The Ripper

Video
1985
Unrated
1h 42m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

An old antique ring turns a college professor into a homicidal maniac when he puts it on. The ring originaly belonged to Jack the Ripper, and the Ripper's spirit possesses whoever wears it.An old antique ring turns a college professor into a homicidal maniac when he puts it on. The ring originaly belonged to Jack the Ripper, and the Ripper's spirit possesses whoever wears it.An old antique ring turns a college professor into a homicidal maniac when he puts it on. The ring originaly belonged to Jack the Ripper, and the Ripper's spirit possesses whoever wears it.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

4.0/10

507

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Photos24

+ 17

‘Snow White’ Stars Test Their Wits

Rachel Zegler, Gal Gadot, and director Marc Webb take our Ultimate Disney Quiz.

Watch now

9:57

More like this

6.6

Le train des épouvantes

4.9

5.3

4.4

7.4

5.0

La Galaxie de la terreur

4.7

Les rats de Manhattan

5.2

Sidekicks

6.3

WNUF Halloween Special

3.5

Blood Cult

5.6

Le manoir de la terreur

4.5

Ongles rouges et cuisses d'acier

Storyline

Edit

Did you know

Edit

Trivia
Tom Savini was embarrassed by his involvement with this film. When he attended a 1996 Fangoria Weekend of Horror's convention, part of his routine there included playfully getting on his knees to "beg forgiveness" from horror fans at the gathering! Was also reported on at a recounting of the events at the convention in a future issue of Fangoria a few months later.

Goofs
Richard and Steve are supposedly watching 'The Conqueror Worm' on TV. 'The Conqueror Worm' is the title 'Witchfinder General' was released under in the US, and it specifically mentioned that it stars Vincent Price, so there is no doubt what film they are referring to. However, the dialogue of the film indicates it is a film about a atomically mutated giant worm (and features no one who sounds anything like Vincent Price).

Connections
Featured in Making 'Blood Cult' Pioneering Shot on Video Movies (2012)

Soundtracks
Fire
Written by Rod Slaine
Performed by Pam Savage
Copyright 1985
Xanthus Street Publishing

User reviews15

Featured review

Poor

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.