The Ripper

OK, I like some of Tom Savini's work, but this was by far, one of his worst. First of all, you can tell that this was a shot-on-video film because of the cheesy camerawork. And second, the gory special effects almost made my throw up. Well, OK, I was 10 at the time but I was seeing with my parents and I was a huge horror fan at the time. But this was one of the worst!!! Avoid it all costs!!!!

Awful film that looks like it was filmed in a college's mass media department. Extremely gory, but almost laughable plot about a professor who is possessed by the spirit of Jack the Ripper. Very cheap. Very Bad.

Finally got around to picking up a copy of this on DVD. Maybe my thoughts turned to it in part because Halloween is approaching.

I was surprised to discover a commentary track on the disc, especially the fact that on it, Christopher Lewis repeatedly talks about the quality of the script. I couldn't help but respond out loud "Then why did you treat it like one of the Ripper's victims?" In fairness, some of the discussion regarding budgetary limitations (for instance, in the area of lighting) explains why certain elements of my original drafts were eliminated, but it's still a frustrating watch for me to see the way certain things were thrown into the final shooting script that either had no story justification, changed the nature of one or more characters, incorporated lines that only made sense in connection with eliminated scenes from prior drafts, or just generally turned the premise of the thriller I'd written inside-out.

Let me just say this. Dance scene, among other things, not mine. In script, his fiancée was a theatre professor, and Harwell walks in during the first day's class during which she is teaching her improv class using an exercise known as "The Asylum," wherein the students spend the hour adopting some sort of fake psychosis. Hence, the Nurse Ratchet line. Harwell's dream sequence was more complex and of greater significance, and there were no actual murders occurring prior to Harwell putting on the ring.

Also, business and dialogue involving brass bed, not mine. I simply had her convincing him to join her in browsing an antique store near where they were having lunch.

The driving force of my original story was that the protagonist became increasingly aware that he had some connection to the series of murders, but in ways that were only evident to him, so there was a lot of internal torment going on. At the urging of Lewis, a later draft did introduce the notion that Steve was picking up on things. And Steve, incidentally, was essentially a younger version of Harwell, not the annoying geek in the final version.

There are too many differences between my climax/ending and what was in the final version to go into here. I'll just mention one. In my original, Jack had no dialogue. I wanted him to be akin to an evil spirit, with his silence actually reinforcing the fear, like the shark in "Jaws" or the vampire in the silent "Nosferatu" (yeah, I know he had title cards, but it's not the same as actually speaking like in the Herzog remake). Lewis felt that if Savini was gracious enough to accept the role, he should have some dialogue, so I tried to craft something that sounded right, while dropping vague hints at his motivation. Unfortunately, the most telling line in terms of motivation got mangled and having no coherent meaning. More unfortunately, I wasn't invited to be an ongoing part of the process, so I didn't realize the changes that had been made until I managed to invite myself onto the set for the one night of shooting with Savini.

Contrary to Lewis' mis-remembered comment as to whose idea it was to recruit Savini, it was mine. Having been impressed by his performance in George Romero's "Knightriders," I thought that if we was that good an actor, he'd probably like to do more of it, but likely wasn't offered many opportunities due to being in demand for his makeup talents. I've since apologized to him.

My review was written in February 1986 after watching the program on United Home Video cassette.

"The Ripper" is an ambitious but off-putting videotaped horror feature from the makers of last year's "Blood Cult" home video entry. Excessive gore and a very slow-paced storyline should turn off prospective fans.

Familiar gimmick has a n outbreak of local slasher murders (pic was filmed in Tulsa) coinciding with a new college course on crimes depicted in feature films, with particular focus on the Whitechapel murders in 1888. Student Steve (Wade Towers) suspects that Prof. Harwell (Tom Schreier) is the new murderer, slitting women's throats from ear to ear and then disemboweling them (shown in closeups for the same type of gore introduced on-screen over two decades ago in H. G. Lewis' "Blood Feast").

Pic dawdles frequently en route to its supernatural climax. Silliest gimmick has Harwell's teacher/girlfriend Carol (Mon VanPernis) leading an aerobics class, which momentarily gives the tape a combo of all the made-for home video genres currently selling well: horror, exercise and music video. Gore is the feature's goal, and the murders are depicted with repetitious cutting of latex throats and torsos, blood spurting and fake entrails pulled out.

Touted star Tom Savini (makeup specialist who wears his acting hat here only) doesn't show up until the finale, and aided by eerie contact lenses, does a nice job as the Ripper, bug brevity of his appearance will disappoint his fans. Technical quality of the video technique is variable, with some blurriness in long shots and unfortunate lens flares in night shots.

Ripper, The (1985)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

This here was one of the first movies to be produced in order to go straight to video with the director's Blood Cult being considered the very first. The film tells the story of a professor (Tom Schreier) who buys the ring of Jack the Ripper and soon afterwards women start turning up with their throats slashed and guts ripped out. This was a very popular and rather infamous rental back in the day but it's pretty much been forgotten since then. I hadn't seen the film in nearly twenty-years and my memories of it were pretty bad but this viewing really didn't come off as bad as I thought it would. There's no question that the film is bad but I was rather shocked to see how well it actually is considering there really wasn't anything for the director to work off of. In other words, I've seen countless direct to VHS (or now DVD) titles that were cheap and poor but it's rather neat seeing such an early example and notice that it's better than a lot of what followed. The biggest problem is that the film runs 104-minutes, which is at least twenty-minutes too long. The actual story is an interesting one and one that could work but not at the long running time. Another problem is that the film spends way too much time with one of the professor's students and his girlfriend. Both of the actors are very bad so why so much time was spent with them is beyond me. Gore master Tom Savini gets top billing but he only appears in one scene playing the spirit of Jack the Ripper.