A series of brutal serial killings that occurred over a century ago still provide fodder for the latest thriller from Hollywood.  Why?  Find out as we tell the tale of...

By JOE WINTERS 

Who was Jack the Ripper? There’s a question that has baffled everyone from police officials to armchair detectives for over a century.

From August through November of 1888, five prostitutes were murdered and in most cases horribly mutilated in London’s impoverished East End Whitechapel district during the hours of darkness. Their names were Mary Anne (Polly) Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly. There is speculation that the killer, referred to as Jack the Ripper, may have murdered twice that many. The suspects range from a Jewish shoemaker, an American doctor, and at least two Russian doctors to a British schoolmaster, the Royal physician, and others, up to and including Prince Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence!

To this day, however, we seem no closer to uncovering the identity of this elusive fiend than were any of the detectives assigned to the case, no closer than those who’ve written a slew of books and articles on the subject, and no closer than any of the film makers who have attempted to commit the gory story to celluloid.

Since the days of silent pictures there have been fictional representations of the Ripper through the use of nicknames such as "Spring Heeled Jack" played by Werner Krauss in the 1923 German anthology film Waxworks. In the last of the film’s three stories, the nimble Jack stalks the film’s narrator (played by future film director William Dieterle) and his lady friend through the expressionistic alleyways of London. In the end, the tale proves to be only a dream, but the nightmare of Jack the Ripper would go on to haunt our waking hours.

In 1926, director Alfred Hitchcock’s first suspense thriller, The Lodger, was based on a 1911 magazine story by Marie Belloc Lowndes, who supposedly got the idea for the story by overhearing a bit of conversation about a couple who had once rented rooms to a man they claimed was Jack the Ripper. There is quite possibly more than a grain of truth to the story of the Lodger as several accounts bear out. These involve real suspects, ranging from G. Wentworth Bell Smith (a Canadian lodger) and Walter Sickert (a famous painter) to Montague J. Druitt (an English schoolmaster) and Francis Tumblety (an American medical quack).

As in Mrs. Belloc Lowndes’ story, Hitchcock’s film gave us a serial killer calling himself "The Avenger" and was clearly calculated to stir up memories of the original case, though now set in contemporary London. The Lodger was re-made with sound in 1932, again starring Ivor Novello in the tile role. Later versions of The Lodger in 1944 starring Laird Cregar and in 1954 as Man In The Attic with Jack Palance were both produced in America at Twentieth Century Fox. The 1944 and 1954 versions would be properly set in Victorian London and would drop "The Avenger" in favor of the popular pseudonym Jack the Ripper. The man suspected of the crimes in both films is a medical scientist named Slade whose guilt or innocence is kept vague until near the end.

Britain’s Hammer Films (before they were widely known as Hammer Films) presented a 1950 version called Room To Let, where a somber gentleman calling himself Dr. Fell (Valentine Dyall) imposes himself on a Victorian household and all but takes over, to the dismay of the female residents. While the film is not the equal of other versions of "The Lodger," Dyall is suitably creepy, and the screenplay co-written by John Gilling and director Godfrey Grayson throws in a twist near the end when the murderous madman is himself mysteriously murdered. Room To Let co-stars lovely Constance Smith as an imperiled member of the household. She would become the object of the mystery man’s affection when she also appeared in Man In The Attic.

Directing/producing team Robert Baker and Monty Berman’s Jack The Ripper would slash its way into theaters in 1959. With a screenplay by Jimmy Sangster (who served as assistant director on Room To Let), the film doesn’t use the actual names of the victims, detectives or suspects, but loosely follows the events of 1888 while introducing an American policeman brought in to help Scotland Yard solve the case. As in the actual case, surgeons were among the chief suspects.

Indeed, the list of possible culprits is extensive and includes the Royal physician Sir William Gull. Also implicated were Russian doctors Michael Ostrogg and Alexander Pedchenko, each with a string of aliases. And then there was American doctor Thomas Neil Cream, hanged in 1892 for the poisoning murders of the Lambeth prostitutes, and supposedly declaring himself to be Jack the Ripper as the rope snapped his neck. However, Dr. Cream had been in jail during the last of the Ripper murders. Of course, the crimes could have been committed by two men …but which two? And who’s to say a woman (Jill the Ripper?) didn’t have a hand in the matter?

