televisionTag Archive for television archive at Hollywood Ripper Guide to Jack the Ripper On Screen

Tag Archive for 'television'

Jul

regarding blondes, psychics and abberline’s
crutch (part 2)

By ripperlady 2 Comments

Categories: Reviews

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!

Jul

michael emerson’s 5 creepiest characters of all time:
hour of the wolf

By ripperlady 0 Comments

Categories: Analysis, Commentary, LOST and Reviews

In his “creepiest performances” video, Michael Emerson (Ben Linus on LOST) gives a nod to Max von Sydow and Ingmar Bergman:

Another great one is, if you watch Ingmar Bergman movies… Max von Sydow did a movie for Bergman called The Hour of the Wolf, where he plays a sort of standard tortured Swedish artist who just can’t stop killing young people. It’s kind of awful. —Michael Emerson

Most people don’t go looking to Ingmar Bergman for their “creepy fix.” But obviously they should—and Michael Emerson (almost apologetically) does. It would be hard to come up with a better pick. Hour of the Wolf, Bergman’s lone”horror” movie, practically defines “creepy.”

The film shows the disintegration of an artist’s mind as strange phenomena occur on the remote and isolated island he inhabits with his wife. We never know quite whether the phenomena are objective supernatural disturbances or subjective mental ones. (sound familiar?) But demonic figures (alternately referred to as “cannibals” and “ghosts”) do interact with the couple either objectively or subjectively, and seek to “claim” the man as their own—driving him toward murder and madness, and most likely to his own death.

Stephen King, obviously, ran with this concept in The Shining. But Stanley Kubrick’s film version of that novel relies on a visual style nearly opposite Bergman’s. Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel is full of light and color, a stunning contrast to the dark drama surrounding Jack Torrence.

Hour of the Wolf (shot by legendary cinematographer Sven Nykvist in black and white) uses chiaroscuro techniques to bring the faces of the characters out of the surrounding darkness (and to darken their faces when surrounded by light).

Not to belabor the point (such lighting has become so commonplace), but compare the shadows on Von Sydow’s face with the shadows often used to frame Emerson’s character, Ben Linus:

It’s easy, of course, to make superficial comparisons with LOST. After all, Bergman’s film is set on a remote island where we don’t always know what’s real and what’s not, while Von Sydow’s artist, Johan Borg, is almost always shot in partial shadow. But Hour of the Wolf is really more like what would happen if the unutterable humiliations found in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf were visited upon an insomniac already on the verge of a mental breakdown… and visited upon him by supernatural monsters. All I can say is that, psychologically, Bergman must have been having a pretty bad year.

As a filmmaker, Ingmar Bergman dealt with his personal anxieties and demons by turning them into movies. So Hour of the Wolf is not merely a brooding meditation on the theme of madness. It is actually a very personal film. Von Sydow is largely standing in for Bergman, who had himself suffered (and been hospitalized for) a significant mental breakdown only couple of years earlier. While Bergman grappled with the darkness, Von Sydow (a frequent Bergman actor) had been playing Jesus in The Greatest Story Ever Told, one of the last all-star biblical epics.

Okay, so now I’ll ‘fess up before I bore you with an endless stream of Bergman and Von Sydow trivia. I “found” Bergman during the requisite “post mortem” viewing of what I assumed would be a medicinal dose of just one or two of the director’s films. I’d been avoiding his work my entire adult life because of the whole “tortured Swedish artist” thing that Emerson mentions. But with his death, I decided it was time to see at least one Bergman film.

And so I saw The Seventh Seal. And then I watched Virgin Spring. And then I watched Wild Strawberries… and Persona… and Through a Glass Darkly... and Winter Light… and The Silence… and Shame… and Hour of the Wolf. I just couldn’t get enough. Bergman was nothing like what I expected. Yes, he was full-on arthouse and full-on tortured, but man was he compelling!

For me, finding Bergman was like a huge relief. Here was somebody making well-crafted movies that asked the big questions, and asked them honestly—not as a chance to pontificate but as an opportunity to explore. It was exciting to see films this courageous and probing—a cinema of ideas. And oddly, Bergman’s exploration of the darkness was not nihilistic, but often strangely hopeful.

But there’s not much hopefulness in Hour of the Wolf. The darkness of the title (the hour between night and dawn) permeates the fabric of the film. Von Sydow delivers a magnificently tormented performance as the doomed artist, and Liv Ullmann is spectacular in her part of the grief-stricken wife. You could say that this is a “creepy” favorite of mine. And I’m delighted to find that it’s also a favorite of Michael Emerson’s.

This article first appeard on Blogcritics.
It has also appeared on the LOST site Room 23.

BTW, if you want to get a sense of the film, you can find the American trailer here. It does contain partial upper nudity.

Aug

fanex convention and a japanese ripper film

By ripperlady 0 Comments

Categories: Information

Francis Matthews

Wow. What a weekend. We had a lot of fun hearing the stories of the celebrity guests–who included Carol Cleveland of Monty Python, American actress Beverly Washburn, and well-known British film, television and stage actor, Francis Matthews. They were all real sweethearts.

My husband and I had the pleasure of driving Mr. Matthews from the airport in Northern Virginia to the hotel on the northside of Baltimore, during the evening rush hour in Washington, DC. It was a long trip, but it was made easier by our delightful guest, who regaled us with stories (and voices) of Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Boris Karloff, and others. He even did Captain Scarlet for us (for whom he provided the voice… using his “silly Cary Grant imitation” as he puts it). And all this after a 9 hour flight from London! We spent much of the trip laughing hysterically.

I won’t go into tremendous detail about the convention, except to mention that there were great films, panels, Q&As, and repartee with our writer, actor, and filmmaker friends.

And now for the big news… I discovered a Japanese Jack the Ripper film! I found it in the catalog of a dealer I’ve known for about 7 years. The day after I spotted it in the catalog, I went to the dealer’s table and asked about the movie. Unbelievably he actually had it with him! (Well, perhaps NOT so unbelievably. He knows that the “Ripper Lady” will come to his table each year and buy a movie from him).

Naturally, I bought it. I’ll watch it in the next couple of days and write about it for the next installment of the blog. That movie got me to realize that there are yet entire continents to be mined for versions of the Ripper tale. Has Bollywood done a Ripper movie? Has Hong Kong? Has Manila? Latin America? the non-English majority of Europe?

Most visitors to Hollywood Ripper come from the English-speaking world of the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. But we’ve also had about 600 unique visitors from non-English-speaking countries in Western Europe; over 100 from all over Asia (39 from Japan alone); about 60 from Latin America (largely from Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico); and over 50 unique visitors from countries that once were “behind the Iron Curtain.”

Obviously there’s a vast potential market for Jack the Ripper movies outside the English-speaking world. Now that I’ve run across my first Asian Ripper movie, I’ll be keeping my eyes open for more Ripper films from Asia and other places that I did not previously suspect.

Jul

off to the fanex convention

By ripperlady 0 Comments

Categories: Information

Well, I’m going to be at the Fanex Convention in Baltimore from Thursday till Monday. It’s going to be fun, so if you’re in the Mid-Atlantic region, you might want to come out and check it out.

I’ll be serving on panels discussing movies that deal with Satanism, Loss of Identity, Monster Rallies, and even Musicals. Curiously, several of these topics have implications for Jack the Ripper cinema and television… though that’s not how I’ll be approaching them at the convention.

Musicals: Well, the panel I’m on will be talking about the weirdest musical numbers we’ve ever seen on film. We’ve already talked amongst ourselves and have come up with a pretty impressive bunch of bizarre musical numbers… including “The Devil’s Cabaret.” If there were a Ripper screen musical, I’m sure we’d be showing a clip from it. But you know, even though no Ripper musical has ever made it to the screen, there have been Ripper musicals on stage. In fact, one will be opening in London in 2004. The theme song from the musical is pretty twisted (and is incorporated into the Flash intro for the website). So you might want to check it out!

Satanism: There are at least a couple of Ripper stories on the screen that place the Ripper in occult alliances with the forces of darkness. In “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,” an investigator discovers that the Ripper’s murders are actually blood sacrifices, and that the locations for the murders form patterns that have meaning in the world of the occult. The Ripper’s purpose? To maintain eternal life. (In this story, it’s already the 1960s, so the Ripper seems to be doing a pretty good job at maintaining his objective). In Ripper Man, the killer (who believes he is the reincarnation of Jack the Ripper) just simply would like to be one of the forces of darkness. And of course, there are some Ripperologists who maintain that the Ripper himself was a Satanist.

Loss of Identity: We’re going to talk about what a scary theme this is, and point to movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. How does this apply to Jack the Ripper? Well, for the Ripper, obviously, total anonymity was necessary in order to commit butchery with impunity. The fact that the Ripper has remained anonymous, though, is just not psychologically tenable for the culture at large. The Ripper has no known identity—and therefore the case has no closure. We lack two things that humans desperately need: a sense of order, a sense of justice. That’s my theory for why some people actually dedicate their lives and financial resources to giving the Ripper an identity.

For some Ripperologists, the Ripper’s identity is merely a parlor game. But the more dedicated and rigorous students of the case, I think, are often on a quest to right a historical wrong. The blood of the murdered women of Whitechapel screams out to them, and they hope to bring the Ripper out of the fog into which he slipped, and into the light.

In the very disturbing movies we will be discussing, people are stripped of their identity against their will. The Ripper willingly stripped himself of identity… but that fact itself remains disturbing enough that over a century later, we still seek to give him one.

May

here’s the bad and the ugly

By ripperlady 0 Comments

Categories: Best and Worst and Reviews

Okay, so I write this blog last night, spend over an hour on it, hit “send,” and it disappears into the ether. So here I am, trying it all over again.

You get what “bad” and “ugly” are all about, right? For bad, think “Angel Eyes.” For ugly, think “Tuco”; And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, stop what you’re doing right now and rent The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly before you watch another Ripper film! Just remember: we love Tuco.

Once again, these are all Jack the Ripper movies. In chronological order…

The Phantom Fiend (1935, US title; 1932, The Lodger, UK title)
Anybody see Gosford Park? If so, you probably remember the character Ivor Novello. He’s the guy who spends most of his time playing and singing at the piano. Early in that film, the catty elderly woman makes some comment about his most recent movie having been a flop. The 1932 Lodger is that film. Novello had starred in Hitchcock’s silent Lodger several years earlier, and decided to make a sound version. But Miles Mander and the other writers wrote the script more to show off Novello’s musical talents than to tell a compelling story. The end result is a vanity production, in which Novello’s lodger woos the leading lady through song (and highly melodramatic speech). The movie does have some fine moments, but most of them occur when Novello is not on screen. RATING: UGLY

The Man in the Attic (1954)
In 1944, the most famous version of The Lodger, starring Laird Cregar, was released. Only 10 years later, this inferior (not to mention, gratuitous) version of virtually the same script appeared in theaters. It’s not all that bad if you haven’t seen the ‘44 Lodger. But if you have, it’s kind of laughable. Mediocre cast, with the exception of Jack Palance (who’s always interesting to watch). RATING: UGLY

“Knife in the Darkness” (1968 )
Episode of Cimarron Strip. Script writer Harlan Ellison, as always, blames this one on the director, but I’m not so sure. Was it the director who decided to have Jack kill an unlikely 8-10 people (I lost count somewhere), all in one night? This is fun and silly Ripper fluff. Kind of lame, but definitely watchable. RATING: UGLY

Jack the Ripper (1976)
I’m sure there are Jess Franco and Klaus Kinski fans out there who will object. But let’s face it, folks… Klaus can do better— heck even Jess can do better—than this! Granted, I have not seen Der Dirnenmörder in the original German. And yes, my rating for this film is partly the result of having suffered through the really really really bad English voice acting in the English dubbed version. But I would have problems anyway. Franco turns Jack into a dismembering killer, who dumps body parts in the Thames. I can take several variations on Jack’s modus operandi, but this is not one of them. Klaus looks like he’s getting ready for his moody turn in Nosferatu, which means, of course, that Jess is spending way too much time on Klaus’s face— and that just doesn’t work. This film is a killer vs. detective story, so it needs to move faster. It’s waaaaaay tooooooo slooooooow for its genre. And then there’s the necrophilia. Yeah, it’s possible that the killings did go down that way, but I don’t need to see it. RATING: Somewhere Between BAD AND UGLY—really really UGLY.

Lulu (1978 )
Pretentious silent art film version of the Wedekind plays, directed by artist Ronald Chase. Too busy being “arty” to do anything really interesting with the story. Yes, there is some nice cinematography, some bizarre set design, and a really studious re-creation of certain elements of silent cinema. But the film is boring, long, and just not very good. Before you think that I just like films geared towards action, let me add that I love Andrei Rublev and The Sacrifice by Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. Those are extremely slow moving and extremely arty 3-hour films. The difference between them and Chase’s Lulu is that they are good. RATING: BAD

Lulu (1980)
Directed by Polish erotic filmmaker, Walerian Borowczyk. Borowczyk is supposed to be an artistic director of eroticism. You would never know it by this movie (which, granted, is one of the most obscure in his oeuvre—so apparently there is some agreement on its worth). The version I saw was in French with Greek subtitles. It is possible that this version was edited down so that only the (un-erotic) “erotic” scenes remained. Regardless, what I saw had almost no plot coherence. You get the hint of Wedekind’s plays, but nothing to tie the story together from one of Lulu’s lovers to the next. Borowczyk also transforms the beautiful lesbian Countess Geschwitz into an old crone figure, who, yikes!, masturbates with her cane and on top of a portrait of Lulu. Just icky. Oh, and Udo Kier delivers a terrible performance as Jack the Ripper. This is almost impossible to find, and I would say: “Don’t seek it out”— not even if you’re a Borowczyk or Udo Kier completist. RATING: BAD

The Ripper (1985)
This is Tom Savini’s infamous Ripper movie. Savini has never stopped apologizing for this Direct-To-Video production, but actually, he’s one of the better elements in the movie. The Ripper has a great concept, but terrible execution. With the exception of Savini and Tom Schreier, the rest of the cast is… well, how do I put this nicely?… amateurish. They deliver what you would expect if someone turned on a video camera at a college dorm party and asked everybody to play a role, sight-unseen, from a script. Yes, the acting is that bad. And where was Savini when they shot the SPFX gore? The mutilations sure don’t look like his work! Still, the movie does get points for trying. The concept really could go far with a moderately budgeted remake, and there actually are some (intentionally) witty moments in the script. (The Conqueror Worm sequence is an absolute hoot, if you know that movie and pay attention to what’s actually coming out of the television). RATING: Somewhere Between BAD AND UGLY

Terror at London Bridge (1985)
Ever wonder what it would be like if you put Jack the Ripper at Havasu City and made a movie with David Hasselhoff and plenty of water sports? No? Well, apparently the makers of this made-for-TV-movie did. Lots of red herrings and plot twists. This movie is fun for awhile, but eventually it starts to drag on… and on… and on. Silly fluff. RATING: UGLY

Edge of Sanity (1989)
Ick! Yuck! I need to take a shower!!! Sleazy, voyeuristic, Ripper movie which in which pornography director Gerard Kikoïne makes an intrinsic association between sexuality and fatal violence. Too bad it’s one of Anthony Perkins’ last performances. RATING: BAD

May

best ripper stuff on tv and film

By ripperlady 1 Comment

Categories: Best and Worst and Reviews

This list is limited to Jack the Ripper television and film. There are no Faux Rippers, False Sightings, or Copycats here. I’ll give a separate listing later for the best of those.

Alphabetical listing:

“Comes the Inquisitor” (1995)
Brilliant episode of Babylon 5, and one of the Ripper’s finest hours on screen. Of course, this is science fiction, so folks who hate that genre will probably not enjoy this episode.

Deadly Advice (1993)
Wickedly funny black comedy, complete with murderous advice from Jack the Ripper… among other infamous killers.

From Hell (2001)
Okay, this is not on the list because of the story. (I kind of have “issues” with turning Inspector Abberline–a real person–into a hop-head who dies young). It’s on the list because it is the most realistic depiction of the crimes and crime scenes on film. Production Designer Martin Childs did a tremendous amount of research into the actual scenes where the bodies were found. He used photographs from 1888, among other things, to help him design the set of Whitechapel. This film also provides a realistic, gritty, look for Whitechapel. It’s not as bad as Whitechapel actually was, but the Hughes Brothers know that audiences don’t really want to watch anything that horrific on screen.

Jack the Ripper (1959)
Clever script, with plenty of red herrings. Does not deal with the actual killings (has none of the real victims mentioned or shown). But it’s got an entertaining plot, nonetheless. And it’s also the first Ripper movie to show the riotous conditions in Whitechapel during the Ripper slayings.

Jack the Ripper (1988 )
This movie was made-for-TV during the Ripper centenary. Michael Caine plays Inspector Abberline (as an alcoholic, who happens to be brilliant). This movie does a fabulous job of re-creating the atmosphere in London during the autumn of 1888. It has one flaw, though, in my opinion: it goes on for 3 1/2 hours just showing what is known, then in the last 1/2 hour, it reveals who it thinks the killer was. Sorry, but any film that is trying to go for the “real thing” should leave the case as unsolved as it remains today. (I guess that answers the question: “So what do you think of Patricia Cornwell?”). A Jack the Ripper must-see.

The Lodger (1926)
This film is of interest, obviously, because it launched Alfred Hitchcock’s career. It was, in fact, the first film by Hitchcock to make it off the shelf and into the theaters. And when it did, it caused a sensation. The young Hitchcock was quickly hailed as Britain’s finest filmmaker. Hitchcock was already using lots of trick shots and doing complex maneuvers with the camera. The image of the Lodger appearing at the door is one of the great moments in early British cinema… as is the moment when we see the shadow from the window making a cross over his face. The film has great atmosphere and technique, and it hints at great things to come in this young man’s future. A Jack the Ripper must-see.

The Lodger (1944)
This is the best screen version of the novel. (Yes, it is better than the Hitchcock version, which is very good in its own right). And it has a legendary performance by Laird Cregar as Jack the Ripper. This is just classic era Hollywood doing its finest in making a suspense film. A Jack the Ripper must-see.

Lulu (1962)
This film is unknown to American audiences. But it’s a brilliant Austrian interpretation of the Lulu story (by Frank Wedekind). Incredible black and white cinematography and shot composition. This is just a beautifully filmed, and well acted film. Excellent direction, excellent set design, excellent costuming and casting. Too bad it’s so hard to find. I had to fly across a continent to watch it in a film archive!

Murder by Decree (1979)
Sherlock Holmes meets the Stephen Knight theory. Don’t know what the Stephen Knight theory is? It’s the Masonic Conspiracy theory… same one that they use in From Hell. Personally, I think the theory is preposterous, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make good films based on it. And this one has the added advantage of forgetting about Abberline entirely and just focusing on Sherlock Holmes’ investigation into the murders. Wonderful performances by Christopher Plummer as Holmes and James Mason as Watson. Though I would disagree, many regard this as the best Ripper film.

Pandora’s Box (1929)
Fabulous silent version of the Lulu story, with a legendary performance by Louise Brooks as Lulu. This is a Jack the Ripper must-see.

Room to Let (1949)
Clever re-working of The Lodger, with a fine performance by Valentine Dyall as the menacing Dr. Fell. Too bad the full 68-minute version is not readily available. Steer clear of the 55-minute version if you can. It’s badly mutilated for television viewing.

Study in Terror (1965)
This is the first “Sherlock Holmes Meets Jack the Ripper” to get onto the screen, and it is very good. Plus, John Neville (the Well-Manicured Man in The X-Files) plays Holmes. This is one of my personal favorite Ripper movies.

Time after Time (1979)
This is a fun science fiction Ripper fantasy, complete with time travel. There are better Ripper movies, but there aren’t many good ones that are as entertaining as this. Malcolm MacDowell and David Warner are great as H.G. Wells and Jack the Ripper, respectively.

“Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” (1961)
This is a brilliant television adaptation of the Robert Bloch short story. Made for Boris Karloff’s Thriller, it is nicely directed by Ray Milland, with an excellent score by Jerry Goldsmith. This is first-class Ripper stuff (one of my personal favorites). Too bad it’s almost impossible to find. It is unfortunately not one of the Thriller episodes available on VHS or DVD. And, so far as I know, it never plays on television. Basically, you have to know a collector to find this one.**

**Note: This was unavailable at the time this post was written. It is now at now at least marginally available in what appears to be a non-commercial DVD collection of the entire Thriller series.

May

best performances as jack the ripper

By ripperlady 1 Comment

Categories: Best and Worst

I think that most people would agree that the majority of these performances should qualify for a “Best of” Jack the Ripper.

10. Jack Palance in The Man in the Attic (1954)
Probably the most controversial choice on the list. Some people call Palance’s performance “somnambulistic.” I disagree. His performance in this film is generally low-key… but that serves as good contrast for the moments when his character becomes intense and threatening. In those moments, Palance is superb. In addition: The rest of the cast is so mediocre that Palance may have keyed down his on-screen interaction with them in order to avoid seeming “over the top.” He doesn’t have to worry about that, of course, when his character shifts more into his Ripper persona.

