Victim | 1961

Victim has so many London locations with interesting stories that we're using the quick jump-to format and also giving the West End locations their own section.

Groundbreaking in its day, the first British film to mention the word 'homosexual', uses plenty of locations around London, providing a fascinating snapshot of the capital at the very beginning of a revolutionary decade.

Like 1959's Sapphire, from the same team of director Basil Dearden and writer Janet Green, Victim is a socially conscious film wrapped up as a police procedural drama. A young man known as Boy Barrett (Peter McEnery) is for some reason avoiding the police and pleading vainly for help from his friends for help to leave the country.

We get a clue to his dilemma when he meets up with Eddy (Donald Churchill) in an ornate Victorian pub called 'Chequers' which boasted, as the coy phrase used to have it, a "mainly male clientele". We're covering the pub fully in the West End section.

▶ Liberal – for the era – Det Inspector Harris (John Barrie) realises that an apparently simple case of embezzlement is at the heart of a vicious blackmail scheme exploiting the vulnerability of gay men at a time when male homosexual activity was strictly illegal.

He works, alongside prejudiced younger cop Bridie (John Cairney), providing the opportunity to air the opposing viewpoints of the period. Their base is supposed to be 'Fulham Police Station’ but this was Chelsea Police Station which used to stand on the King's Road at Milman’s Street by the ‘dog’s leg’ in the road at World's End, SW10. The police station was long ago replaced by a modern block and much of the surrounding area has been redeveloped. You can still though recognise what was the Water Rat pub, which is now Greek restaurant Bottarga.

It's the same police station seen in Sapphire and stands across from what-was Vivienne Westwood's notorious SEX / Seditionaries fashion store (now clumsily called Vivienne Westwood’s World’s End) which defined the look of the Punk scene in the Seventies. ⏏

▶ Among the people Barrett has been trying to contact is ambitious barrister Melville Farr (Dirk Bogarde), who's on the brink of a high-flying career as a QC and eventually a high court judge.

▶ Farr is disturbed when he receives the call at his club in the exclusive St James's district, and in the background you can recognise the Tudor red-brick towers of St James's Palace, the senior royal palace in London and the monarch’s official royal court.

This is not a gentlemen's club at all but Stornaway House, 13 Cleveland Row, SW1, and disappointingly, the imposing lamps each side of the door have gone. It stands just across from ‘Grantham House’ – London home of the Crawley family in the Downton Abbey TV series and on the big screen in Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. ⏏

▶ Farr lives with his wife Laura (Sylvia Syms) in the smart leafy area of Chiswick in Morton House, Chiswick Mall , W4 on the Thames Riverfront. The garages on which crude graffiti is daubed, which appear to be directly behind Morton House were accessed a little further west. They've since been replaced by more housing.

As Farr approaches his home, you can see the gnarled old wisteria covering the house alongside has expanded substantially. This is Strawberry House, which featured in the Merchant-Ivory adaptations of Howards End and The Golden Bowl.

Although it appears that Morton House has a river view toward Hammersmith Bridge, this is a bit of a cheat – possibly to be discreet about the location in such a 'shocking' film. The reverse shots of Melville and Laura having a heart-to-heart supposedly in front of their house, were filmed at Eyot Green, further east toward the part of Lower Mall seen in Bond movie No Time To Die and in biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. ⏏

▶ When the troubled Farr takes a walk to clear his mind, it really is only a few minutes west of Morton House in the churchyard of St Nicholas Church, the parish church of Chiswick.

Apart from containing the tomb of artist William Hogarth, this is also the churchyard to which the possessed workman runs for sanctuary in Hammer's 1967 film of Quatermass and the Pit. ⏏

▶ Setting out to discover other blackmail victims, Farr visits jittery salesman Phip (Nigel Stock) at 'Cavendish Cars'. This garage, which stood at 250 Brompton Road in South Kensington, SW3, has been replaced by a contemporary Italian furniture showroom, but in the background you’ll easily recognise the distinctive Michelin House, an eye-catching Grade II-listed building built in 1911 as HQ of the tyre company. Until recently, it housed Bibendum Restaurant and Oyster Bar.⏏

▶ Farr's legal work is based in Middle Temple, City of London EC4, the quiet old-world legal enclave south of The Strand (where you’ll also find the chambers of Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones’s Baby). The photogenic grounds are also used for a foot chase in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and for a musical number in Mary Poppins Returns.

Farr’s dilemma is highlighted by when senior members of the legal profession talk of his impending elevation to QC as they stroll through the courtyard in front of Middle Temple Church (remember it being visited in The Da Vinci Code?). The arcade behind them is where Ilsa Faust fights off a knife attack in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. ⏏

Farr’s chambers can be found on the tiny passageway between Crown Office Row and Elm Court, where you'll see that graceful flight of steps, at the foot of which Farr is approached by Eddy with the compromising photo that threatens to end the promising career.

Farr approaches actor 'Tiny' Calloway (Dennis Price), whom he suspects is also being blackmailed, but following a curt denial receives a mysterious call to meet Lord Fullbrook (Anthony Nicholls) at " 18 Nightingale Mews”.

▶ This turns out to be the photographic studio of Paul Mandrake (Peter Copley), where Farr is confronted by a surprising group of high-profile victims. Unwilling to take the risk of public shame – and possibly criminal charges – by speaking out, they urge Farr to drop his enquiries.

The mews is Old Barrack Yard, hard to find, tucked discreetly away off Wilton Row behind the luxurious Berkeley Hotel in the heart of swanky Belgravia, SW1. ⏏

▶ Undeterred, Farr arranges a meeting with blackmailer Sandy (Derren Nesbitt) on the Embankment south of Dolphin Square in Pimlico. Extensive renovation has rendered the area, featured also in Michael Reeves’ The Sorcerers, unrecognisable. ⏏

▶ After Farr courageously decides to inform the police, a sting is set up and the blackmailers are followed from Doe's bookshop back to their lair. Blackmail was clearly an enormously profitable business. Sandy is finally arrested at his home which is the grand 19th century red-brick block Langham Mansions in Earl's Court Square at Warwick Road, SW5. ⏏

---