When 10 Rillington Place was released in 1971 the disturbing sting of serial killer John Reginald Christie was still lingering in the United Kingdom’s social consciousness. Only five years prior, Timothy Evans – who falsely confessed to accidentally killing his wife and their daughter before hiding the bodies, an act committed by Christie himself – was finally pardoned. Problem was he’d already been executed for the murder of his daughter in 1950. All said, the gruesome saga of Christie encompassed a span of near twenty-five years, between his first murder of a woman called Ruth Fuerst in August of 1943 up to the official posthumous pardon of Evans in 1966.
Many weren’t sure if 10 Rillington Place was too soon for UK audiences. Christie’s crimes had rocked the country. It wasn’t just that he murdered women— Christie was once a policeman, he also served in the military, and people were shocked that a seemingly respectable person could devolve into a serial killer and a necrophile. The fact he was capable of blending in with regular society so easily was part of why his story terrified the public. Despite any reservations about public response, director Richard Fleischer brought this realist tale of injustice and murder to eerie life.
Storytelling is an important aspect of why 10 Rillington Place is so chilling. The screenplay, written by Clive Exton, is told from an almost journalistic perspective. At the start is a subtitle across a black screen stating: “This is a true story. Whenever possible the dialogue has been based on official documents.” We watch some of the murders, the debacle with Evans (played by John Hurt) and his trial, and then we see what becomes the eventual downfall of Christie (played by Richard Attenborough in one of his finest performances). However, what works best is the third-person narrative, in which Christie’s perspective unfolds in front of us without holding any details back and the audience is aware of the truth while the characters around him are oblivious. This isn’t a groundbreaking technique, it’s simply an effective way of conveying the power of the atrocities Christie committed.
A fantastic example of this occurs when Christie has a conversation with Beryl Evans (played by Judy Geeson), after she comes to him seeking advice about her unwanted pregnancy. The audience already knows of the man’s hideous crimes. Because of this privileged perspective, the audience is in a perpetual state of terror, worrying about what will surely happen to Beryl. Most unnerving is when Christie laments “the taking of life” in regards to the unborn Evans foetus. Juxtaposing this sentiment with what we know about him is darkly humorous, albeit simultaneously disgusting. It’s also a subtle bit of expository information that illustrates how Christie assigns a moral hierarchy to the way he takes lives, even if it’s only him lying through his teeth. But this scene exemplifies how perspective in storytelling can ratchet up the suspense and tension an audience feels while following a movie’s plot.
Realism is an equally important reason for the movie’s terror. Fleischer doesn’t just stick to the details of the actual crimes. At times he vividly recreates moments from the case. There aren’t any overtly graphic moments, even in the opening scene where Christie works on one of his victims— his necrophile habits are never explicitly referenced, only suggested. What makes the story horrifying is mostly the inclusion of the hanging scene, for a couple of reasons. First, due to the UK’s Official Secrets Act – in effect from 1911 to 1989 – showing a British hanging on film was prohibited, and so the fact there’s actually a scene depicting the hanging of Evans was controversial for a movie debuting in 1971. Secondly, and more upsetting, is that real life retired executioner Albert Pierrepoint was involved in the recreation of the execution scene with painstaking detail to drive home the realism. More than that, Pierrepoint was the actual executioner who hanged both the innocent Evans and, later, the guilty Christie.
Along with the actual facts of the case, 10 Rillington Place does well by showing the socioeconomic state of the UK, particularly London, in the shadow following World War II. This is more than a visual choice, showing the squalor many people lived in, such as Tim and Beryl Evans, as well as Christie and his wife Ethel. It also involves the way Christie lured in victims. He used his advantage of basic medical training from the military, the desperate economic situations of others, and also, at the time, the illegality of abortion in order to find people whom he could exploit.
Part of why he was able to manipulate Tim Evans towards his eventual execution was because he was not well off financially, nor was he an especially intelligent man. Moreover, Christie likewise manipulated Beryl Evans into death, using her fear of persecution for seeking an abortion to give him control over her. Worse than that, the police were initially convinced Christie was an upstanding citizen, and because Tim was known for being in debt, among other trouble, the former was not suspected of any wrongdoing. All these social and economic issues came together to create a perfect storm for a serial killer to use to his advantage. And the screenplay uses this for more than a few chills.
10 Rillington Place’s shining achievement lies in precise storytelling, and also its message. Attenborough famously said he detested playing Christie, yet it enthralled him. One reason for that is due to the actor’s perception of the movie as a condemnation of capital punishment. He’s not wrong, either. The actual case itself led to the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act of 1965— a year before the royal pardon of Evans. Police incompetence became a more prominent issue in the eyes of citizens once all the mistakes of the initial investigation into Evans were revealed, such as how they neglected to do a thorough search of the property at 10 Rillington Place which would have produced other victims’ corpses hidden by Christie. So it’s only natural the eventual movie about the case would further work to keep this tragic miscarriage of justice in the public eye.
Fleischer uses imagery as a method of critiquing the useless cycle of capital punishment. The prominent recurring image is a noose. Christie uses a smaller version of the same hangman’s noose we later see slipped over Evans to hang him during his execution. Christie usually strangled his victims, though it’s compelling Fleischer uses such a similar rope as the killer’s weapon of choice. This dual image is like a statement about the differentiation of murder, between an individual killing and the state killing. Fleischer seems to suggest there is no difference whatsoever: murder is murder, and a killer is a killer, state sanctioned or otherwise.
Without being a graphic horror movie, 10 Rillington Place is able to creep out audiences. There’s a very real terror about its story. Serial killers are scary because, more often than not, the idea of ‘stranger danger’ is false, and it’s the people in everyday life who wind up being the worst sort of monsters. John Christie is scary enough without Fleischer having to resort to explicitly depicting his acts of murder and necrophilia. The screenplay tells a story full of tension by keeping the audience ahead of the other characters with Christie, and relying on stark realism to show important events in the timeline of Christie’s crimes. It’s hard to deny the movie feels most effective when it is delivering a blow to arguments for the death penalty. As we watch Tim Evans get railroaded by the UK justice system, failed by the legal process, 10 Rillington Place takes on a greater significance than a movie adaptation of true crime by becoming part of a global cultural movement against capital punishment. After the credits roll, one image lingers on perpetually: when Tim has the noose slipped over his hooded head and around his neck, the shot cuts as his body drops and the rope snaps to a shot of Christie – the rope’s sound matching his own stretching groan – who’s safe and sound at home. This movie’s horror is not in the events themselves, but in the all too real, unforgettable notion that this is a story of many across the world. In popular culture, the story of Evans is part of a canon continued by The Central Park Five (2012), The Staircase (2004), Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996), Making a Murderer (2015), and others, all of which terrify us in their depictions of the justice system failing those it’s meant to protect. Perhaps the scariest of all is that there are so many of those stories— and even one is already too many.
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