Pimp Julep: Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Vanessa Howard

Girly and her brother, Sonny

Director Freddie Francis' 1969 Brittish cult horror-comedy-oddity it a delightfully stylized tale of the super deadly, filthy rich, and overflowingly proper English family, who populate the rooms of their sprawling estate with kidnapped gentlemen friends. Sounds great, right? Well, it is.
I have been ruminating on this cinematic gem for some time, not quite knowing what to say. The main characters, Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly, all keep to a strict set of rules, complete with bed times, regimented crochet, and daily doses of vitamins and minerals. Their etiquette-soaked lifestyle, however, has a distinct tinge of malice and insanity, and the characters react in unpredictable ways when rules of the house slowly begin to be broken with the arrival of a new friend. The new guest catches Girly in the prime of her pubescence, and she must face the choice of grown-up life or childish games. What makes the film is not the exquisite and decaying mansion, the quirky Mary Poppins-esque dialogue, or the various vengeful murders, but the Character of Girly. Vanessa Howard plays this role with a constant mask that can be only construed as "I want to be sexually ravaged." It is this powerful quality that entices the many victims into the manor, to be toyed with and then inevitably "put on trial" for rule-breaking and then "sent to the angels."
The self-proclaimed "happy family" of the film is in a constant state of vague but piercing tension, most of which tends to be aimed toward the power figure and head of household, Mumsy. When Mumsy and Nanny spend their regular afternoons crocheting, no one is to finish before the Mumsy, no matter their crochet prowess.
"You must never forget, you are only the Nanny, and I am the Mumsy."

"Friend in #2" disrupts the household to shambles, as he causes Girl to doubt her structured and sheltered upbringing, and acknowledge her own humanity.