Cold Light of Day
A middle-aged civil servant living in a run-down bedsit, Jorden Marsh would not have been considered a hot catch in the clubs of Soho on a Saturday night; instead he targeted the dregs, the homeless, the desperate, taking them back to his upstairs room in a north London tenement with water stains on the ceiling, a harsh awakening in the cold light of day.
Among them was art school dropout Joe, handsome but alone in the city without a safety net; needing a place to stay he entered into a toxic semi-relationship with a man twice his age who so desperately needed the company he kept Joe around even after he strangled him, bathing his body then concealing him under the floorboards.
A nondescript man, perhaps even a good neighbour who checked on the elderly invalid downstairs and took care of the cat when the nurse opposite was away, nobody would ever suspect him of making headlines as one of the most notorious serial killers of the twentieth century, less conspicuous than Jack the Ripper but considerably more productive over the five years he lured men to his home.
Inspired by the horrifying true tale of Dennis Andrew Nilsen, arrested in February 1983 when human remains were found blocking the drains and subsequently sentenced for the murders of at least twelve victims, writer/director Fhiona-Louise was only twenty-one when she made Cold Light of Day, starring her drama school associate Martin Byrne-Green as Joe and Bob Flag, best known as the impassive face of Big Brother in Michael Radford’s adaptation of 1984, as Marsh.
Shot over two weeks, much of the location filming conducted surreptitiously without permit, despite being feted at the Venice Film Festival Cold Light of Day never received wide distribution until Arrow Films retrieved it from the archives for restoration from the original 16mm negative, adding to their diverse catalogue this uncomfortable depiction of the lowest ebb of the downtrodden decade of Thatcher’s Britain, devoid of any of the warmth and glamour offered by more nostalgic recollections of the eighties.
The minimal funds reflected in the grainy footage, Cold Light of Day is bleak viewing, Nilsen a man who either would or could not articulate his reasons for his actions, and while as a work of fiction it wisely maintains him as an enigma rather than presenting him as sympathetic nor does it seek to broaden or understand the other characters, Joe a non-specific amalgam of Nilsen’s victims, both Flag and Byrne-Green bravely exposing every vulnerability and monstrous compulsion without ever playing to the camera in what is a minimalist presentation of the tragic events rather than a more rounded attempt at dramatisation.
Cold Light of Day is available on Blu-ray from Arrow Films now
