True crime movies have existed since the early days of cinema, and over the decades have become a prominent form of viewing experience. Some of the biggest movies in history have been based on tragic, cruel and downright hopeless true events, fromSchindler’s ListtoMonster. The ‘70s brought about a real boom in movies using their factual backgrounds as selling points, particularly in the horror genre, with titles such asThe Amityville Horror,The Town That Dreaded Sundown, andThe Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This could prove to be a controversial move that drew criticism for portraying the suffering of real people for the sake of entertainment. But often such movies cushioned the blow somewhat by deviating considerably from the events that inspired them, or at the very least allowing some time to pass before production began. One movie that did not offer any such courtesy was a British crime drama calledThe Black Panther, and it drew such heavy controversy upon release in 1977 that it ended up barely seeing the light of day.
What Happened to Lesley Whittle?
In January of 1975,British newspapers were heavily covering an unfolding crime: 17-year-old heiressLesley Whittlehad disappeared from her home in Shropshire, and a ransom note had been left demanding £50,000 for her return. Despite her family’s attempt to meet this demand, the arranged rendezvous failed, and police continued to scour the area and attempt to find the missing girl. Days dragged into weeks, and neither Lesley nor her kidnapper were found. Seven weeks after she disappeared, Lesley’s nude body was found hanging in a drainage shaft in Bathpool Park, more than sixty miles from her home. It wasn’t until December of that year that the perpetrator of this vicious crime was finally captured, and unexpectedly linked to an earlier spree of armed robberies that had killed three people. The kidnapper wasDonald Neilson, a figure themedia had dubbed The Black Panther, whose crimes were motivated by an incessant pursuit of money. The BBC tells of Neilson’s criminal career, during the course of which he committed over 400 crimes without ever being caught, and the freedom with which he got away with it all that infuriated the British public. Had he been apprehended sooner, it seemed likely that several people wouldn’t have ended up losing their lives. This anger would only be extended when it was announced that less than two years after these awful events, a movie about them would be released.
On the film landscape of the 1970s, one thing seemed sure: this movie would be an exploitation horror that focused heavily on the suffering of Neilson’s victims. This was the era of hardcore horror, one that would turn out the majority of the titles that would later be banned as part of theVideo Nasties moral panic. The list encompassed movies that contained graphic violence, a lot of nudity, and an overall feeling of degeneracy. And if there was one thing the British public was not impressed by, it was the idea of taking such a recent and horrific event and transforming it into a vessel for depraved entertainment. When the movie was released in December of 1977, the media and some public figures were so offended by the prospect that theyissued bans that prevented local cinemas from showing it.The Black Pantherwas dead on arrival, and it barely saw the light of day for almost forty years, until it was finally given aDVD release courtesy of the BFI in 2012.
What Makes The Black Panther Different?
While the issue of making films out of horrific true events could be debated ad infinitum, there is no denying that as far as such movies go,The Black Pantherstands out among its contemporaries for its careful, tasteful, and very effective handling of this terrible crime.Michael Black ofThe Telegraph and Argusreportsthat, “Having approached the Whittle family for their co-operation and been rebuffed - Lesley’s brother Ronald said, ‘I know you’ll go ahead and there’s nothing we can do to stop you, but please show my family respect’ - [director Ian] Merrick resolved to make a spare, ascetic portrait of what he calls ‘a bitter man, pathetic and desperate’”. It is really the movie’s framing of the crimes that make it good. It doesn’t linger on graphic pain or suffering, nor does it paint its villain as some charismatic evil mastermind. It approaches the action in an almost documentary style, as didTen Rillington Placea few years earlier, to the point that the movie doesn’t seem to have an attitude to the action one way or the other, but rather tries to put the audience in amidst it and allow them to draw their own conclusions. Even Lesley’s eventual death is such a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it affair that you’re not sure if it’s happened until a title card confirms it. It does what it must to communicate the beats of the story, but chooses to focus much more on the characters and the organic world they build around themselves.
