YMMV / House of Whipcord

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Justice Bailey seems to be the most sympathetic of the wardens, so we have to wonder if he was as big a zealot as Margaret to begin with and softened over time. Or else he's just easily manipulated by her due to his senility. You have to wonder if he even knows about some of the nastier things that happen in the prison - as it would be easy to hide them from him.
  • How complicit are Walker and Bates? One of them has a Pet the Dog moment involving Anne Marie after seeing how broken she is from the torture. Are they similar to Justice Bailey in just wanting the girls to reform, are they following Margaret out of fear or do they just have slightly more standards than her?
• Damsel Scrappy: Anne Marie for some, being a little too dimwitted to realise what's going on once she's brought to the prison.
• Fetish Retardant: You will not be able to find anything sexy in the flogging scenes.
• Fridge Horror: Julia is going to be in need of some serious therapy after the credits roll. She says she convinced Anne Marie's modelling agency to bring her over to England, and as such she feels responsible for her. So she's not going to take it well that the girl was killed before she could save her.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The scary thing about the film? There were prisons like this in Ireland called the Magdalene Laundries (see The Magdalene Sisters) where women were sent if the church deemed them corrupt or immoral. And the public knew about them. What's worse is that the last of the laundries didn't close until 1996.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • It's hard not to look at the drab grey uniforms and prison cells and not think of the Sparrows from Game of Thrones. Justice Bailey even sounds similar to Jonathan Pryce, while Bates has a resemblance to Septa Unella.
  • Given Mark's Honey Trap it also brings to mind Get Out (2017) which is a Gender Flipped version involving the girlfriend luring the boyfriend to a trap with her parents.
• Narm: It's rather jarring to see that Bates is playing with a stuffed animal while she's on duty.
• Narm Charm: Penny Irving's French accent is quite stereotypical but not enough to detract from the film.
• Never Live It Down: Anne Marie is often mocked for her Idiot Ball in the first part of the film - going into a creepy place with a man she barely knows. This ignores that she does several smart things to escape the prison, both of which work and it's not her fault bad luck intervenes to put her back in her cell.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The moment where you truly realise just what Anne Marie is about to go through. The whole place looks eerie and foreboding, but once you discover it's a prison...
  • One girl being hanged simply for stealing bread because she was hungry. She's screaming in terror every time we see her.
  • When Anne Marie is being flogged, we cut to Mark listening outside the room and he's clearly getting off on it.
  • You're bound to go Oh, Crap! when the truck driver unwittingly drives Anne Marie back into the prison.
• Paranoia Fuel: You meet a nice guy, hit it off with him and he invites you to meet his parents. Turns out it's all a trap to punish you for a Felony Misdemeanor.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Penny Irving later played Miss Bakewell on Are You Being Served? and was a notable Page Three Stunna.
  • Henry's wife is played by Rose Hill, who would later be best known for playing Madame Fanny in 'Allo 'Allo!.
• Values Resonance: The film's villains are misogynists who attack female sexuality - and the themes it tackles are even more relevant in a post 'Me Too' world.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The film was made partially in response to Mary Whitehouse and her 'Clean Up TV' campaign, as well as the rise of right-wing Christian attitudes in British society at the time.

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