Trivia / House of Whipcord

• Actor-Shared Background: Penny Irving was a glamour model like her character Anne Marie.
• Banned in China: The film is banned in Norway.
• Billing Displacement: Barbara Markham (Margaret) and Patrick Barr (Justice Bailey) are billed first, even though Anne Marie and Julia are the film's protagonists. Penny Irving is given the 'And Introducing' credit, but Ann Michelle is billed after Ray Brooks, who plays the lesser role of her boyfriend Tony but was also more recognisable for Coronation Street and The Knack... and How to Get It.
• Completely Different Title:
  • France: Flagellations
  • Italy: And Traces of Violence on the Body
  • Sweden: The Penitentiary
• Dawson Casting: Anne Marie is said to be nineteen. Penny Irving was actually thirty-two!
• Executive Meddling: Although there was lots of arguing back and forth with the censors, the fact that there seemed to be a lot of poignant social commentary in there meant that Pete Walker merely had to cut a shot of Anne Marie being whipped to get it passed.
• Fake Brit: Sheila Keith was Scottish, putting on an English accent to play Walker.
• Fake Nationality: Penny Irving is British playing the French Anne Marie.
• God Never Said That: Many sources were convinced that Margaret Wakehurst and Justice Bailey were deliberate caricatures of Mary Whitehouse and Lord Langford, and their 'Festival of Light'. Pete Walker countered that Margaret came from a real person (see below for the inspiration) and that Mary Whitehouse was much different in personality to the character. Other sources claim that Margaret was based on women from the area in which he grew up, but he clarified that other interviewers noticed some similarities and he just admitted they had a point.
• Playing Against Type: Sheila Keith did a lot of comedies at the time, and Pete Walker decided to cast her against type as a sadistic prison warden.
  "I don't know if you've noticed but comedy actors make terrific villains."
• Production Posse: Sheila Keith (Walker) also starred in Pete Walker's films Frightmare and The Confessional.
• Technology Marches On:
  • The truck driver who picks up Anne Marie unwittingly sends her back into the prison by mistaking it for a private clinic. If it were these days, he'd be able to use a GPS to find the nearest hospital or else call an ambulance on his cell phone.
  • Julia asks to use the kitchen phone and discovers Mark, thus setting up the climax. Again, with a cell phone...
• Tuckerization:
  • Margaret Wakehurst was a real prison governess that existed in the 1800s and got fired for cruelty towards the inmates.
  • Margaret's Dragon is named Walker, after the director himself.
• Typecasting:
  • Robert Hayman plays a similar Handsome Lech in Vampire Circus.
  • Dorothy Gordon, who plays Bates, was cast because she had played a similar character in Women of Twilight.
• Unbuilt Casting Type: Penny Irving would later be better known as a Ms. Fanservice in comedies of the 70s. In her first major role, she's playing a woman who's being punished for her Ms. Fanservice nature, and incarcerated because she was photographed nude in public.
• Word of God: Pete Walker denies that Margaret Wakehurst and Justice Bailey are deliberate caricatures of Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford. He says that there was a little inspiration, but Mary Whitehouse was a kindly librarian sort as opposed to the ruthless zealot Margaret was.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Alfred Shaughnessy, of Upstairs Downstairs fame, wrote a treatment but he was too busy with commitments to the TV show to write the full screenplay.
  • The film was originally envisioned as a straight Girls Behind Bars flick, but Pete Walker read about a Victorian prison governess who was fired for excessive brutality and that helped form the story.
  • Peggy Cummins auditioned for the role of Margaret Wakehurst but was turned down for being too attractive.
  • Pete Walker's Frightmare was originally planned as a sequel to this, before evolving into an original story.