Hands of the Ripper

Hands of The Ripper is a well made but slow-paced 1971 offering from Hammer. Some nice acting from Eric Porter and Angharad Rees offers some compensation for a rather lugubrious tale of Jack The Ripper's daughter, who, when subjected to sparkly flashes of light followed by a kiss (which happens about five times in the movie, straining credulity to breaking point) is psychically possessed by the spirit of her old Dad, dispatching all and sundry in variously nasty ways.

As a take on the Ripper story, this doesn't really work. As usual the prostitutes on display here are mainly glamour types with little attention to veracity (a few matronly ladies do make it into the mix) and Eric Porter's Freudian Doctor is surely the most misguided psychoanalyst ever put on screen, even disposing of the bodies when Anna kills.

Horror movies were soon to descend to body count status and this is a kind of prototype. We get Dora Bryan impaled on a poker, Marji Lawerence's throat gorily slashed and Lynda Byron with hat pins stuck in her eye. Squelch! The main trouble with Hammer at this point is that they were making too many horror films - haven't counted exactly but about 12 in 1970/71 alone. They flooded the market and diminished audience interest. Still, on it's own Hands of The Ripper is not a bad little film. Earnest and rather glum, with an effective ending set in St Paul's Whispering Gallery.

TCM just aired this and like all the other Hammer films I enjoyed it a great deal. They're not cinematic achievements but they are fun and that's one of film's aspects I really appreciate. I also tend to look at technical aspects and the first thing that struck me is how fake the moustaches looked. The beards looked better but now I wonder. The second, I'm embarrassed to write, was Marjie Lawrence's cleavage which may not be how she would like to be remembered given her extensive body of work. Did they really dress like that in Victorian England? I'd also never seen Angharad Rees before nor had I even heard of her but then I found out this was her first co-starring and second film role and I was intrigued. And, incidentally, that's another thing I like about Hammer: they find and highlight young talent. Anyway lots of good talent here, a lot from TV, presumably because they come cheaper. Some goofs like when Rees begins to sit while her host invites her to do so. But I'm getting technical again. Eric Porter is great. He manages to save the day even skewered by a cavalry sabre. Which brings up another goof: the thing must be five feet long but you can't see the other end sticking out of Porter's body. Good final scene, good score, worth a viewing.

Anna (Angharad Rees) suddenly begins murdering any other young female who unluckily crosses her path. All for no apparent reason. Dr. Pritchard (Eric Porter), a psychiatrist, believes that she's suffering from schizophrenia and needs proper care.

Since it's the Victorian era, psychology is in its infancy, and considered by most people to be tantamount to voodoo.

Pritchard has his work cut out for him, as Anna continues her rampage. Then, things take a strange turn into the realm of the supernatural.

HANDS OF THE RIPPER is another superb film from Hammer studios...

Orphaned teenager Anna (innocent-looking Angharad Rees) is placed under the care of the awful Mrs. Golding (Dora Bryan), a fake medium who uses her in moneymaking schemes and pimps her out to customers, which leads to her murder. Anna is adopted by Dr. John Pritchard (Eric Porter), an early follower of Freudian philosophy, who tries to help Anna when it's revealed she's the daughter of Jack the Ripper with homicidal tendencies of her own after seeing dear old dad murder mum as a child. Dr. Pritchard is so obsessed with Anna and his research that he isn't above covering up the murders that follow.

The performances are first-rate, the turn-of-the-century London flavor is accurately captured, the murders are pretty bloody for the time and there's a great, subdued ending at the "Gallery of Whispers." Fine period horror from Hammer Studios, originally shown on a double bill with TWINS OF EVIL.

Score: 7 out of 10

Not your typical Hammer vehicle starring Eric Porter as a doctor, influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud, who wants to study a young 17 year-old girl he knows to be a murderer. Porter thinks by analyzing her past he can find out why people murder and maybe prevent the act of murder in the human race in the process. The film is interesting in its objectives yet is a bit uneven in its execution. Directed by Peter Sasdy, who has obvious talent and directed Taste the Blood of Dracula nd Countess Dracula, the film works very hard at focussing on the relationship of childhood memories with adult behaviour, but at the same time wants to incorporate typical Hammer stuff such as big bosoms busting through stretched corsets and lots of blood and bizarre deaths. Angharad Rees plays the murderous daughter of the Whitechapel killer who as a child saw her mother brutally killed and then was orphaned. She does a good job as do all the actors. My biggest problem is with Porter, not his performance, but his character's motivation. I find it a little difficult to believe that a man supposedly intelligent would be so amoral, for he definitely seems to think that he is doing nothing wrong. The film is not all talk. There are several murders, all fairly brutal in their execution(no pun intended). The most ridiculous of these has to be a woman killed by her pince-nez glasses...but I'll let you decide if murder by pince-nez is realistic or not. There are some wonderful scenes too and the climatic one in St. Pauls is extremely powerful.