I Watch Films: House Of Whipcord

 

House Of Whipcord

A young woman is picked up by a trucker, and the story of what happened to her is told in flashback. Anne-Marie, a young and slightly naïve French model is surprised to see a photograph of her being arrested for public nudity in a gallery; she dumps her boyfriend the photographer. She meets a fascinating bloke named Mark E DeSade and having no sense of self-preservation goes away for the weekend with him.

She arrives at his country house to discover it’s actually a prison. Technically a former prison it is run by Margaret, a former reform school governor who was forced to retire when a girl there died (it was ruled suicide but in fact Margaret killed her) and Justice Bailey, a former High Court Judge who presided at her trial. The two of them, along with Mark and two female warders believe the “permissive society” has gone too far. Anne-Marie was fined £10 for indecent exposure and they think she deserves a harsher sentence.

Justice Bailey is now blind, disabled and increasingly senile, does not realise that the women sent here are not reformed and released. There is a system of demerits; the first leads to solitary confinement, the second to a flogging and the third to being hanged. Inevitably the women either remain imprisoned or are executed.

After many exploitative prison scenes Anne-Marie escapes, to be picked up by the trucker at the start of the film. Unfortunately he decides she needs a hospital and is sent to a nursing home, which is actually the very prison she escaped from. However the clock is now ticking; Anne-Marie’s flatmate is trying to find her and Mark E DeSade and the Trucker sees her picture in an advert. The ending is messy and bloody.

Watch This: Dark thriller, showing the horror beneath judgment and punishment
Don’t Watch This: Genuinely grim