9. Charles Regnier in Lulu (1962)
Regnier does not have a large role, but he does have an important one. His Jack the Ripper dispatches Lulu in the final sequence. But in between “Acts,” he also serves as a sort of “Greek Chorus” on Lulu’s behavior. Having Jack the Ripper provide the moral voice of the citizenry is a rather ironic choice, and Regnier does a fine job with it. Also, he provides a Ripper who seems more like a bureaucrat than a homicidal maniac. Good casting. Interesting interpretation. Unfortunately, this Austrian interpretation of the Lulu story is not readily available in English (or even in German).

8. Sir John Mills in Deadly Advice (1993)
Once again, the role is not large, but it is significant. And Mills provides an ironic flair to the character, as he instructs an “up-and-coming” serial killer in how best to remain undetected. Excellent black comedy. And wonderful casting for Jack the Ripper. Mills plays the Ripper as a quiet, unassuming man who would be the last person anybody would suspect… which is precisely the point.

7. Peter O’Toole in The Ruling Class (1972)
O’Toole does not technically play Jack the Ripper in this “False Sighting” film. He plays a schizophrenic aristocrat who comes to think he’s Jack the Ripper. But his performance is so chilling that any “Best of” list would be incomplete without it. By today’s standards, the film’s commentary on British class structure and the aristocracy seems a little heavy-handed. But none of that undermines O’Toole’s magnificent performance as Jack Gurney, the 14th Earl of Gurney.

6. David Warner in Time after Time (1979)
This is the first film mentioned so far that nearly everybody has heard of. You probably know the concept: H.G. Wells uses his Time Machine to track down Jack the Ripper, who has fled into the 20th century. Warner is… well, Warner. He’s always good at playing detached, ironic, sociopathic characters. His interaction with Malcolm McDowell (as his former friend Wells) is excellent. He also delivers that great line that From Hell quotes as coming straight from Jack the Ripper: “I am the 20th century.” So far as I can tell, that line is actually by the makers of Time after Time and has been put into the mouth of their Jack the Ripper. But that’s a small quibble, since at this point in history, Jack is more myth than man anyway.

5. Sir Ian Holm in From Hell (2001)
Okay, the film may have some problem areas, but Sir Ian Holm is not one of them. He is excellent both as the mild-mannered Sir William Gull, and as the maniacal Jack the Ripper. In fact, his part requires tremendous range, and he delivers it. But then, he also makes a great Bilbo, a great Ash, a great Polonius… I mean, the guy can act.

4. Gustav Diesel in Pandora’s Box (1929)
The absolute finest Ripper cameo ever committed to film. This movie belongs to Louise Brooks, who plays Lulu. But in the few minutes he’s on screen, Diesel provides a wrenching and haunting pathos to his Jack the Ripper. He and Brooks together electrify the screen. Absolutely brilliant.

The fatal final sequence of Pandora’s Box, featuring Gustav Diesel and Louise Brooks.

3. Valentine Dyall in Room to Let (1949)
This film, unfortunately, is one of those long-forgotten Ripper programmers from the beginning of the television era. In its full 68-minute version (not the 55-minute version that sells on Movies Unlimited), it is a complex and multi-layered re-working of The Lodger. In either version, it features a fabulous performance by Dyall as Dr. Fell—a man suspected of being Jack the Ripper. Dyall’s Fell/Ripper is a controlling lodger who begins to dominate the lives of his landladies and dictate what they will and will not do. If nothing else, it is a chilling portrait of a man who must always be in control. Dyall, though, also plays Fell/Ripper as a haunted man, longing for something unattainable. Great job.

2. Laird Cregar in The Lodger (1944)
Surprised that I ranked Cregar so “low”? I know, he is generally accepted as having given The “Best Ripper Performance.” There’s no question, really, that Cregar’s performance belongs in either the #1 or #2 slot. He is iconic as Jack the Ripper, and the entire film is dependent on Cregar’s performance, and he and his co-stars (Merle Oberon and George Sanders) all deliver the goods. Cregar’s interaction with Merle Oberon (as potential victim Kitty), though, is what really “makes” this film a classic.

1. Wayne Alexander in “Comes the Inquisitor” (Babylon 5) (1995)
American actor, Wayne Alexander, beat out a regiment of British actors to win the role for this B5 episode. When you watch it, you can see why. His Inquisitor/Ripper is utterly chilling. All he has to do is walk off the Vorlon ship he has travelled on, and the hair on the back of your neck stands on end. No other Ripper actor has ever created such terror before ever saying a word. I know this choice for #1 Jack the Ripper goes against the common wisdom. But the writing for this episode is outstanding, and Alexander makes the most of it—in both his silence and his dialogue. All I have to say is that, IMHO, it’s “Sorry, Laird. You have to move over for Wayne.” In his performance, Wayne Alexander brings what I believe to be the most menacing Jack the Ripper Ripper ever put on screen—and he does it all without a knife in his hand.