Terror king Boris Karloff hosted a pair of television episodes that dabbled with the Ripper legend, first in an installment of The Veil, this one starring Niall McGinnis (from Curse Of The Demon) as Walter Durst, a clairvoyant who envisions a murder on the East End street Bucks Row. Shortly afterward, his wife reads the newspaper account of Mary Nichols’ murder in Bucks Row. Mrs. Durst urges her husband to go to the police, who consider Walter just another crackpot. But when Walter "sees" a fourth killing, which comes true, as well as a fifth, the police take him seriously. The character of Walter Durst seems partly based on psychic Robert Lees, who did figure into the Ripper case at one point. And actually, the third and fourth murders did take place on the same night (early morning, actually), and were referred to as "the double event."

The saga of Saucy Jack takes an even more supernatural turn in a segment of NBC-TV’s anthology series Thriller entitled Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper directed by Ray Milland. An affable introduction by Mr. Karloff urges the TV viewers to "huddle close together as the Ripper always struck down solitary victims. It would be a pity if a member of our audience were to become…dismembered." What follows is the tale of a modern day serial killer whose methods resemble those of the original. Furthermore, the man pursuing him is convinced that it is the original, and that the murders, which occur regularly across the years and throughout the world, are in reality unholy blood sacrifices that keep Jack eternally young. In a sense, and in the minds of many, one might say that was true.

Over the years, television would continue to draw inspiration from the Ripper case for a number of shows ranging from the western Cimarron Strip and sci-fi Star Trek to Kolchak: The Night Stalker and Fantasy Island.

In 1965, Columbia Pictures’ A Study In Terror pitted the Ripper against renowned fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes (John Neville). While emphasizing some of the lurid shocks (in color) which one might expect from producer Herman Cohen, we were spared the true extent of the Ripper’s violence. Director James Hill and his writers construct an impressive whodunit that skillfully blends the actual names of depicted victims with appearances from such Baker Street favorites as Holmes, his brother Mycroft (Robert Morley), Inspector Lestrade (Frank Finlay), and of course, Dr. Watson (Donald Huston). Fictional suspects include some characters slightly suggested by actual suspects.

While Holmes ultimately succeeds in revealing and destroying "Jack the Ripper" this would not be the last time the great detective would face him on film. Among the similarities this film shares with the authentic investigation, besides casting suspicion on surgeons and others, is the possibility that the killer may be a denizen of society’s upper crust.

Hammer Films returned to the Ripper theme twice in 1971. Dr. Jekyll And Sister Hyde suggested that Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous fictional doctor was responsible for the Whitechapel murders. The film, directed by Roy Ward Baker with a screenplay by Brian Clemens (of The Avengers TV fame), even worked grave robbers Burke and Hare into the plot!

That same year, Hammer also gave us the splendid Hands Of The Ripper which opens with the murderer, complete with high hat and cape, fleeing down Berner Street with an angry mob practically on his heels. Eluding them, he slips into an apartment where his infant daughter and her mother reside. The woman immediately deduces the man’s guilt (his bloody hands are a dead giveaway), and he kills her in full view of the little girl. Years later the teenaged girl inherits her father’s murderous traits, but with no memory of ever having killed. In one scene, a clairvoyant sees a vision of the girl’s mother and father… a nobleman…but the psychic can’t or won’t say who he was.

Another film from 1971 (a big year for Saucy Jack) starred Spanish horror star Jacinto Molina (a.k.a. Paul Naschy) as Jack El Destripador De Londres (a.k.a. Jack The Ripper Of London) and introduced the element of cannibalism into the proceedings. It is said hat a letter, which may have been from Jack the Ripper, stated that he did indeed fry up and gobble down part of one of his victims’ kidneys! In fact, a kidney from victim number four, Catherine Eddowes, had been removed.

The more lurid aspects of the case would provide further fodder for director Jess Franco’s Jack The Ripper (1976) with Klaus Kinski in the title role as a man who rapes and murders local prostitutes, the result of a childhood trauma brought on by his prostitute mother.

The classier and far more intriguing Murder By Decree (1979) starred Christopher Plummer and James Mason as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Frank Finlay would again play Inspector Lestrade, while a collection of star character actors would join in as celebrated and imaginary victims, suspects and interested parties. Here the murder trail would lead Holmes onto a conspiracy theory to the halls of political power as well as the secret brotherhood of Freemasons, and a cover-up involving a Royal personage. This premise bears a similarity to claims involving the aforementioned painter, Walter Sickert, who lived in the East End during the time of the murders and was supposedly a close friend of the Royal family.

With so many theories and so few clues and methods of detection at the time, it seems the only way we might ever uncover the identity of Jack the Ripper would be to go back in time and plant ourselves at one of the crime scenes before a murder occurs, along with a camera and a couple witnesses. Anybody have a time machine handy? In 1979’s Time After Time, director Nicholas Meyer used this concept to propel writer H. G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) in pursuit of Jack, known here as Dr. John Stevenson (played by David Warner) from Victorian London to present day San Francisco. The film makes an interesting point that in these days, marred by excessive violence, war upon war, crime upon crime, and atrocity upon atrocity, Jack the Ripper is, sadly, by today’s standards, merely an amateur!

Jack’s Back (1988) stars James Spader as modern day twins, one of whom may be re-enacting the Ripper murders, while Edge Of Sanity (1989) returned to Victorian times to once more combine the Jekyll/Hyde formula with the Ripper legend. Here, Anthony Perkins portrays Henry Jekyll and his alter ego Jack Hyde with dashes of his Norman Bates from Psycho (1960) and his sexually perverse religious fanatic from Crimes Of Passion (1984).

To commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of the Ripper murders, a live television show hosted by actor Peter Ustinov and paneled by several criminologists, declared Aaron Kosminski, a Polish immigrant Jew, to be Jack the Ripper. Kosminski, a hairdresser and Whitechapel resident with an extreme hatred of women and a history of related crimes, remains one of the more popular suspects.

For 1988’s CBS-TV mini-series Jack The Ripper, Michael Caine portrayed Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline, on whose first-hand accounts the film is said to be based. The two-part presentation offers a detailed explanation of the events along with a gallery of suspects from various walks of life including prominent stage actor Richard Mansfield (played by Armand Assante) whose performances included Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (re-enacted to coincide with the Ripper murders).

Among the more likely suspects depicted was John Pizer, a shoemaker also known as "Leather Apron" (there was a leather apron found near one of the murder scenes). Also on hand were the previously mentioned Royal doctor, Sir William Gull… clairvoyant Robert Lees…Socialist rabble-rouser George Lusk…a chatty coach driver (and self-proclaimed doctor) John Netley, and even the Queen’s grandson, who as it turned out had an iron clad alibi during most, if not all of the killings. All this combines to baffle the police, and the viewer, with an engaging brainteaser that keeps you guessing until almost the very end.

And even then, is it ever really the end? Today a flood of books, articles, films, internet websites and guided tours, and even a recent stage musical and CD add up to a multi-million dollar industry born of a killer’s brutality. The current film, From Hell, based on a popular graphic comic book novel and starring Johnny Depp as Inspector Abberline, takes its title from a letter allegedly sent to police by the Ripper himself.

 In the television documentary Jack The Ripper: An On-Going Mystery (2000), that program concludes with the assumption that even if someone had indisputable proof of the Ripper’s identity, people still would not believe. Perhaps in some way we want the bloody saga of Jack the Ripper to remain…a mystery.

Thanks, Joe!  The old Ripper sure hasn't lost his "edge" when it comes to slaying movie audiences.   Perhaps it's best that his (or her) identity remains shrouded in movieland mist.

 Article copyright © Joe Winters

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