House Of Mortal Sin

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This is another decent directing effort by Pete Walker with a captivating premise that is well executed and maintains a dark & macabre interest throughout (mostly), although the pacing does lag in a few places, but the brooding atmosphere & intriguing performances does enough to keep you interested until the chilling climax. The film's tone is relentlessly bleak and grim, yet the effective and really quite compelling, with some decent & chilling death scenes throughout. Finally, the capital sins are also considered grave matter. These sins are vices and are defined as contrary to the Christian virtues of holiness. They are pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth (acedia).

What I love about Walker's films is their seedy, sordid quality - I don't mean "T&A", but the overall sense of degeneracy and decay. There's no need for supernatural terrors in a Pete Walker film because he shows us that real life is grottier and more horrible than any vampire or ghost. In House of Mortal Sin, Susan Penhaligon's character goes into church in a fit of pique and unwittingly triggers a chain of events that, in a "spiralling descent", destroys not only her life, but the lives of everyone she touches. Her helplessness in the face of others' disbelief, her inability to convince anyone that she's not just an overwrought and silly girl, and the way that the "Establishment" closes ranks to protect its own is plausibly frightening, especially in light of recent revelations about institutionalised abuse routinely covered up by the Church. It is with Frightmare, particularly, that Walker achieved a reputation as a maker of exploitation films featuring strong women and weak men. The parallels between Wakehurst and Bailey in House of Whipcord, and Dorothy and Edmund in Frightmare, are reinforced in a line delivered in House of Whipcord by Wakehurst’s son, Mark: ‘They’re insane’, he tells Anne-Marie in reference to his parents, ‘Can’t you see that? They’re not really criminals. They need treatment’. Of course, in Frightmare, Dorothy and Edmund have been released after such ‘treatment’– and Walker seems to show how flawed that premise is. I’m still going to recommend purchasing it if you don’t already have it on DVD as the film itself is well worth watching and picture quality is no worse than many other titles that are still shown on television. ExtrasGood performances all-round with Susan Penhaligon as Jenny Welch and Stephanie Beacham as Vanessa Welch particularly impressing as a couple of sisters that are clearly close. Norman Eshley plays Father Bernard Cutler and does a decent enough job with the role he has been given. Father Meldrum’s ‘problems’ stem, it seems, from his sexual repression. The narrative slowly makes it clear that Meldrum ran into the priesthood at the behest of his mother, in response to both his murderous impulses and a relationship in his youth with Miss Brabazon. There’s the hint of a festering Psycho­­-like Oedipal complex behind Meldrum’s actions, Meldrum’s once overbearing mother now stripped of her mobility and voice by the ageing process. ‘You guided me away from temptation, into God’s service’, Meldrum tells his invalid mother, ‘But I need your help again, mother. The old temptations, they’ve returned. They’ve been growing for some time’. In the years since, Brabazon has refused to leave Meldrum’s side; though their relationship is not sexual, Brabazon is clearly devoted to Meldrum, telling him that she followed him int the Church ‘because I was happy to share your house even if I couldn’t share your bed’. Incredulity, heresy, apostasy, schism—Incredulity is the neglect of revealed truth or willful refusal to assent to it. Heresy is obstinate post-baptismal denial of a truth that must be believed with divine and catholic faith. Apostasy is total repudiation of the Christian faith. Schism is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or communion with the members of the Church (CCC 2089). These sins strain or break the bonds of unity with the offender and the Catholic Church. Idolatry—Idolatry is the worship, veneration or belief in false gods. Because it is a direct rejection of God, it is a grave sin (1 Corinthians 6:9-10). Idolatry includes worship of images (This does not mean that we cannot venerate religious images. Veneration of images such as a crucifix is veneration of the person depicted, and not the actual image in and of itself.)

Abortion—Human life begins at conception in the mother’s womb. For God tells us, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew thee, and before you were born I consecrated you” (Jeremiah 1:5). Abortion is therefore murder. The oldest Christian book (besides parts of the Bible) is the Didache, a book composed by the twelve apostles or their disciples. The Didache proclaims the ancient teaching of the Catholic Church, “You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish” (Didache 2,2). All Catholics who procure a completed abortion or participate in execution of an abortion are automatically excommunicated from the Catholic Church (CCC 2272 and CIC Canon 1314). Susan Penhaligon gave an equally great performance as the troubled young girl, Jenny. Her fear and torment are conveyed perfectly. In addition, she gives her character a certain level of naiveté that makes both her character more convincing and the viewer sympathetic. Presumption —The Church teaches of two types of sinful presumption: the presumption that man can save himself without help from God and the presumption that God’s power or his mercy will merit him forgiveness without repentance and conversion (CCC 2092).a disappointment, although it has its moments...The script relies too much on mild sacrilege for its effects, instead of concentrating on more interesting aspects of religious repression." ~ Time Out [5] Finding that the church is currently taking confessions,Jennny decides to go into the confession box,in the hope of continuing her conversation with Cutler.To Jenny's disappointment,she discovers that instead of Cutler,the head vicar Father Xavier Meldrum is taking confessions.Deciding to stay for confession,Jenny begins to tell Meldrum about the feelings that she still has for her ex-boyfriend. More specifically, House of Whipcord had relevance for the era of Mary Whitehouse and the Nationwide Festival of Light, who during September of 1971 had held a couple of high profile rallies, in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square, against perceived permissiveness in the media landscape. Walker and McGillivray’s original intentions were to make a WIP (Women in Prison) film but this eventually ‘started to veer towards [a satire of] the Festival of Light’, Walker has said, and the notion of ‘“right” people taking a “righteous” stand but [who] were just more evil than the people they were criticising’ [6]. Walker saw the picture as an opportunity to poke fun at the hypocrisies of the ruling classes, Mrs Wakehurst and Justice Bailey functioning as caricatures of moral crusaders such as Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford. (Walker has suggested that the BBFC Secretary, Stephen Murphy, recognised House of Whipcord as a satirical depiction of Whitehouse and Longford, with the result that he passed the film with minimal cuts.) Hatred—Hatred of a neighbor is to deliberately wish him evil, and is thus a grave sin (CCC 2303 and Galatians 5:19-20). P ete Walker is a filmmaker whose once-controversial pictures have acquired a strong cult cache in the years since their original release.

