Wild Justice (1994): Welsh Rarebit

Dave digs out an obscure Welsh thriller and discovers a director who was once a person of interest for MI5.

“I feel I want to go out and celebrate!”

That probably wouldn’t be the reaction of most filmmakers when they found out they’d been blacklisted by the BBC, but for Paul Turner it was the proof he needed that his lack of success at the U.K.’s principal broadcaster wasn’t down to ability.

It was politics.

Turner, an assistant film editor by trade, had applied for several jobs at the corporation during the ’70s and had grown increasingly depressed at the repeat rejections. A decade later, The Observer newspaper discovered that the Cornish filmmaker was one of a number of individuals who had been secretly vetted by domestic security service MI5, who – believe it or not – actually had a base in in the bowels of Broadcasting House [1].

Nationalism was the charge, with Turner having committed the seemingly treasonous act of joining the Welsh Communist Party in his youth. Surprisingly the endless vetoes to his Beeb applications didn’t deter him, and after establishing an independent production company in the mid-‘80s, Turner and his film, Hedd Wyn (1992), became the first Welsh prospects to be Academy Award nominated, in the category of Best Foreign Language Film.

WILD JUSTICE, meanwhile, saw Turner in a position of compromise. Although it premiered on regional television station HTV Wales in its original language, an English language version had been shot in tandem in order to tap into the lucrative home video market. A logical decision for sure, albeit with a feature that already carried a minimal chance of mainstream success.

Per the back of First Independent’s British cassette release, Wild Justice focuses on the Hughes family who have just started to get their lives back together in the wake of the devastating rape and murder of their youngest daughter, Catrin (Manon Prysor). But the nightmares are reawakened when the killer is released from prison only three years into his sentence. Incensed by this travesty of justice, Catrin’s brother, Alun (Dafydd Emyr), vows to reap his own retribution – much to the horror of his elder sister, Rhiannon (Nia Medi). In a desperate bid to put a stop to Alun’s plan she finds herself alone in a remote ruined mansion in the dead of night, face to face with her sister’s killer.

There’s something decidedly movie-of the-week about the opening third of Wild Justice, with some heavy-handed exposition that’s intent on setting up the narrative with a thick black marker pen. Thankfully, as soon as the revenge aspect kicks in, things get a little more interesting. The script (from Turner and colleagues Eiry Palfrey and Geraint Jones) shows no reluctance in mining the depths of the human psyche, and it’s these moments of intense moral conflict between brother and sister that stand out.

A strange sexual energy permeates the picture. It takes the story’s bleak tone by the scruff of the neck and amplifies it further, while virtually every second of the run time is set in near darkness and against a backdrop of the most persistent rainstorm imaginable. It’s full credit to cinematographer Brian Morgan, then, for giving Wild Justice an unexpected nocturnal beauty. Some impeccably lit sequences fully justify his BAFTA Cymru Award nod.

Wales ● 1994 ● Thriller, TVM ● 88mins

Nia Medi, Nicholas McGaughey, Dafydd Emyr ● Dir. Paul Turner ● Wri. Paul Turner, Eiry Palfrey, Geraint Jones