CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Patience Watson One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

jamesraeburn2003 1888: Whitechapel in the East End of London: Inspector O' Neill (Eddie Byrne) is coming under intense pressure from the Yard, the Home Secretary and the terrified local population to bring to book a serial killer known as Jack The Ripper who murders and mutilates street women. His close friend, a visiting American policeman called Sam Lowry (Lee Patterson), is keen to help him track down the Ripper since his own force has a deep interest in the case too. The Mercy Hospital for Women falls under great suspicion of the local people who are developing a lynch mob tendency. A mute employee at the hospital, Louis Benz (Endree Muller), drops a medical bag he is carrying at the scene of a crime spilling all its surgical contents on to the pavement. Assuming him to be the Ripper, the locals pursue him through the cobbled streets arming themselves with the scalpels and surgical knives and it is only by chance that O' Neill and Lowry happen to be passing that he is saved from being hacked to pieces by the mob. O' Neill puts Benz in protective custody and the assistant chief commissioner of the Yard is keen to charge him for the murders, but O' Neill thinks that it is too easy and does not believe that the unfortunate Benz is his man. But who is the elusive Jack The Ripper and what are the motives behind his frenzied, bloody and insane killings?There has been countless films and documentaries made and numerous books written about the world's most famous unsolved case about the mysterious serial killer who terrified London's East End during 1888. Naturally, there has been countless suspects and theories behind the motives of the Ripper murders. Anybody who has even just a passing interest in the case will see the solution in this British b-pic from Monty Berman and Bob Baker coming from some distance off. Yet, the identity of the culprit is well enough concealed until the film reaches its shocking denouement. Jimmy Sangster, Hammer's regular screenwriter whom Berman and Baker hired for their copy of that studio's gothics, The Blood Of The Vampire (1958), teases us with a number of red herrings and possible suspects. Berman and Baker, here multitasking as cinematographers/directors and producers admirably rise to the occasion in generating the tension; sometimes to very high levels. The climax, for instance, where O' Neill and Lowry trap the killer in the hospital tricking him into thinking that the porter he has just stabbed to death is still alive and on the brink of regaining consciousness and could reveal his identity. As they intended, he breaks and tries to make a run for it hiding at the bottom of a lift shaft. But, the mortuary attendants use the lift to take the porter's body down to the morgue and he is crushed to death in a suitably effective and lurid moment. My DVD, an Italian import, used an American print in which that scene turns into Technicolor to reveal the Ripper's blood seeping through the floorboards of the elevator. That gimmick was not seen in UK prints of the film although it still got an 'X' certificate. The murders are fairly shockingly staged combining just the right amount of graphic horror and leaving the rest to the imagination, which is so much more effective. Effective set design and b/w cinematography succeed in creating a chilling atmosphere and convincingly recreates the fog shrouded, cobbled streets and dank alleyways of Whitechapel in the Ripper era. It has to be said as well that the picture's low budget is pretty well concealed. Berman and Baker also capture quite well the effect that the murders have on the community transforming it from a happy thriving place into one where decent people live in fear and develop a mob mentality. Performances are generally good all round with Eddie Byrne offering a good down to earth portrayal as the dogged and frustrated police inspector and John Le Mesurier is noteworthy as a surgeon whom we are teased and lead on to believe is the Ripper throughout the film sustaining the suspense. Film buffs will recognise Lee Patterson, the imported American leading man, who was a 'B' picture stalwart in Britain at this time. Many of the low budget programmers he appeared in were largely forgotten after they were first screened to fill the lower half of the double bill, but many are enjoying a resurgence in the age of DVD.All in all, Jack The Ripper's solution behind the killings can be seen coming from some one way off, but it is still a highly enjoyable atmospheric and sometimes shocking fictionalised account of the world's most famous unsolved cases.

