Here come da judge!
2 August 2006
This movie is not nearly as good as Jorge Grau's very similar "Pena del Muerte", but it is in English (or in British anyway). It is surprisingly sleazy for a British film of that time period with a generous amount of depravity on display. A modern-day Jack the Ripper is stalking the mini-skirted young lasses of Swinging London. A hedonistic youth who is (quite unaccountably) a metaphoric ladykiller is suspected of being the real one by the lead detective on the case. Not surprisingly though, the real killer is someone much more entrenched in the establishment, which the detective hero only discovers after his pretty young wife has become a potential victim.

This movie is similar to the seemingly reactionary but actually very subversive and anti-authoritarian movies Pete Walker would be making five years later ("House of the Whipcord", "The Confessional"). But unfortunately it is pretty ham-handedly executed and just not very good. It does offer a view of Swinging London at the time that it was all actually happening, but it is a rather myopic view and is seen more from the perspective of the moralistic detective and dirty old rotter magistrate than from the hip youth of the the era (the only real nude scene for instance is a skanky stripper doffing it all for some gaping oldsters in a seedy nightclub). It is very sleazy, if you consider that a plus. And even though the identity of the killer is pretty apparent, the ending is memorable. It's not as hypocritical at least as many British films of the era that railed against jaded youth while missing no opportunity to look up their mini-skirts or inside their blouses. Worth a look anyway.
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