The Ripper

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.

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.

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!!!!

A college professor stumbles across a ring that belongs to Jack the Ripper and goes on a murderous rampage. This gory garbage plays like a cheap early 80s music video. How did special effects genius Tom Savini end up in this loser? Avoid this crap at all costs. My evaluation: (no stars).

THE RIPPER (VIDEO 1985) Not bad... For a high school student film 2.5 out of 10 stars Time to Read:

BASIC PLOT: Jack the Ripper's ring is found in an antique shop, and bought by Richard Harwell (Tom Schreier) a college professor. A string of ripper-like killings begin, and Steve (Wade Tower), one of Richard's students begins to suspect his teacher is the new ripper.

WHAT WORKS: *CINEMATOGRAPHY IS OK For the most part, I didn't have a lot of problems with the blocking, setups, framing etc. It's decent for a student film, which is what it seems to be.

*ORIGINAL SCRIPT OR TREATMENT (NOT EXECUTED SCRIPT) ISN'T BAD I can see the writer's intent, and it wasn't bad. What they did to his vision is the real bloodbath.

*SEVERAL PLOT DEVICES AND CHARACTERS AREN'T USED CORRECTLY Fred (Randall White) for instance, the flock of seagulls nerd who knows about "Star Trek", and brings his dog to class with him, is a great character. Push him into knowing about the occult, make him team up with Steve & Carol, and there's a workable plot device about how they all discover what the ring is doing to Richard. It's a more enjoyable path as well, instead of haphazardly jumping from scene to scene, with no explanation as to how we got here.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: *THE ENGLISH ACCENTS ARE LAUGHABLE The English accents in the opening scene are so bad they are laughable.

*NO BREASTS In this type of movie, if you're going to include a five minute make out scene, there needs to be breasts.

*WHY DID THE MOTORCYCLE EXPLODE? There's a scene where a motorcycle rider lays down his bike, and then in the distance, we see an explosion. WTH?

*ACTING IS WOODEN Acting is beyond flat. It reminds me of a high school student film, where there's no budget, no rehearsals, and made by people who are still learning.

*WHY IS JACK THE RIPPER DRESSED LIKE A VAMPIRE? It doesn't make sense.

*NO SUSPENSE, NO BUILDUP TO VIOLENCE This is the biggest problem, because it robs the viewer of the fear factor. It instead leaves the ultra violence feeling cartoony, and lackluster. It doesn't help that they continually mention films that are full of suspense and terror.

TO RECOMMEND, OR NOT TO RECOMMEND, THAT IS THE QUESTION: *I cannot recommend this to anyone but aspiring screenwriters, and as a cautionary tale of what NOT to let happen to your work.

(rw2499279)

CLOSING NOTES: *THIS IS A STRAIGHT TO VIDEO MOVIE, please keep that in mind before you watch/rate it. Straight to video movies have a much lower budget, and so your expectations should be adjusted.

*I HAVE NO CONNECTION TO THE FILM, or production in ANY way. This review was NOT written in full, or in part, by a bot. I am just an honest viewer, who wishes for more straight forward reviews (less trolls and fanboys), and better entertainment. Hope I helped you out.