By DR. BENNY GRAVES
What does propriety mean in our modern age? We live in a time when those in the highest offices commit acts of cruelty freely and use social media to gloat over their acts. Situations are judged without nuance, and loss of life is weaponized as a factoid rather than being a cause for empathy or reflection. The call for a return to past “values” is a stone that’s been lifted countless times, and beneath it always writhes unspeakable evils. Some committed this notion to film long before the advent of social media. Buckle up and pour yourself a strong one, we’re going to Pete Walker country.
A storm rages through the blackest night. A trucker driving through the maelstrom comes upon a young woman. She’s barely coherent, mud-splattered and dressed as if she’s broken out of a death camp. The details of what happened to her are unclear, but one thing is certain: She’s experienced something beyond horror. Over the course of THE HOUSE OF WHIPCORD, so will we. The movie then turns back the clock, and we discover the young woman is named Anne-Marie DeVernet (Penny Irving), a model who was arrested by police for public nudity during a photoshoot. Looking to escape her circumstances, she leaves her photographer boyfriend and London behind. Her chauffeur for this reprieve is a charming but mysterious fellow named Mark E. DeSade (Robert Tayman). However, instead of arriving at an idyllic cottage in the hills, Ann Marie finds herself at the gates of a decommissioned prison. This prison is very much in use – but by no legal authority. Instead, it is run by a family forged in corruption and driven by their contempt for the “amoral nature” of young women. Kidnapping wayward girls, the family and their sadistic wardens serve as self-appointed judge, jury and executioner. Ann Marie DeVernet is about to go through hell.
I had my first experience with a Pete Walker film before I even knew his name. At the time, an ex-girlfriend had been gifted a ton of DVDs, the low-rent pre-boutique kind that were essentially VHS-rips. We would watch them at random, which is how I first saw Frightmare (The 1973 flick, not the 1984 one, which I am also fond of). I remember dismissing it as a British riff on Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This makes sense since I was full of that youthful judgment that makes people write off art they aren’t equipped to digest. Cut to my late 30s and a recent fixation I had on seeing The Comeback, a paranoid horror delight directed by Walker. The stars aligned, and my local record store had the Pete Walker Collection Blu-ray set released by Redemption Films. However, instead of immediately watching The Comeback, I ended up intrigued by the blurb about THE HOUSE OF WHIPCORD. By the time the credits rolled, I had a very specific thought: If I had a Delorean and an eccentric mad scientist friend, I’d be duty-bound to slap the shit out of my younger self.
Walker is very much an exploitation director, and his movies could be written off as schlock. However, layered within Walker’s ouvré is pitch black subtext and an anti-establishment bent that is unabashedly punk. THE HOUSE OF WHIPCORD is no exception, taking a women-in-prison movie but infusing it with the bleak reality of extremist conservative values. Suffice to say, watching the scene of the kangaroo court sentencing of Anne-Marie in a room where a large sign above her declares “THE WORLD FOR CHRIST” seems eerily prescient. (I’d be remiss if I didn’t give credit to the sadistic warden played by Walker-favorite Sheila Keith. She’s an incredible character actor, and her role exudes a cruelty that evokes Estelle Getty possessed by Marjorie Taylor Greene.) If you end up loving this flick, do yourself a favor and dig into Walker’s filmography. His genre-blending work and commitment to skewering corrupt ideologies make for a menu of gruesome delights. Now that sentencing is over, I just have one question: Do they let you have a liquid lunch for your last meal? Kitty Bernardo, head bartender at New York’s Paradise Lost, is here to serve you a drink worthy of this brutal British classic:
“The ’70s are notoriously known as the Dark Ages of bartending for a reason … with a lot of drinks being fruity vodka things with sexual innuendo being a common theme at the time. (Think Slippery Nipple, Sex on the Beach, Sloe Comfortable Screw, etc.)
Most of the stuff we see from this period leans sweet or juicy. Vodka was in, easy to swing back, inoffensive in comparison to the pungent juniper-forward gins and whiskeys that were being left to the old heads to drink. The drinks scene was flush with more liqueur-laden drinks than anything: Galliano, tons of different colored curaçaos and other flavored liqueurs.
Chartreuse, a liqueur made by Carthusian monks with roots in Paris (a landing pad that didn’t last long. as the city’s penchant for artistic noise and growing population became antithetical to the monastic way of life), took a huge dip in sales in the U.S. as the traditional ways of drinking this herbaceous tipple began to be seen as austere and antiquated. The U.S. marketing team for Chartreuse then developed the recipe for the Swampwater in the late ’70s to try to increase sales. And it did work. With plenty of branded merchandise to boot.
Though initially geared towards the younger college demographic, the Swampwater found its place in dives and neighborhood bars around college campuses, which are often the unofficial museums of marketing ploys of decades past as I can attest to as the first bar I ever worked right off of Rutgers campus still had cases of Zimas and ’80s Cuervo promo materials for Cinco de Mayo.
Basically, the dive cousin of the much-revered Chartreuse Swizzle, the Swampwater is an easy 3-ingredient cocktail: Green Chartreuse, canned pineapple juice and lime (probably Rose’s Lime cordial for accuracy). Instead of a true recipe, I feel like knowing the historical context is more important, as you’d probably not be worried about specs at a dive.” (Author’s note: This gut-rot goblin does not.)
