True Crime Movies

[sdreid]

Is there a Sickert character in it?

[Rob Clack]

No, it is very loosely based on the Camden Town murder. The Robert Woods character is married in thia film. The actor who played him whose name escapes me at the moment appeared om one of tje Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films (Faces Death)

[Rosella]

I still find 10 Rillington Place quite realistic, for the standard version of the Christie killings. (I happen to believe Tim Evans killed his wife and daughter.)

I watched it again only a few months ago. Apparently while they were filming it Richard Attenborough couldn't leave Reginald Christie at the studio, so his wife went off and lived elsewhere until filming was done, as he was giving her the creeps!

[sdreid]

It's comfortably in my top 5 true crime films.

[Mayerling]

Arthur Margetson

No, it is very loosely based on the Camden Town murder. The Robert Woods character is married in thia film. The actor who played him whose name escapes me at the moment appeared om one of tje Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films (Faces Death)

Hi all,

I checked on the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb) website. The actor who was in this film and Sherlock Holmes Faces Death was Arthur Margetson, who according to that website was born in 1887 and died in 1951. Margetson had some role in Random Harvest, apparently. I was reading the summary of the plot, and it somehow anticipates Billy Wilder's version of Agatha Christie's "Witness For the Prosecution", as the central figure, a great barrister, has to relax for his health but is convinced instead to take on a prominent current murder case defense. Except for the character actress Kathleen Harrison, none of the performers (including Margetson) are known to me. As the barrister is suffering from heart disease, they have apparently combined the true life characters of Sir Edward Marshall-Hall and Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett (who defended Edith Thompson). Curtis-Bennett, a very stout man, did not take adequate care of himself by dieting as his doctor recommended, and his concentration on his case load led to his premature, early death.

The fictional barrister apparently had a lost love in his background, who connects him to the defendant. Interestingly enough Marshall-Hall's first wife turned out to be promiscuous. She died in a rather horrible manner, killed by an abortionist - doctor in 1894.

Jeff

[Rob Clack]

Thanks Jeff,

Margetson also appeared in The Mystery of the Marie Celeste (The Phantom Ship) with Bela Lugosi and Denis Hoey (Lestrade in the Rathbone films) and it also happens to be a Hammer Film.

Rob

[sdreid]

Well, Marie Celeste is true but we don't know if it involved a crime or not.

[sdreid]

Poor management is at least as likely it seems.

[Batman]

1. Citizen X (1995) (HBO too)
2. The Boston Strangler (1968)
3. The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)
4. City of God (2002)
5. In The Name of the Father (1993)

[Mayerling]

1) The Prisoner of Shark Island
2) The Conspirator
3) The Lodger (1944)
4) Murder on the Orient Express (Albert Finney as Poirot) - elements of the Lindbergh Kidnap/Murder in it.
5) Monsieur Verdoux - Chaplin's dark satire of marriage and murder based on the Landru Case
6) Les Enfants du Paradis - I like the film in it's entirety, but I appreciate the actor playing Pierre Lacenaire.
7) Ten Rillington Place
8) We Are Not Alone - One of my two favorite films suggested by the Crippen Case
9) The Suspect - The other film suggested by the Crippen Case (added plus is it has Laughton, Stanley Ridges, and Henry Daniell in it).
10) The Body Snatcher - Burke and Hare by way of Stevenson and Val Lewton. Again Daniell (in a lead role for a change) and this time Karloff are in it. So is Lugosi.

There are others if I thought of them, but these were the first 10 to pop up in my head.

Jeff

[sdreid]

Good to see the 1944 Lodger on there Jeff. It seems to be overlooked too often

[sdreid]

There are actually quite a few on these recent lists that I haven't seen.

[sdreid]

Has anyone seen the new Lizzie Borden drama series on Lifetime Channel?

[sdreid]

Has anyone seen the new Lizzie Borden drama series on Lifetime Channel?

I assume it will later be released on disc, possibly as a long form (6 hr. ?) movie.

[Mayerling]

I assume it will later be released on disc, possibly as a long form (6 hr. ?) movie.

There was a good television movie back in the 1970s with Elizabeth Montgomery as Lizzie, and Fritz Weaver as Andrew Jackson Borden.

Jeff