Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman
by Adrian Shergold
List Price:
Our Price: $0.88
You Save: $19.07 (96%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Category: DVD
See more DVD details
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD details
Actor: Christopher Fulford, Clive Francis, Ian Shaw, Juliet Stevenson, Timothy SpallDirector: Adrian Shergold
Brand: Genius
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 98 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-10-30
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Model: 80540
Studio: Ifc
DVD Reviews of Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman
DVD Review: Grim, interesting, quietly polemical, and with two magnificent performances by Timothy Spall and Juliet Stevenson
Summary: 4 Stars
Albert Pierrepoint was a paragon of lower-middle-class respectability. He and his wife, Annie, lived in a small, tidy house. His favorite supper was pork chop. He was not too keen a man, but serious about those things he held important. Annie was loyal, kept a quiet house and served his meals on time. They had no children. Albert Pierrepoint's job was delivering wholesale supplies to markets. He also had a part-time job, a job he didn't speak about. He hanged people. He did so punctiliously, with dedication and decency. Albert Pierrepoint, according to the movie, was the United Kingdom's last chief hangman. It was a job that ran in his family. His father and uncle were official hangmen, too. Between 1933 and 1955, Pierrepoint hanged over 600 people. Nearly a third were Nazi war criminals.
He took with pride and seriousness his duties. When called to perform a hanging he always took the train to the prison site, stayed a night, insisted upon a hot meal, and became so proficient he was able to move the prisoner from the holding cell to the gallows and then to the drop in an average of little more than 11 seconds. His best time was 7.5 seconds, but some believe this prisoner cooperated by stepping to the noose even faster than Pierrepoint. He believed that when a prisoner was hanged the person's guilt was cleansed. He treated the body with respect, cleaning it carefully (the relaxation of the sphincter muscles can sometimes cause a loss of dignity for the dead), and insisting on a coffin of proper size.
He was a dedicated practitioner of his craft. Over time he developed a useful chart that analyzed body weight, body height and rope length, He used the chart to insure that the length of the rope was exactly what was required for the drop to break the neck cleanly between the second and third vertebrae. Before Pierrepoint's analysis and his chart, many hangings resulted in slow strangulation if the prisoner was not heavy and the drop too short, or in snapping off of the prisoner's head if the prisoner was heavy and the drop too long. Either situation can result in discomfort for those observing and acute professional embarrassment for the hangman.
Albert Pierrepoint's life changed abruptly when his work executing Nazis (he was personally selected for the job by Field Marshal Montgomery) became public knowledge. He became a hero to the British public. He resigned his duties in 1956 over a disputed payment. He and Annie continued to run the pub he had bought partly with his earnings from the Nazi executions. Later, he became a target for those opposed to capital punishment. He died, full of years, in 1992 in a nursing home.
As with many biographical and social-issue movies, the director enjoys cleverness and has a social bone to pick, in this case, capital punishment. Just be aware that Albert Pierrepoint is magnificently portrayed by that wonderful actor, Timothy Spall. Juliet Stevenson, one of Britain's great actresses and who is bound to be made a Dame one of these years, is just as good as Annie Pierrepoint. They are worth seeing the picture for, regardless of your tolerance, or lack of it, for hanging Nazis to a Strauss waltz or for the director's willingness to stretch or invent things to make his social point. While the movie, for example, says Pierrepoint managed over 600 hangings, the best research according to some puts the number at about 425 (still a number any conscientious hangman could be proud of). Pierrepoint wasn't the last of the United Kingdom's hangmen and he wasn't really a hangman for the United Kingdom. The movie's emphasis on Pierrepoint's disillusion with capital punishment avoids Pierrepoint's own equivocations. As many directors might say, these are just quibbles that get in the way of a larger artistic truth.
For all of the Strauss waltzes, the hangings are shown in grim detail and in close-ups. There is not the slightest attempt to avoid the truth that killing people in cold blood, even if the state demands it, requires that aspect of our nature which is hard to reconcile with our basic beliefs and our daily lives. There are times when I found the movie difficult to watch. At least two of the persons Pierrepoint hanged were later found innocent and, to the joy of their corpses, given posthumous pardons.
As you might expect, the movie, which was made originally as a British TV program, went nowhere in Britain. Renamed The Last Executioner for the American market and released briefly in a handful of theaters, it tanked even faster. It's a well-crafted movie, but often grim and polemical. The performances of Spall, in particular, and Stevenson just about redeem any failings. The two are excellent. To enjoy just how fine and versatile an actor Timothy Spall is, watch him in costume as the Mikado in Topsy-Turvy, as a photo archivist in Shooting the Past and as the noxious beadle in Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. For Juliet Stevenson, a couple of her finest performances, I think, are as Nina in Truly Madly Deeply and as the wronged Flora Matlock in The Politician's Wife.
Description of Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman
PIERREPOINT:LAST HANGMAN - DVD MovieBestsellers in DVD
![The Story of Jeremiah [VHS] Image](/images/noimg.gif)
The Story of Jeremiah [VHS]Vision Video; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Wresting With God [VHS]by Vision Video
Vision Video; Published: 1990-10-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
Study Bible Video with Workbook [VHS]Spring Arbor Distributors; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $7.95
Price in other shops:
Tempo:Childrens TV Favourites Video [VHS]HarperCollins Audio; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $9.17
Price in other shops:
Tempo.Herbs:Parseley'Sb/ Party Video [VHS]HarperCollins Audio; VHS Tape; VHS Video
![Strike the Original Match [VHS] Image](/images/Strike-the-Original-Match-VHS-0001374079-X.jpg)
Strike the Original Match [VHS]New Liberty Films; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
![Medjugorje The Miracles and the Message [VHS] Image](/images/Medjugorje-The-Miracles-and-the-Message-VHS-0001373293-X.jpg)
Medjugorje The Miracles and the Message [VHS]JPN Film Production; Release date: 1995-12-15; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $29.99
Mayo Clinic Echocardiography Review Course for Boards and Recertification DVD 2008by Mayo
DVD
Price in other shops:
Pediatric Diagnostic Imaging DVD: Single Userby Oakstone
DVD
Price in other shops:
Cost Accounting [VHS]by Charles T. Horngren, George Foster, Srikant M. Datar, Howard Teall
Pearson Canada, Toronto; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Similar DVDs, VHS Video, Audio CDs
EichmannE1E; Release date: 2011-01-18; DVD
Best price: $11.90
Price in other shops:
To Kill a KingSTARZ HOME ENTERTAINMENT; Release date: 2008-02-26; DVD
Best price: $6.66
Price in other shops:
The Day of the JackalUNI DIST CORP. (MCA); Release date: 1998-04-29; DVD
Best price: $5.16
Price in other shops:
First LightRelease date: 2011-10-04; DVD
Best price: $14.34
Price in other shops:
The Stoning of Soraya MLions Gate; Release date: 2010-03-09; DVD
Best price: $6.93
Price in other shops:
You Kill MeGenius; Release date: 2007-10-09; DVD
Best price: $3.53
Price in other shops:
The Wind That Shakes the BarleyGPI; Release date: 2007-09-04; DVD
Best price: $10.49
Price in other shops:
The Executioner's Bible: The Story of Every British Hangman of the Twentieth Centuryby Steve Fielding
John Blake; Published: 2008-11-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.03
Price in other shops:
This is EnglandGenius; Release date: 2007-11-13; DVD
Best price: $12.21
Price in other shops:
Pierrepoint: A Family of Executioners: The Story of Britain's Infamous Hangmenby Steve Fielding
John Blake; Published: 2008-07-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.50
Price in other shops: