Ally Ryder asked about the evolving themes in Ripper cinema. It’s a great question, and one that I don’t think I answered adequately. So here’s to a more in-depth explanation…
Early Ripper Films (1917-1954)
Early Ripper movies tended to use literary antecedents: Wedekind’s Lulu saga (3 plays condensed into a single film) and The Lodger. Between 1917 and 1954—a period of nearly 40 years—there are three movies based on Lulu and five based on The Lodger (if you count Room to Let, which I do). Waxworks is the odd man out.
The first Ripper film to feature Jack the Ripper as a central character doesn’t come until 1944—about 30 years into Ripper cinema. In the Lulu story, the Ripper (when he appears—which he doesn’t in the 1917 version) only appears in cameo. In The Lodger, the killer is supposed to be a central character, but in the two Novello versions, the lodger is actually an innocent “wrong man.” The actual killer is offscreen for all of the Hitchcock film and for all but a few moments of the 1932 film.
So in early cinema, the Ripper story is dominated by two strands—one telling the story of a fictional Ripper victim and the other telling the story of an innocent family unknowingly housing the Ripper under their roof. But the early Lodger movies are squeamish about putting the monster in the house. Once this threat had been fully realized in the 1944 Lodger, though, later adaptations followed suit.
The early English-speaking productions are equally squeamish about making the women prostitutes. I don’t know the cause of this squeamishness for the British films, but for the American movies it’s largely a result of Production Code restrictions and the censors.
Transitional Ripper Cinema and Television (1958-1968)
Television becomes a major force in this period, and new themes emerge. We routinely begin to see supernatural or other fantastical elements (at least in television)—first, a psychic; then an occult ritual used to maintain life across the ages; then waxworks possibly coming to life; and finally, a formless entity who kills so it might feed on the fear of its victims.
In the films, we see police procedural (including the first Sherlock Holmes confrontation) and yet more Lulu. (The Lulu story doesn’t die out until 1980).
One thing about all of these instances… none of them is terribly violent. True, the 1959 Jack the Ripper has that blood-red final scene in the elevator (the film had been in black and white). But on-screen violence was not yet commonplace in the Ripper cinema.
Someone asked why I thought that the Ripper case had been so sanitized. Largely censors, I think. The sanitization in this period, though, stopped applying to the issue of prostitution. In A Study in Terror, the victims are not only prostitutes, but they are given their real names on screen for the first time. This never does become an actual trend. Most Ripper television and cinema continues to create entirely fictitious victims. Notable exceptions include: Murder by Decree, Jack the Ripper (1988) and From Hell.
The Violent Era (1971-Present)
In the late 1960s, the US film industry abandoned the old Production Code and relaxed censorship standards. I’m not sure about the actual impact on world cinema (the Italians had been producing proto-slasher giallo films since 1965!). But from this time forward, Ripper cinema becomes increasingly violent, or at least the Ripper’s eviscerations are discussed if not shown.
I’m not going to provide a complete litany of violent movies. But the actual modus operandi of the Ripper killings finally gets on the table during this period. It’s discussed in the Michael Caine Jack the Ripper. It’s shown, to some extent, in From Hell. And it’s graphically (though boringly) displayed in the Tom Savini Ripper (1985). (No way did Tom create those utterly lame gore effects!).
The larger trend, though, has been just to exploit violence for shock value, regardless of the Ripper’s modus operandi—a trend started by Hammer Films in 1971 with the release of the mildly gory films Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (in which the killer does take female internal organs, though not onscreen) and Hands of the Ripper.
Thematically, pretty much anything is now fair game—from strict police procedurals to the most outrageous supernatural, science fiction and sheer shock plotlines.
Well, I hope that answered Ally’s question a little better! And sorry this is taking so long (the podcast is now two weeks old!). I’m just having to do a lot of shuffling these days. And I hope I didn’t bore everybody with all the detail!
