GB
1971
1hr 51mins
Dir: Richard Fleischer
Starring: Richard Attenborough and Judy Geeson
The story of the Christie murders of the 1940s and ’50s
This brilliant but disturbing crime film is based on the book Ten Rillington Place by Ludovic Kennedy. The film dramatises the case of British serial killer John Reginald Halliday Christie, who committed many of his crimes in the London terraced house located in Notting Hill. There is a sequence where Timothy Evans (played by John Hurt) returns to Wales, and there is a brief glimpse of Merthyr Vale station on the Abercynon-Merthyr Tydfil branch. Although no trains are seen, lingering smoke and sound effects of a departing steam train belie the fact that it was 1971. One doesn’t always need to see a train for the atmosphere to be recreated. Also, the use of the location is deliberate as Merthyr Vale was Evans’ hometown. There is also a brief sequence filmed inside a compartment of a coach but, if this was not a set, then it is not known where it was shot.
