As Mãos do Estripador

'Hands Of The Ripper' is one of the most interesting Hammer movies. An odd mixture of Edwardian costume drama, pop psychology and proto-slasher gore, which may not be 100% successful, but it does make for some fascinating viewing. Eric Porter (who some may remember from the 60s TV series 'The Forsyte Saga') is perfectly cast as the detached and driven Dr John Pritchard who unexpectedly encounters Jack The Ripper's daughter Anna (the lovely Angharad Rees). She has no idea of her background and is working for a fraudulent medium that Pritchard and his son visit. After Anna is implicated in a brutal and bloody murder he "adopts" her, and hopes to unlock her secrets using the new fangled theories of one Sigmund Freud. Can he help this confused and potentially lethal young woman before she kills again? I leave it up to you to find out. While I don't rate this one quite as highly as many, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it is yet another example of just how most of Hammer's output has been largely underrated over the years.

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.

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.

Jack the Ripper's young daughter Anna; witness the grisly murder that her father committed against her mother. Many years have past and she been adopted by an old lady who fakes being a medium with the help of the girl. But one night these traumatic memories of her mother's death and her father kissing her cause to enter a trance because of a glittering light and she murders whoever decides to kiss her. A psychiatrist - Dr John Pritchard is an idealist that decides to take her in, as he believes he can discover and eventually cure the girl's unstable condition.

Like father… daughter will follow. Well, the voices in her head made sure. After watching this - I couldn't believe director Peter Sasdy went from this credible Hammer flick to the ridiculously monstrous "I Don't Want to Born" that I watched only a fortnight ago. Um, "Hand of the Ripper" is quite a big step up. "Taste the blood of Dracula" is even better. This Hammer production takes on the Jack the Ripper legend with a quite different and cerebral angle. Amongst psychological edge -- there's even a slasher touch about it. But those looking for high camp might be slightly disappointed. The skillful direction by Sasdy conjures up some flair, outlandishly violent deaths and a hauntingly, harrowing conclusion. The workman like production injects a very detailed and quite realistic backdrop of the grimy period. The empowering, but professionally orchestrated score is hard to shake as it works around with the moods effectively. Acting from the cast was very solid even if they had somewhat stilted characters. Eric Porter gave a strong performance as the determined doctor who has his own personal agenda and the ravishing Angharad Rees is naturally good as (daddy's little girl) Anna. Now onto the weakest points. The muddled story is fuelled by many ideas, but still it has some illogical aspects and certain reasoning's that just don't rub off. The script probably does ponder on with some unusual turns, being flooded with scientific jargon and unconvincing relationships that don't really lead anywhere. For some the pacing could be quite slow and while; I didn't find it spectacular and filled with such excitement, but there was enough going on to keep me watching.

Hammer's latter day effort is a above-average and polished presentation that receives more ticks than crosses.

I am an enthusiastic fan of the Hammer Studios, and my admiration for this brilliant Production Company gets greater with each film I see. The Hammer Studios are most famous for their films made in the late 50s and 60s, most prominently for the (awesome) "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" series. As far as I am considered, however, some of Hammer's films from the early 70s are just as brilliant as their older successes. One of their greatest and my personal favorite of their films, the brilliant "Vampire Circus" was made in 1972, for example, and the early 70s also brought a variety of other classics, such as "Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde" or "Scars Of Dracula", which is easily the nastiest entry to Hammer's Dracula series. "Hands Of The Ripper" of 1971 is yet another great Hammer production that is immensely atmospheric, genuinely creepy, well-acted and stunningly suspenseful, and an absolute must-see for every Horror-fan.

As a toddler, little Anna has to witness the murder of her mother by her own father - none other than the notorious serial killer Jack the Ripper himself. At the age of seventeen, Anna (Angharad Rees) lives at the house of an elderly lady, a phony medium who is perfectly willing to leave her 'granddaughter' to rich 'gentlemen' for money. After this 'grandmother' is brutally murdered, the rich doctor John Pritchard (Eric Porter), a humanist and follower of Siegmund Freud, decides to take custody of poor Anna, both out of sympathy and for research reasons...

"Hands Of The Ripper" is a vastly underrated Hammer gem that is ingenious in many aspects. The film is immensely creepy and scary, with a suspense level that is higher than in most Hammer flicks, and the murders are brutal and very bloody. The atmosphere is eerie and tense and, as usual for Hammer, the film is shot in great Gothic locations. The performances are great. Eric Porter delivers an excellent performance as Dr. Pritchard, and Angharad Rees deserves special praise for her outstanding performance in the role of Anna. All said, this is a shamefully underrated film. Creepy, stylish, excellently acted and stunningly suspenseful from the beginning to the end "Hands Of The Ripper" is a great gem from Hammer that no lover of Horror can afford to miss!