It’s a curious fact that while American filmmakers (and TV movie producers) have always been keen to make movies based on real life serial killers, mass murderers and other criminals, the British have shown a remarkable reluctance to do likewise – at least after a certain point. While films about Jack the Ripper, Crippen and others are considered fine, there seems to have been an unspoken cut-off point where no-one would dare to make a movie dramatising the crimes – only worthy TV dramas that concentrate not on the killers but incidental characters (as with recent Fred West drama Appropriate Adult). Much of this squeamishness seems to be based around the likely reactions of a hypocritical press (who seemingly have no problem with hurriedly-churned out books about major crimes, possibly because the writers are often their journalists), and the outrage that greeted The Black Panther in 1977 rather proves the point. Condemned before it was even completed, the film found itself virtually hounded out of several towns by local councillors with delusions of grandeur and one eye on the headlines, while the newpapers slammed the film and everyone involved. So this new release, on the prestigious BFI label, is a welcome chance to reassess the movie in more sober times.

Admittedly, you might instinctively expect this to be an exploitation film. Any 70s film critic seeing Michael Armstrong listed as screenwriter would certainly have raised their eyebrows, given his track record on sex comedies and grim shockers like The Haunted House of Horror and Mark of the Devil – though those latter titles should have also been a clue to how this story would be treated, both being straight-faced, nasty and brutal efforts that made no effort to sugar-coat or glamourise violence.

And so it is here. Directed by Ian Merrick with all the bleak domestic dourness you’d expect from a 1970s social drama, the film sticks pretty much to the established facts of the case, where ex-soldier Donald Neilson (Donald Sumpter) embarks on a life of petty crime that rapidly spirals out of control. We first see Neilson out in the woods, training like the army reject he is. Neilson leads a fairly pathetic life – ruling his family (like most characters in the film, they are unnamed, presumably for legal reasons) with an iron fist, but ultimately a feeble, powerless figure even in their eyes. Desperate for money, Neilson sets out on a series of post office robberies, but is doomed to failure – in each case, he encounters surprisingly feisty sub-postmasters and invariably ends up fleeing empty handed. This would almost be comical if it wasn’t for the seriousness of the escalating violence of his crimes – out of desperation, and then frustration and rage, Neilson unloads his shotgun into his victims, and at one point beats the man’s wife up. The crimes are shown in fairly brutal detail, but certainly not made at all exciting to watch, and Neilson is a laughably inept robber, notable only for the hood that gave him his nickname in the press.

But despite his incompetence, Neilson tries to up his game by kidnapping a teenage heiress, Lesley Whittle. Surprisingly, this goes well at first, as he breaks into her home, forces her out of bed (the film’s exploitation roots leading to an entirely gratuitous full nude scene from actress Debbie Farrington) and into his car, before being taken to an underground storm drain, where she is tied up with a noose around her neck and left on a narrow platform while Neilson sets off to collect the ransom from her family.

At this point, everything goes disastrously wrong – Neilson’s pointlessly complicated instructions, malfunctioning equipment and dreadful luck all going against him, while the story leaks to the press, resulting in hoax calls and sordid headlines for the family to deal with. Watching Neilson wait in frustration as the phone box he’d chosen as a contact point is hogged by two giggling girls again shows how close to farce the whole thing became. After a failed ransom drop, a frustrated Neilson takes his anger out on his victim – as ingle moment of madness that permanently elevated him from the ranks of petty if violent criminals to public enemy number one – something you suspect the arrogant but impotent killer rather relished as he spent the rest of his life in prison, one of a handful of prisoners condemned to serve a full life sentence.

Sumpter is excellent as Neilson, who is at the centre of the film – there is barely a scene without him in it. His tight-lipped, military discipline fails to mask his essential inadequacy, and when he erupts, it’s the howl of a frustrated child rather than an angry adult. The rest of the cast barely get much to do (though Farrington is impressive in a fairly thankless role), but Sumpter holds it all together, and fits well with Merrick’s no-nonsense, documentary-style direction.

Time has been kind to this film. Distanced from the facts, it feels less an exploitation movie and more a serious historical document, one that has been badly misunderstood and needlessly condemned over the years. In a way, it feels similar to The Brute, another grim little slice of British life from the same period, and another film widely and wrongly dismissed as tasteless exploitation.

The new BFI release looks as good as you could hope (the screener was on DVD, so I can’t comment on the Blu-ray), and comes with some interesting extras – as well as the usual extensive booklet that fills in a lot of information about the film, the disc also includes 1979 short film Recluse, another true-crime piece that is a more overtly stylised drama, all slow burn and so authentically Devon that you might feel you need subtitles in parts. It’s slight, but intriguing, and comes complete with original recce footage shot by director Bob Bentley.

DAVID FLINT

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