10 Rillington Place – 1971 | 111 mins | Docudrama, Crime | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Drawing heavily on Ludovic Kennedy’s excellent book, 10 Rillington Place delivers an accurate account of John Reginald Christie’s 1940s London killing spree. The movie belongs to Richard Attenborough, his portrait of Christie is one of the creepiest things ever to crawl onto the screen, subtly terrifying even when performing such innocuous tasks as brewing a pot of tea.

Timothy John Evans (John Hurt) and wife Beryl (Judy Geeson), play the fatally dim couple unfortunate enough to pick the wrong landlord when they and their baby daughter find a home in 10 Rillington Place. Their downstairs neighbour is John Reginald Christie, unbeknown to the pair, Christie has a history of killing women with gas and having sex with their dead bodies, and he has eyes for the young wife. When Beryl learns she is pregnant, the young couple agrees to Christie performing an abortion. Instead of performing an abortion Christie rapes and murders Beryl. Christie tells Timothy his wife died during the procedure and suggests he go away and leaves their daughter in his care. The dim Timothy does as he is told, and that same night Christie kills his daughter. Eventually Timothy goes to the police and confesses to murdering Beryl. At his trial he relates the facts but is condemned by perjured testimony from Christie and hanged. Christie goes on to take the lives of several other victims, including his own wife, before justice is served.