As the tortured priest, Anthony Sharp brilliantly veers between whining, childish self-pity and stone-faced, stone-hearted bombast, characterising the hypocrisy that Walker sees in the Catholic Church. Happy to leave his mother to the depredations of Sheila Keith's vicious housekeeper, manipulating the young people who come to him for help, and blaming his actions on other people, Meldrum is a monster. Walker began his working life as a stand-up comic: his father, Syd Walker, had been a comedian, and his mother had been a showgirl. However, he ‘retired’ from comedy at the ripe old age of 19, and decided instead to pursue work as an actor. Eventually, he acquired the rights to a number of 8mm ‘glamour’ films and established another career distributing these, eventually moving into producing his own, with such descriptive titles as ‘ Soho Striptease’ (1960), ‘ Planned Seduction’ (1965) and ‘ Godiva Rides Again’ (1965). In the late 1960s, Walker progressed into making longer sex films (such as I Like Birds in 1967, and School for Sex in 1969), alternating the production of these with gangster films and thrillers – though Walker’s gangster films also featured a heavy, easily marketable focus on sex. Of these, Man of Violence (1970) is particularly interesting inasmuch it features a bisexual hero in the form of the underworld fixer Moon (played by Michael Latimer). Theft—All persons have a right to lawful private property obtained by legitimate work, inheritance or gift. To violate a person’s right to property by theft is a grave sin, especially if the loss of the property will severely hurt the victim (CCC 2408). The gravity of theft is determined by the harm it does to the victim. A poor beggar who steals a loaf of bread commits a less grave sin than a rich man who steals the savings of a destitute person. St. Paul tells us that thieves shall not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).

In this movie Pete Walker continues to demonstrate that he, along with the equally great director, Norman J. Warren, were the natural successors to Hammer, Amicus and Tigon. The three companies in question had dominated the British horror movie industry for over a decade, having made some truly superb productions. All three had ceased to produce horror movies at this point, paving the way for the two mentioned excellent directors to make independent movies now rightly appreciated as minor classics of low-budget cinema. With their contemporary settings, Pete Walker’s terror films stood in stark contrast to the dominant paradigms of British horror cinema that had been established via Hammer’s horror pictures in the wake of Terence Fisher’s one-two-three hit of The Curse of Frankenstein (1958), Dracula (1958) and The Mummy (1959) – in other words, Gothic horror films featuring supernatural (or man-made) monsters in a period setting. In the 1970s, with its agonal gasps, Hammer tried to drag what was arguably its most profitable monster, Christopher Lee’s Dracula, into the modern-day in Dracula A.D. 1972 (Alan Gibson, 1972) and its sequel, The Satanic Rites of Dracula (Alan Gibson, 1973). Though both of these films have acquired a cult reputation in the years since their original release, it’s fair to say that they received a mixed reception at the time – their attempts to tap into a youth market, particularly through the depiction of Swinging London in Dracula A.D. 1972, seeming quite desperate and, ironically, more disconnected from present-day reality than Hammer’s period pictures of the 1950s and 1960s. (Incidentally, The Satanic Rites of Dracula is notable as the last film that Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee would make together – until Pete Walker’s 1983 picture House of the Long Shadows.) Homosexual acts—Although it remains to be determined if homosexuality is a genetic, social or personal stigma, homosexual acts are condemned by God and can NEVER be approved by the Church (1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Genesis 19:1-29, Romans 1:24-27 and CCC 2357). If homosexuals are born with the condition, then they are called to live a life of Christian purity and chastity for the greater love of Christ. Such people can experience a life of trial, which all others must treat with compassion and sensitivity. well-executed and maintains a dark interest throughout, supported by interesting performances (especially Sheila Keith as Meldrum's devoted love)." ~ The Terror Trap [8] House of Mortal Sin includes some really suspenseful and tense moments. Viewing the picture, you learn early on just what the Priest is capable of. He's a holier-than-thou, above reproach figure who relishes his perversions and is quite at ease with viciously disposing of those who he feels stand in his way. It's really creepy watching the way he twists religion to meet his depraved desires. And to see the twinkle in his eye as he's trying to get the young girl to discuss her sex life is quite disturbing.