30 NIGHTS OF NIGHT, Night 1: 10 RILLINGTON PLACE (1971)

It's odd that 10 Rillington Place, a true-crime thriller that is bloodless but no less brutal than any of its type, isn't widely celebrated alongside Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, The Silence of the Lambs, and The Night of the Hunter as one of the best portrayals of an honest sociopath on screen. The sociopath, played by a calm, soothing Richard Attenborough, is an ordinary man of extraordinary cruelty named John Christie, who has every appearance of a being a kind and helpful neighbor. What Christie did to his neighbors, Tim and Beryl Evans, is so terrible that it's considered one of Britain's most horrific crimes.

Tim (John Hurt) is a not-so-intelligent working class man who barely makes enough money to support his wife Beryl (Judy Geeson, bright and unsuspecting) and their newborn daughter. When Tim and Beryl learn that they have another baby on the way, Tim enlists the help of Christie, who pretends to have medical experience, to perform an illegal abortion.

What follows is historical record. Christie murdered Beryl during the operation and convinced Tim to help him hide the body. Christie later returned and murdered their baby. Tim was convicted of the murder of his wife and executed. Later the truth was found after Christie killed four more women, including his wife. Tim's conviction was overturned posthumously, and the death penalty was abolished in Britain.

The movie follows the events with disturbing earnestness. Much of the dialogue is taken from the record itself. A scene in which Tim confesses a phony story to the police, coached by Christie, is starkly real and heartbreaking, and recited by Hurt with a rehearsed manner combined with an irrepressible tremor. There is no actor more apt at portraying inner pain than Hurt; it's why he was so believable as the alien popped from his stomach.

The director, Richard Fleischer, takes a documentary-style approach. Scenes are shot straightforwardly; the horror is allowed to linger without relief. Fleischer's prolific and resume is made up mostly of family and adventure films--The Vikings, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Doctor Dolittle, Fantastic Voyage--but amid his high-profile fare are a select few particularly taut thrillers. (He also directed The Boston Strangler, a similarly-toned procedural which is an overlooked prototype of Zodiac.)

This movie was cited as a footnote in Attenborough's career after his death a couple of years ago. It ought to have been more. Attenborough is famous for playing gentle, morally conflicted characters in films like The Great Escape, Seance on a Wet Afternoon, and Jurassic Park, and here that same gentility masks a real, true-life monster.

*** 1/2 out of ****