HOUSE OF WHIPCORD (1974)
Director: Pete Walker
Shriek Show/Media Blasters

Shocking, violent, and as intelligent as they were graphic, Pete Walker’s horror films never hid from controversy. With undeniable enthusiasm and a cultural terrorist's knowledge of human frailty, his eerie ensembles seethed with social commentary and explicit gore, diving headfirst into subjects that his era wished to ignore. He not only makes his audience face the distasteful, he makes them choke on reflections of its prejudices, focusing here on the baseness of a justice system whose rigidity lends itself to fanaticism.

Perhaps no other film in the Walker cannon is as scorching, thoughtful, or politically effective as HOUSE OF WHIPCORD, a jaw-knocking, bodice-ripping attack against ‘holier than thou’ mentalities. Raising our sense of outrage alongside terror and revulsion, a carefully written script by Walker regular David McGillivray evokes impressive sympathy for characters who are treated with compassion – that is, before they are subjected to a world turned upside down, its threat magnified because its terrors stem from the laws of society. A medicine for mediocrity, this rabid piece of cinema is everything a horror film should be; emotionally rousing and shocking. It's the perfect, grainy little pill with which to treat the sickness of limp Hollywood remakes and popcorn movies which display small balls and smaller brains in their desperate attempts to rape the wallets of single mothers and adolescents.

In Swinging 1970s England – an era thought by conservatives to have been a cesspool of immoral decadence requiring stern legal measures – Ann-Marie (Penny Irving of "Are You Being Served?" fame), a 19 year old model, is captivated by the attractive Mark E. Desade (Robert Tayman from Hammer's VAMPIRE CIRCUS), who leads her to a prison masquerading as a country home. Ran by folks whose unbendable devotion to the Law (impervious to the fact that they're breaking both moral and penal laws by stripping victims of social rites and liberties, not to mention their lives), this house of punishment indulges in such character-building reforms as solitary confinement, floggings, and death by hanging.

Mrs. Wakehurst (Barbara Markham), Mark’s mother and Justice Bailey's (Patrick Barr's) administrator, charges Anne with lewdness, and Bailey quickly passes sentence, decreeing that she must be imprisoned until worthy of release – that is, never if the chillingly believable Wakehurst and her two uniformed jailers have anything to say about it. Wakehurst indulges in her own secretive sins as she and her cohorts torment, exhort, and punish ‘the sinners.’ The house as prison metaphor, and the angry middle-aged female wardens, are creepily effective as the stern, emotionless tools of punishment, feeding their own perverse urges in the sanitized name of “the law.” The movie is an obvious if effective parody of a culture which craves the punishment (and spectacle) of the condemned while often guilty of the same instincts. Kinky, savage punishments are interspersed with moments of bonding between Ann-Marie and other inmates, while Julia (Ann Michelle, sexy star of PSYCHOMANIA and THE VIRGIN WITCH), a friend, attempts to locate the missing girl. Will she be in time . . .?

HOUSE OF WHIPCORD asks no understanding of its audience. Tyranny, madness, and a social system exposed by Walker as bad if not worse than the criminals it judges are the order of the day . . . and the jury is demented! More importantly is Walker’s not-so-subtle condemnation of people who see themselves as handmaids of justice – folks psychologically unbalanced, tools of nothing more profound than the base hunger for power. Sporting a psychologically penetrating, socially condemning screenplay, this movie is equal parts exploitation and expose of a culture that now, as then, is quick to condemn.

While unapologetically exploitative in its material, HOUSE OF WHIPCORD clearly has more on its mind than titillation. Whippings, executions, and lunacy are accompanied by careful examinations of law, justice, and struggle for survival. A sense of emotional cold severity – symbolized by the Law as concept and the Judge’s ramblings, as well as by the plot itself – is evoked here by the icy warden's conviction in their own authority. Shelia Keith (as warden Walker) is outstanding, as usual, stealing the show in all her fanatical fierceness. She is cruel punishment embodied in wrinkled, frenzied staring flesh. The movie's sense of moral outrage is externalized by somber green-hued lighting, and the sterile yet decrepit interiors of the prison interior. Walker's sure direction and careful placement of camera ensures that we receive the proper visual stimulus that each queasy scene demands. A more intelligent and effective entry of the W-I-P films of 1970s infamy, HOUSE OF WHIPCORD is a grim odyssey into the same thematic decadence that Walker mined from a different perspective in FRIGHTMARE. Whereas in the later film he lamented the permissiveness that allowed cannibals to re-enter society, in this spectacle of law-gone-wrong his moral vantage point appears comes from the left, suggesting that society is too quick to judge.

A 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer has a a good level of picture detail and does a nice job presenting drab, emotionally bleak colors with a maximum of effectiveness. Small amounts of grain don't noticeably distract from the movie, and the framing appears correct. Picture quality overall is very good, looking much cleaner than in the earlier Image release. Audio is in English mono and/or 5.1 surround sound, both of which are clear and scratch free, summon forth the grunts, cries, and screams of Walker's hell into your living room.

As in other volumes of the Pete Walker collection, Media Blasters features an insightful commentary with director Walker, wherein he discusses several intimate and broad facets of the film's history, preparation, production, the press, and its social upsets. We learn about location searches, his reflections on actors, and what a tasking chore producing a movie truly is. Such is Walker's enthusiasm that you can't help but be interested in what he has to say. Besides this commentary is the feature's theatrical trailer, trailers for the other films in the series, and a small photo gallery. (William P. Simmons)

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