Jack the Ripper arrives on Babylon 5 to carry out a special interrogation.

A challenge: Watch as many of these performances as you can and see how you would rank them. Then write me and let me know how your list matches with mine.

Regnier’s peformance will be nearly impossible to find. Cregar’s is not commercially available**, but it does play on cable. All the others are either commercially available, have been commercially available (and therefore probably available on ebay), will be commercially available, or are at least available through Movies Unlimited.

Happy hunting.

**Note: Cregar’s performance was not available at the time this post was written. It is available now.

May

jack the ripper or adolph hitler?

By ripperlady 0 Comments

Categories: Analysis, Commentary and Reviews

Since the first part of the Hitler movie ran last night on ABC, I got into a conversation on the nature of evil today. What’s odd is that I’m not the one who raised the obvious question: Was Hitler more evil than Jack the Ripper? Or did Hitler just have more power to wreak havoc?

Here are excerpts from the blog I wrote on that movie elsewhere last night:

staring into the eyes of a monster

I was expecting it to be just sort of another one of those historical movies. But it wasn’t. It looked deep into the eyes of the monster. And what it showed there was absolutely terrifying. It still has me shaken.

My husband and I watch a lot of scary movies–from the silent era to the present. We’ve seen the Universal horrors, the Hammer horrors, the cheapies, the high budgets, Night of the Living Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a variety of slashers, Italian giallo films, even Cannibal Holocaust. And a whole lot of Jack the Ripper films. The really intense ones can give you some immediate and visceral chills. But most of them are cathartic. Most of the time, you identify with a potential victim in a battle against a monster/killer. And once the film is over (and the potential victim usually has won), you go home and feel just fine.

This wasn’t cathartic. Yes, they do give you a character to identify with, but you suspect that he will ultimately be crushed under the wheels of Hitler’s rise.

The main character in this movie is Hitler. Viewers are usually led to identify with the main character–no matter how vile that character is–by placing us close to the main character’s point of view. Though this film does place us close to Hitler’s POV, it never tries to get us to identify with him. When he is holding a pistol to his head after the disastrous putsch, you just wish he’d pull the trigger. When soldiers start firing on Hitler’s armed mob, you wish they’d land a shot to Hitler’s head. When Hitler’s on trial for treason and starts speechifying, you are more horrified at his rhetoric than caught up in the excitement of the main character turning disaster into triumph. You watch all the lost opportunities to stop the Nazi horror, and just feel helpless that the juggernaut continues to roll on.

This dynamic is very unusual in filmmaking, and very hard to pull off because of the audience’s natural identification with main characters. I think the filmmakers pull it partly because we know the future that these events will lead to. We know about the war, the death camps, the genocide. But most of the credit belongs to the the brilliant performance by actor Robert Carlyle, who plays Hitler in this film. Without him, the filmmakers probably could not have pulled it off.

Carlyle plays Hitler as a man of intense anger and hatred. You suspect that he is psychotic. You know that he’s evil. And Carlyle’s portrayal is terrifying. Hitler becomes the bogey-man. The darkest depths of the human soul. The monster. And all this without ever going beyond what we’ve seen of Hitler on old newsreels. If you didn’t know it were true, you’d think it was over-the-top. But you stare into the eyes of the monster and know that they’ve got it right.

In Hitler’s early years, the “bad” things that happen to him are no worse than the normal trials involved in growing up. He doesn’t get along with his father. He doesn’t get into art school. Sure, his mother dies. But by that time, he is in his late teens, not early childhood. The film shows no trauma that could ever explain what Hitler became. He’s more a product of nature than nurture–the demon child, the bad seed, the boy born bad. If he had not grown up to be a genocidal dictator, he would most likely have become a serial killer (his childhood behvarior fits nicely into the serial killer profile). And if not a serial killer, some other type of menace to society, or (if we had been so lucky) an inmate of a mental hospital.

All I have to say is that if you like scary movies, this one is really scary. And even scarier… it’s true.

(First blogged: Monday, May 19, 2003)