(1966, GB, 100 min, b/w) Dir Eric Conway Bryce. Cast Dirk Bogarde, Denholm Elliott, Billie Whitelaw.
Based on the infamous real life case of the so-called ‘Bloody Blonde’, Hadley Close comes second only to 10 Rillington Place in my mind in it’s portrayal of humdrum post-war Britain and in their depictions of squalid murder – both films seem to exist in a sooty pall. The more unsettling thing about Hadley Close however is the fact that the case remains to this day unsolved – the one 1952 murder in an abandoned house in, yes, Hadley Close yielded no convictions, no plausible motives and no likely suspects. Dirk Bogarde in convincingly haunted as Detective Samuel Gately who headed the investigations and never, it is said, let it go. Denholm Elliott and Billie Whitelaw are the victim’s parents whose grief runs through the film like the writing in a stick of rock, their undying faith in Gately battering him down more and more as the years go on. A grimly solid depiction of the times and of the terrible effect of murder on a people.
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