Hands of the Ripper (1972)

When this film begins, a little girl is watching her father (presumably Jack the Ripper) killing her mother. Years pass and this young lady is now working for a sleazy medium--fooling folks into believing she can communicate with the dead. Little does her boss know but the young lady, Anna, is a psychopath--a murderous one at that! After killing the boss in a very bloody fashion requiring super-human strength, a local idiot decides to take Anna into his home and use Freud's techniques to cure the woman. And, since the police don't know for sure who's done the killing, bringing her into his home isn't a problem...until she starts killing again and again. And vivid and VERY grisly these killings are! This sure ain't a movie for kids to watch!This film IS entertaining and if you like seeing a lot of blood, are you in for a treat! However, at the same time the film never makes much sense. Who would bring a violent murderer into his home? Who would CONTINUE to keep her there after she then kills one of his maids?! And, who would CONTINUE to try to cure her after she stabs someone in the eye?! What also make no sense is after impaling someone with a saber, the guy is STILL able to remove the sword and run about London?!?! And this was no small sword!! Enjoyable but stupid.

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.

Hands of the Ripper is directed by Peter Sasdy and written by L.W. Davidson and Edward Spencer Shew. It stars Eric Porter, Angharad Rees, Jane Merrow, Keith Bell, Derek Godfrey, Dora Bryan and Marjorie Rhodes. Music is by Christopher Gunning and cinematography by Kenneth Talbot.The infant daughter of Jack the Ripper witnesses the brutal murder of her mother by her father. Now a young woman she is deeply troubled and seems to have inherited her father's murderous instincts. An eminent psychiatrist takes her in to his own home in the belief he can benefit medical science by studying her at close quarters...A nifty late horror entry from Hammer Film Productions, Hands of the Ripper boasts the usual period delights and a on form cast doing justice to the intriguing twist on Ripper lore. The murders are delightfully gruesome in that colourful Hammer way, the Freudian beats penetrative and spicy and the suspense is well orchestrated by old pro Sasdy. Sasdy also has a keen eye for fluid camera techniques, and with Talbot making good use of shadows and light, it's an all round well constructed production that looks higher on monetary value than it actually was.Naturally full of improbabilities and cliché contrivance, Hands of the Ripper is still a horror film of considerable substance. From the attention grabbing opening sequence as Jolly Jack returns home from his work, to the breath holding finale set at St Paul's Cathedral, it delivers many treats for fans of Hammer Horror. 7.5/10

From Hitchcock's The Lodger to Murder By Decree, Time After Time and From Hell, the legend of Jack the Ripper has provided cinema-goers with plenty of ripping yarns over the years. Among the better efforts is Hands Of The Ripper (originally screened in a double-bill alongside Twins Of Evil), an absorbing melodrama in the Hands Of Orlac-mode from Hammer at their most experimental.Angharad Rees stars as Anna, who as a toddler witnessed her mother's murder at the hands of her father, Jack the Ripper. Raised in near-feral isolation by her aunt, the phoney medium-cum-brothel keeper Mrs Golding (Bryan), the first indication of her troubled past comes when she slaughters her guardian by pinning her to a door with a poker.Dysart (Godfrey), Anna's aborted trick, and an oily but influential MP, believes she's possessed. "If she wasn't, how could she manage, a frail girl, to drive a poker through the flesh and bone of a human body plus an inch-and-a-half oak door?" Recently bereaved physician and nascent Freudian Dr John Pritchard (Porter) isn't so sure. "The hysteria accompanying certain mental disorders can produce great strength," he muses and, blackmailing Dysart, Pritchard (whom Anna amusingly calls "Dr John") takes the hairy-handed girl into his patronage with a view to getting to the root of her psychopathic tendencies. "'Pygmalion' with blood," a reviewer called it at the time. It soon transpires that a particular chain of events makes Anna go ape; either by accidentally being put into a trance-like, highly-suggestible state by a proximity to glittering lights (resembling the flickering fireplace her father slaughtered her mother in front of) - or kissed (just as daddy Jack did to her, before fleeing into the night).Thus, the plot is driven along by shoehorning any such occurrence into the film at regular and grisly intervals, all but prompting viewers, panto-fashion, to yell at Anna's would-be victims to hide their sparkly necklaces under a roll-neck sweater or proffer a handshake instead. "Miss Anna," coos Pritchard's maid Dolly, draping a twinkling locket round her neck, "you look just like a little doll, all done up to meet the Queen," seconds before she has her throat slashed. And stabbed - can't be too careful. "Rest and care," thinks the irresponsible Pritchard, privately disposing of the body. After all, what price a dead maid or prostitute when ranged against the great Freud? "Don't you see?" he berates a highly unimpressed Dysart, "I'm on the way to a discovery that might change the whole perception of crime and punishment." "The only cure for her," comes the blunt retort, "is a length of rope." It's like a column-off between the 'Guardian' and the 'Daily Mail'.A visit to esteemed psychic Madame Bullard (Rawlings) finally uncovers Anna's parentage, if not her father's identity: "I can't tell you who Jack the Ripper is," she trembles. "But I warn you, the violence of that man is still in this girl. She is, what I would call, possessed..."Directed by Peter Sasdy, who'd go on to direct cult items Doomwatch and Nigel Kneale's The Stone Tape, Hands Of The Ripper - based on a short story by Edward Spencer Shew - remains a laudable attempt by Hammer to try something a little different. Suffused with a sense of melancholy throughout, it ranks among the studio's greatest achievements, owing to its combination of terrific scripting, nuanced performances (Porter's being stand-out) and a superior score from Christopher Gunning, along with its particularly gruesome and inventive set-pieces (censored by the BBFC at the time, and later restored).Its recreation of turn-of-the-century London is highly convincing (the credited gallery of 'Cell Whores' and 'Pub Whores' give some indication of its flavour), while the climactic fall from St Paul's Cathedral's Whispering Gallery is justly celebrated as one of the most moving and poetic climaxes in the genre; not bad going for a low-budget horror flick.It has its flaws, certainly: if Hammer hoped to provide fuel for the nature v nurture debate, the 'Freudian' reasoning behind Anna's condition seems a little pat, and there are some unintentionally comic moments; everyone seems to take Anna's catatonic trances for granted, burbling away to her as if they haven't noticed she's started to attract woodworm. Jack's whispered refrain of "Annnaaa..." in her ear every time she's kissed is hammier than a pig farm, while the 'will-he-won't-he-kiss-her' subtext between Anna and Pritchard is distracting. The subplot, featuring Pritchard's son and his blind fiancée is also a transparent contrivance - their inclusion, an over-indulged set-up for the finale.Nevertheless, Hammer must be applauded for jettisoning the usual supernatural suspects in favour of psychology, yet there's even a subtly suggested ambiguity about that too. Is Anna simply traumatised or genuinely possessed? Dysart and Pritchard's sparring might be seen as a microcosm for the superficially opposed dialectics of spiritualism and science then galavanising the nation, until the psychic fall-out from the Great War tipped some of our most enquiring minds headlong into reactionary occultism. In fact, the most chilling moment in Hands Of The Ripper doesn't concern itself with the murders at all. It's when Jack the Ripper talks to his daughter, hopelessly lost in her own head: "What are dreams, and what's real, Anna? I never know."