Hands Of The Ripper [1971] [DVD]

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Now some of you might now also wonder why she committed five murders if she was just after Mary Kelly but the author has a perfectly reasonable explanation for that, too: Mary Ann Nichols and Annie Chapman were just practise. After all killing and mutilating is hard work and you need to make sure that you can really do it even if you already have some knowledge about anatomy like Lizzie. And Lizzie knew about anatomy because her husband was a surgeon and she always watched him during operation...you know just like watching 8 seasons of Criminal Minds have made me a proper profiler. And it is very much a modern day tragedy, a squalid tale of a life that once offered so much becoming lost in a sewer-smelling swamp of domestic abuse, addiction and red light exploitation.

Since the two above-mentioned murders [Stride and Eddowes] no fewer than 1,400 letters relating to the tragedies have been received by the police, and although the greater portion of these gratuitous communications were found to be of a trivial and even ridiculous character, still each one was thoroughly investigated.” Rather early on in the book Morris share the information that his investigation uncovered and names the woman (the wife of a physician whose infidelities only served to place a spotlight on the fact that the woman was barren and unable to produce the child the physician so desperately wanted) who Morris is convinced was responsible for all five murders and because of her status in society (her husband was a physician to the Royal family) went completely unnoticed. Is it a far-fetched thought? Not in the manner in which Morris presents his case. In the author's words, 'It had been an orgy of death - the reason for which only a woman unable to have children of her own, a woman who had lost her fortune and was now faced with losing her husband too, a woman on the edge of insanity, could fully understand. But the butchery had taken much longer than she had realised.' At the end of this book Morris presents three appendices that lend further proof to his postulates.

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Overall, it is a Good Looking Film as usual for the always Visually Interesting Hammer Studios and is one of the most Violent in its Catalog. Although Dysart is seen running from the building after Mrs. Golding’s murder by Dr. Pritchard, He’s let off the hook in a police investigation so that he can provide Pritchard with as much information he can scrounge up regarding Anne. As Dysart is a member of Parliament, he has access to files & folders that might shed some light on Anna’a condition. Pritchard warns Dysart that if he fails to keep his end of the bargain he’ll let the police know that he indeed see Dysart running from the home directly after Mrs. Golding was murdered. Dysart complies…for the time being.

For those in the know, of course, it’s an oddity alongside more tongue-in-cheek fare they were becoming known for at this time.The film ends with a tragic yet fitting climax that takes place in the Whispering Gallery of St. Paul's Cathedral, the fatally wounded Pritchard calling to Anna to join him—which she does by climbing over the edge of the gallery and falling to her death. On the night before the murder, she had attracted a large crowd in Aldgate High Street by loudly impersonating a fire engine. The author is also rather desperate to convince that readers that it is totally obvious that the Ripper must have been a woman because the victims weren't sexually assaulted and a man would have done this. He repeats this over and over in almost every third chapter (he is rather fond of repeating things, I guess if you cut out all the repetitions you'd loose at least a third of the book). If you’re not a fan of any of the films in the Hammer canon then firstly I have to ask what the hell is wrong with you? Secondly, I have to tell you that although it doesn’t feature either Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee, Hands Of The Ripper would be a damn fine film for you to start educating yourself on the films from the groundbreaking British studio. It features everything one would want from both a good psychological mystery and a slasher film: A great plot, fine acting and gore galore! What more could you ask for?