There are three key components that makeThe Black Pantheras good and inoffensive a movie as it is:Michael Armstrong’s script,Ian Merrick’s direction, and an astoundingly good performance fromDonald Sumpteras Neilson. The movie really takes its time to breathe and feel out its surroundings, dedicating surprisingly lengthy portions to just silence and action. Neilson himself is given surprisingly little dialogue, relying heavily on the physical presence of Sumpter, which is considerable. He brings a brooding menace to the role, playing it like he’s some friend’s father that you really don’t want to be left in a room alone with. The scenes in which Neilson interacts with his downtrodden wife and teenage daughter build an all too believable picture of an abusive household, in which his tea is always too hot, his dinners aren’t served fast enough, and his expectations are too high to meet. He is detached from everything, existing in his own hateful little world where he is the main character and everyone else is just background noise. Sumpter has a great face for villainy, with piercing eyes and a great range of expressions that make it obvious he is a man not to be messed with.
The script is far more focused on the reality of the situation than one would expect from a movie like this. It goes for a fly-on-the-wall approach that avoids hyperbole or overwrought dialogue. In fact, an opening title card informs us that as far as possible, the script is based on documented facts and court transcripts, further adding to the style of unsensational realism that it commits to. It isn’t going for a horror movie that boasts of its levels of violence, but rather a crime drama in the truest sense. We see Neilson in his everyday life, at home, and in cafés, minimally interacting with the people around him, but evidently, he really comes alive when he is out alone, putting his military experience to use on little one-man expeditions. He is a fierce hunter who thinks he is far stronger and more capable than he actually is, and the movie really cares to build him as a character so that we can better understand why he committed the crimes, and how he got away with it for so long.
Another surprise is that Neilson himself is the main fixture of the narrative, with his victims simply showing up when he is ready to attack them. Despite Sumpter’s brilliant menace, Neilson is not portrayed as some ruthless unstoppable villain; he is in fact quite useless when it comes to his crimes, hence why people end up dying at all. Every effort he makes to steal money or break into a post office is bungled in some way or another, and his eventual capture is so casual and unremarkable that it could only be real.A fictional villain would go out in a blaze of glory, fighting to the end and being led away thrashing in handcuffs. But the movie ends on a freeze-frame of Neilson, cuffed to a drainpipe having been tackled outside a fish and chip shop, and there is no Bates-style smirk of evil or violent outburst, just a pathetic man finally apprehended.
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Does The Black Panther Deserve All The Vitriol?
It seems that those who causedThe Black Pantherto fail before it even had a chance to prove itself never actually saw the movie.John Patterson’s article forThe Guardianall but confirms this: “[Broadcaster]Sue Lawleywent after director Ian Merrick on theTonightprogramme, accusing him of having made a ‘sick’ movie, despite not having seen an inch of the film herself”. Just the idea of evoking a painful and recent memory in British consciousness for the sake of a movie put such a bad taste in people’s mouths that they didn’t see the need to find out whether or notThe Black Pantherwas a bad movie. If anything, paying to see such a film was encouraging bad behavior in the filmmaking world. It was turned into a moral crusade in which decent people were expected to consider it exploitative filth, and anybody who dared disagree was no better than Neilson himself.
Because of all this hysteria, a very good movie never really got a chance to make its mark. It couldn’t even benefit from the bad publicity because no theaters were willing to show it. Given the sheer uproar that it caused, one wouldexpect a bona fide Video Nasty to emerge, along the lines ofLast House on the LeftorI Spit On Your Grave, whenThe Black Panthercouldn’t be further from this sort of movie. It is a crime drama, the kind that nowadays would become a four-part television series with very little outrage. There is no glorification of terrible crimes, nor invitation for the audience to see it if they dare. It is simply a dramatization of an unremarkable man whose actions made the world a worse place and a very engaging and powerful one at that. This is not an extension of the legacy of terror that Neilson left behind him, but a reminder of a sad and fearful time in British history caused by one pathetic individual and his greed for money.
