Classic Films in Focus: HANDS OF THE RIPPER (1971)

Hands of the Ripper (1971) is a gory Hammer horror foray into the much visited territory of Jack the Ripper mythology, this time focusing on the serial killer's imaginary daughter and the effects of being a witness to acts of extreme violence. While it has many of the customary elements of classic Hammer - namely bloody killings, a lush Victorian atmosphere, and buxom girls in various stages of undress - it comes up sadly short in the narrative department, mainly because its focus on Freudian psychoanalysis and compulsive behavior takes precedence over any effort to make its most important character actually interesting. The result is disappointing because Hands of the Ripper could be a much more sophisticated and engaging story than the one we get, in which a milquetoast and often catatonic girl suddenly becomes a killer every time the right stimuli occur.

Directed by Peter Sasdy, the film follows the psychologically damaged Anna (Angharad Rees) as she leaves a trail of corpses behind her. The daughter of Jack the Ripper, Anna witnessed her father murdering her mother but grew up an orphan with no memory of her past identity. Her murderous impulses are triggered when her employer, a fraudulent medium, accidentally recreates the stimuli that Anna experienced during her mother's gruesome death, but Anna is spirited away and protected by Dr. Pritchard (Eric Porter), who wants to study her using Freud's psychological methods. Soon members of Pritchard's own household are turning up dead, but the doctor cares more about his research than Anna's well-being or the lives of other people.

Visually there's a lot to like about Hands of the Ripper, from the flashing lights that mesmerize Anna to the delirious climax in the Whispering Gallery of St. Paul's Cathedral. The scenes of violence grow increasingly dreadful with each occurrence thanks to the persistent formula that stimulates them, with viewers waiting in suspense for the inevitable, innocent kiss that causes Anna to strike with the nearest sharp object. The scenes featuring prostitutes - and there's no shortage of them - are colorful and energetic in their earthiness, contrasting splendidly with the buttoned up, secret depravity of respectable gentlemen like Pritchard, Dysart, and even Jack himself.

Unfortunately, Anna remains a tabula rasa, a cipher without agency or personality, throughout the film, and outside her brief flashes of violence she does nothing at all. She's more like Conrad Veidt's sleepwalker in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) than Laird Cregar's tortured killer in Hangover Square (1945), and that's a shame because the monstrous is always more powerful when the viewer pities and understands the struggle of the person who becomes monstrous. Anna never puts up much of a fight and barely even registers that anything has happened, which leaves the viewer with Pritchard as the only character whose motivations can be pondered to any degree. Pritchard, however, is deeply unsympathetic from the moment he lets Anna murder the housemaid and then covers it up without warning his family that he's brought a dangerous, uncontrollable killer into their home. His behavior smacks of paternalism and misogyny, especially because it doesn't seem to matter to him that Anna's victims are all women... until, of course, he finds himself on the receiving end of her violent compulsion. Pritchard, Dysart, and Jack all use Anna for their own ends, making all of them far worse monsters than the girl who never has any say in her own fate, but we don't feel like justice is served or karma balanced by the ending because the original author of all this suffering, Jack himself, cannot be held accountable for his crimes.

If you're interested in more developed female monsters and killers in other classic horror films, try Dracula's Daughter (1936), Cat People (1942), or The Vampire Lovers (1970). Peter Sasdy also directed the Hammer films, Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) and Countess Dracula (1971). Eric Porter is best remembered for his leading role in the TV miniseries, The Forsyte Saga, while Angharad Rees starred in the 1970s TV series, Poldark. For more classic movies inspired by Jack the Ripper, you might try The Lodger (there are two films with the title, from 1927 and 1944, and both are about the Ripper) or the 1979 Sherlock Holmes thriller, Murder by Decree.

Classic Films in Focus: THE LODGER (1944)

There have been plenty of Jack the Ripper movies in the history of cinema, but few can lay claim to the eerie charms of director John Brahm's 1944 picture, The Lodger, which stars the incomparable Laird Cregar as the mysterious title character. Adapted from a novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes (which had already been adapted into a 1927 film by Alfred Hitchcock), this delirious tale of murder and monstrosity basks in the ambience of gaslight London and builds suspense not through any doubt about the killer's identity but through the audience's ironic knowledge of the psychopath hidden in plain sight.

When Mr. Slade (Laird Cregar) first rents a set of rooms, his landlady (Sara Allgood) is only too happy to have the additional income, even though the grisly Ripper murders have set all of London on edge. Slowly, however, the family begins to notice odd parallels between their lodger's activities and the ensuing attacks, although the landlord (Cedric Hardwicke) passes them off as mere coincidence. The landlady's beautiful niece, Kitty (Merle Oberon), tries to engage Mr. Slade's friendship and interest, but his reaction to her is puzzling and sinister. In the meantime, a handsome police inspector (George Sanders) becomes concerned for Kitty's welfare because all of the Ripper's victims have been associated with the stage, but the entire force might not be enough to save her from the deranged killer's dangerous obsession.

Although Merle Oberon and George Sanders get top billing as the picture's leads, the film really belongs to Laird Cregar, and it's his performance that makes The Lodger so effectively creepy and compelling. He brings touches of sadness and humanity to his madman, especially when he laments the tragic death of his beloved brother. Like all great monsters, Slade is all the more terrible for being an object of pity as well as horror; he has that sublime quality so often praised in characters like Frankenstein's monster, the Wolf Man, and Peter Lorre's pathetic serial killer in M (1931). By the end of the movie, as he lurches through the theater trapped and bleeding, we see Cregar's character as his own ultimate victim, and his death is more tragedy than triumph, the inevitable result of urges that could not be controlled. In the last scene, the camera frames him like a wild animal caught in a corner, with the circling policemen closing in like hounds at bay, and his final desperate act creates a fatal poetry that the survivors note in the film's closing lines.

You'll find more of the exotic Merle Oberon in The Dark Angel (1935) and Wuthering Heights (1939). George Sanders, who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in All About Eve (1950), turns up in several other memorable films, including Rebecca (1940), The Black Swan (1942), and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). Laird Cregar, whose career was cut tragically short, can also be found in The Black Swan (1942), and he makes a delightful Devil in Heaven Can Wait (1943). Cregar, Sanders, Brahms, and screenwriter Barre Lyndon all return for Cregar's final picture, the effective thriller, Hangover Square (1945).

This review was originally posted on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.