House of Whipcord (Photographer's Models) (1975)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Stephen M

  
  A notorious British shocker from the Seventies in which Barbara Markham runs a correctional institution for girls who have been let of lightly by the British courts. Usherette, I demand a refund!!! I only watched this because I thought it would be enjoyably awful and it turns out be… More
  A notorious British shocker from the Seventies in which Barbara Markham runs a correctional institution for girls who have been let of lightly by the British courts. Usherette, I demand a refund!!! I only watched this because I thought it would be enjoyably awful and it turns out be tolerably well acted and directed. There's even suspense and a couple of nifty twists! This is an outrage!!! Joking aside, <I>House of Whipcord</I> isn't bad at all. The photography is very murky, making it difficult to see what is going on much of the time, particularly in the outdoor scenes, but with better production values it could have been a little gem. Mischievously, the movie is prefaced by a plea for the reinstatement of corporal and capital punishment and then proceeds to show the systematic torture and murder of a group of innocents held on trumped-up charges. Of course, most of the nastiness is suggested and it's all very tame by today's standards, though the film remains memorable for its oppressive atmosphere, the bleakness of its resolution and the unusual amount of sympathy extended to the villains. As one might expect, the token lesbian warders are present and correct - there's even a whiff of incest between Markham's character and her son - but it's interesting to note that <I>House of Whipcord</I> is actually less prurient than much of the otherwise insipid, more mainstream horror fare being released around the same time.

• Steve S

  
  Again, terrible exploitation: Sex, violence, cruelty, sadism, and sexual perversion. Another inspiration for my burgeoning screenplay, Attack of the Killer Nazi Lesbian Sadist Vampire Nuns.