanding of the priesthood. Fairly early in the picture, Cutler and Meldrum engage in a conversation about celibacy and the priesthood, Cutler telling Meldrum about a Belgian Cardinal who has raised the question as to whether the vow of celibacy is still relevant in the modern era. Meldrum dismisses the ideas of what he terms this \u2018renegade Belgian Cardinal\u2019. \u2018Don\u2019t you think the need for celibacy, especially today, isn\u2019t all that relevant?\u2019, Cutler presses. \u2018Relevant to what?\u2019, Meldrum responds, \u2018Relevant to increasing permissiveness in society, is that what you mean?\u2019 \u2018Times change\u2019, Cutler reminds Meldrum, \u2018and we must change with them\u2019. \u2018By whose orders?\u2019, Meldrum questions. (The Belgian Cardinal under discussion is presumably Leo Joseph Suenens, who fought to modernise the Catholic church in the 1960s, including a call for the Church to reconsider its position on marriage and celibacy.) Eventually, Father Cutler\u2019s dissatisfaction with the Church and the manner in which it is held in the past by priests like Meldrum, compounded by Cutler\u2019s budding relationship with Vanessa, leads him to walk away from the priesthood.<\/p>

\"house<\/p>

Walker\u2019s terror pictures are known for their ambiguity, Walker both revelling in and questioning what he represents on screen. This is perhaps what gives them their complexity. Walker has said that his personal outlook is largely conservative, but regarding the ambiguity of his films\u2019 message, he has said that \u2018You must never let your audience know which side you are on\u2019[9]. Nevertheless, despite this, in House of Mortal Sin<\/b><\/em> it seems fairly clear which side of the fence Walker sits on vis-\u00e0-vis the Catholic Church and the question of modernisation. Though he breaks his vow of chastity and ultimately leaves the priesthood, Father Cutler is utterly sympathetic; Father Meldrum, on the other hand, maintains his vow of chastity \u2013 and arguably, that is part of his problem \u2013 but is a degenerate murderer. As another priest, Father Duggan (Mervyn Johns), tells Cutler, when Cutler asks for his advice, \u2018If you stayed on [as a priest], you\u2019d be a hypocrite \u2013 and we have enough of those as it is\u2019. Duggan also adds that, \u2018Maybe next year or the year after, our Church will become enlightened. Then we may see you again\u2019.<\/p>

With its depraved priest and setpiece killings, complete with prowling point-of-view shots, House of Mortal Sin<\/b><\/em> feels very much like a precursor to the slasher films that would become increasingly popular following the release of John Carpenter\u2019s Halloween<\/b><\/em> in 1978; though perhaps House of Mortal Sin<\/b><\/em> was as much influenced by gialli all\u2019italiana (Italian-style thrillers) featuring murderous priests, such as Aldo Lado\u2019s Chi l\u2019ha a vista morire?\/Who Saw Her Die?<\/b><\/em> (1972), as it was by The Exorcist<\/b><\/em>.<\/p>

Ultimately, House of Mortal Sin<\/b><\/em> is anchored by a seemingly throwaway line delivered by Brabazon. After killing Terry (in the church, with the thurible), Meldrum takes the body into the graveyard and buries it in a freshly-dug grave. He enters the presbytery, wet, with dirty shoes. \u2018You should wipe your feet if you\u2019ve been to the graveyard, Father\u2019, Brabazon says, \u2018You\u2019ve trailed mud into the house\u2019. Perhaps all three of these films \u2013 House of Whipcord<\/b><\/em>, Frightmare<\/b><\/em> and House of Mortal Sin<\/b><\/em> \u2013 may be regarded as parables about the trailing of mud into various houses (the penal system, the family, the Church).<\/p>

Walker and McGillivray\u2019s collaboration would continue with Schizo<\/b><\/em>, released towards the end of 1976. The premise of Schizo<\/b><\/em> was Walker\u2019s: he wanted to make a \u2018surprise picture\u2019 in response to the influx of US-made slasher films and gialli all\u2019italiana\/Italian-style thrillers[10]<\/b>. Walker\u2019s intention was to make a thriller whose story wasn\u2019t overshadowed by the key setpieces, and in playing with audience sympathies for the protagonist he \u2018wanted to tell the ultimate lie\u2019[11]<\/b>. McGillivray, however, \u2018loaded the idea of it\u2019, and the film marked the end of their working relationship[12]<\/b>. The finished picture is a rather different film to the other Walker-McGillivray collaborations \u2013 a Hitchcockian thriller more in line with the earlier Die Screaming, Marianne<\/b><\/em> and the later The Comeback<\/b><\/em>. But that is a story for another time\u2026<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Sources<\/u>:<\/p>

[1]<\/b> \u2018An Eye for Terror, Part 1\u2019 (Elijah Drenner, 2012). Included on the Redemption Films Blu-ray release of Die Screaming, Marianne.
[2]<\/b> \u2018Slasher Serenade\u2019 (Elijah Drenner, 2012). Included on the Redemption Films Blu-ray release of The Comeback.
[3]<\/b> \u2018Flesh, Blood and Censorship\u2019 (Elijah Drenner, 2014). Included on the Redemption Films Blu-ray release of The Flesh and Blood Show.
[4]<\/b> \u2018Perversions of Justice\u2019 (Elijah Drenner, 2012). Included on the Redemption Films Blu-ray release of House of Whipcord.
[5]<\/b> See https:\/\/www.margaretthatcher.org\/document\/101088
[6]<\/b> \u2018Perversions of Justice\u2019.
[7]<\/b> \u2018For the Sake of Cannibalism\u2019 (Elijah Drenner, 2014). Included on the Redemption Films Blu-ray release of Frightmare.
[8]<\/b> \u2018For the Sake of Cannibalism\u2019.
[9]<\/b> \u2018Perversions of Justice\u2019.
[10] <\/b>\u2018My Sweet Schizo\u2019 (Elijah Drenner, 2012). Included on the Redemption Films Blu-ray release of Schizo.
[11]<\/b> \u2018My Sweet Schizo\u2019.
[12]<\/strong> \u2018My Sweet Schizo\u2019.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPaul Lewis\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h4>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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PhD, MA, BA(Hons), PGCE, FHEA | Writer: pajlewis.contently.com | Community Photographer | Filmmaker @ grimnirpictures.co.uk | Film \/ Lit \/ Photo Lecturer | Cinephile<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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More film ><\/a><\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\"Eden<\/a><\/div>
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\tExploring ‘Hoodie Horror’ and the Class Politics of Eden Lake\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t12\/10\/2020\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tEleanor Miller discusses 'Hoodie horror', Eden Lake and the media demonisation of British youth for Horrified...\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/article><\/div>
\"retreat<\/a><\/div>
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Retreat: an interview with director, Marcus Anthony Thomas\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t25\/06\/2021\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tDirector Marcus Anthony Thomas, speaks with Christina Brennan about his short film, The Retreat, and the impact of online platforms...\u200b\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/article><\/div>
\"dracula\"<\/a><\/div>
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\tDracula: Hammer Icons – Part two\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t22\/09\/2020\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tHorrified's Jonathan Clode dips into the Hammer monster archives again, this time inviting Dracula in...\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/article><\/div><\/div><\/div>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Lewis latest essay for Horrified is an extensive exploration of the work of director Pete Walker and his collaboration with screenwriter David McGillivray, focusing on three of the former’s best-known films…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":123436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"no-sidebar","site-content-layout":"page-builder","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"disabled","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"disabled","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[667,518,666],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Frightmare.png?fit=904%2C718&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6748"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6748"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123448,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6748\/revisions\/123448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}