A sexually-charged true-crime drama ,Christian Marnham’s The Orchard End Murder chronicles the brutal murder of a young woman (Tracy Hyde) in rural Kent ,and dramatizes the tragic aftermath of the crime.The hunt for the killer leads the woman’s boyfriend (Mark Hardy) to the house of an ecentric stationmaster, who tends a garden of gnomes and seems to posses a diabolical secret. Orchard End is a cinematic curiosity item, being a short feature intended for distribution as part of a double-bill (usually packaged with Gary Sherman’s Dead and Buried).
Restored by the British Film Institute, this edition also includes Marnham’s The Showman,a fascinating documentary portrait of seedy sideshow impresario Wally Shufflebottom Jr.
Interview with Christian Marnham | Interview with actress Tracy Hyde | Interview with actor David Wilkinson | The Showman (1970, 25 min.), a documentary short directed by Christian Marnham | Christian Marnham on The Showman