Robert J. Maxwell Jack the Ripper stories are always rather fun. Historically, Saucy Jack killed (and mutilated in varying degrees) five known whores in Victorian England. They must have been easy prey, down and outers with bad teeth, alcohol problems, and no place to sleep. Then, too, the murders were never solved, so movie makers can dream up all kinds of plots to explain the heinous goings on. It was an actor. Or it was some mysterious lodger. Or it was Queen Victoria's psychopathic relative. Or it was Victoria herself in drag.This film endorses the common belief that the Ripper was a man of medical knowledge. (It's a lot of horse hockey. It's like the speculation that Son of Sam was a draftsman or architect because his printing was neat.) In fact, Jack is a surgeon here -- Ewan Solon, as the mythical chief surgeon of some equally mythical hospital. John Le Mesurier provides a red herring as another surgeon, an edgy one, perhaps too fond of his niece, played by Betty McDowall. Assorted other characters provide color and texture to an interesting movie that offers the viewer a satisfactory climax in which Jack the Surgeon gets squashed in the shaft beneath an elevator descending to the morgue."We know who it was but we can never prove it," concludes the requisite police inspector, Eddie Byrne. Wouldn't it be pretty to think so.It's fairly well done. The cobblestoned back streets of Whitechapel are effectively represented. The performances are all good, especially Solon's, and the characters well portrayed, except for the visiting American detective, Lee Patterson with his Elvis Presley do, put into the script presumably to appeal to American audiences.Not bad, if not exactly original or surprising in any way.

sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** We get a clue to who this mysterious killer terrorizing the Whitechaple district of London is almost as soon as the movie "Jack the Ripper" began: Mary Clarke! The is the name the killer asks everyone of his victims before he runs them in with his surgical scalpel.The murdering in Whitechaple gets so out of control that Scotland Yard has to ask for help from the NYPD in the person of police detective Sam Lowry, Lee Patterson. Lowry in trying to assess the damage done by the elusive killer almost gets himself lynched by the terrified people in the area in thinking, in him being an outsider, that he may very well be the killer: "Jack the Ripper".Working together with his British counterpart Inspt. O'Neill, Eddie Byrne, Lowry comes to the conclusion that the killer with his knowledge of the human anatomy and experience in using surgical equipment, in murdering and dismembering his victims, has to be a physician. It's these clues that has both Lowry and Inspt. O'Neill zero in on the only hospital in the Whitechaple district a privately funded medical clinic for women. The hospital is run by Sir David Rogers, Ewen Solon, and his top man the person who just happened to preform all the autopsies of the "Ripper's" victims Dr. Tranter, John Le Mesurier.As the killing in Whitechaple go unabated the people in he area start getting openly violent even attacking and almost killing Dr. Tranter's assistant the harmless mute, but a bit weird, Louis "Dumb Louie" Benz, Endre Muller. Louie being at the scene of the "Ripper's" latest murder accidentally dropped his medical kit containing a number of surgical scalpels. Feeling in that he had the murder weapon on him and that he's the notorious "Jack the Ripper" lead the angry and mindless mob to chase Louis all through the streets cornering and and almost murdering him if it wasn't for both Lowry and Inspt. O'Neill coming to his rescue.Finally through him locating her birth certificate the "Ripper" finds out who this mysterious Mary Clarke is and it's that very reason that in the end he finally exposes himself and the reason why he so's determined to murder her. It turns out that Mary Clarke, using another name, works as a chorus girl at a nightclub in the neighborhood. With him knowing Mary Clarke's true identity the "Ripper" completely drops his guard in going after her. This leads to the "Ripper" not only murdering Mary but attacking and, in making it look by Scotland Yard, almost killing the only person who can, by seeing his blood soaked clothes, identifying him. Trapped on all sides and with nowhere to go the "Ripper" has his whole world slowly come crashing down on him in he films bone crushing and gut spilling climax. By the time the movie ends there's nothing of "Jack the Ripper's" remains left even to be buried.

pdavideastburn I remember seeing this movie in the theater when I was 12 years old in Washington, D.C.,and it scared the hell out of me. It was a wonderful eerie period piece. It was black and white throughout the whole movie until the very end when Jack was crushed under the elevator. As his blood seeped up through the floor boards, the movie changed to glorious color to show the red of the blood, and the horror of the men in the elevator looking down at the floor. Most effective! I bought this video tape from England, but that colorized blood-seeping scene was not included. I don't even think it had the blood seeping up in black and white. I was later to learn that this colorized ending was added to the American release. But as far as I know it is not available in VHS or DVD. I was really disappointed when this novel scene did not appear in my video. At least I have the memory of it as a child and the effect it had on me then.