Jack The Ripper - Mark Whitehead [54]
Jack the Ripper (1988)
Director: David Wickes. Cast: Michael Caine, Armand Assante, Jane Seymour, Ray McAnally, Lewis Collins, Susan George
At the ‘quality’ drama end of the market – or rather the ‘mid-quality, mid-evening’ drama end – there was Euston Films’ self-proclaimed ‘proper’ telling of the story of Jack the Ripper. Well, okay. The three one-hour episodes were appropriately mounted, with newspaper-wielding urchins, horses, carts and the occasional odd-looking bicycle to the fore. However, the Vigilance Committees are played like torch-bearing lynch mobs out of a Frankenstein movie, and there is an odd focus on Assante’s Richard Mansfield as a prime suspect. His Hyde might have been good but I would be more concerned about how he got hold of 1980s bladder effects than whether he was the Ripper.
Along with the usual ‘faces’ of 1980s mid-range drama (Susan George as Catharine Eddowes!), Michael Caine attacks his role of the reportedly mild-mannered and reserved Inspector Abberline with both fists. Permanently annoyed and shouting at everyone in sight, Caine’s Abberline always seems to be on the verge of chinning Lewis Collins. It starts to become uncomfortably possible that Abberline will lose it completely, march out into the street and yell: ‘Oy! You, bloody Ripper! Leave those bloody prostitutes alone!’ On the plus side, the plot unrolls at a decent gallop over the film’s worst offences.
Taking more liberties with history than David Irving, Janet Meyers’ The Ripper (1997) features a fictional copper (Patrick Bergin’s Beethoven-haired Inspector Hanson) and a fictional prostitute (Gabrielle Anwar’s Oirish washerwoman Florry Lewis) hot on the trail of Jack as Heir-to-the-Throne, Samuel West’s barking Prince Eddy. Mind you, ‘barking’ is a relative term: Michael York’s Sir Charles Warren (one of the few ‘real’ people in it) is a fuzzy old buffer more interested in pairing off his protégée (Hanson) than catching the Ripper. If you’ve stayed with us this far then you’ll flinch like we did when Hanson shows Florry Mary Kelly’s murder photo just after the ‘double-header’ (itself bumped up the running order). By now, it should be clear that we’ve no problem with fictional retellings of the case but… the muddle! Historical verisimilitude is attempted with slops being chucked out of East End windows and the most men with absurd facial hair filling the screen since Gettysburg (1993).The line (delivered completely straight),‘He may be insane but… lovely penmanship’, deserves some kind of recognition. Although, for the life of us, we couldn’t say what kind.
From Hell (2001)
Directors: Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes. Cast: Johnny Depp, Heather Graham, Ian Holm, Robbie Coltrane, Ian Richardson
Filmed mainly in Prague, the troubled production finally hit the screens with a hole in its heart. Johnny Depp played Inspector Abberline as a fin de siècle occultist a few notches more experienced than his Ichabod Crane in Sleepy Hollow (see the lovingly-filmed scene where Abberline fixes himself a glass of absinthe). His romance with Heather Graham’s Mary Kelly (apparently voiced by Dick Van Dyke) leads up to one of the most jaw-droppingly cynical deus ex machina ever foisted on the movie-going public. Finally, the Whitechapel Murders gets a happy ending. Thanks, Hollywood, that’s just what it was missing. Bloody, stylish and with a credible recreation of the Whitechapel streets, From Hell misses the point of Moore and Campell’s creation by a mile. This isn’t really its fault. You try pitching Fox a lengthy dissection of the Victorian era and the impending birth of a new century.What we end up with is a flashier version of Murder by Decree with the real people reinstated. Arguably the most noticeable lack is the filtering of the murders through Gull’s spiralling messiah complex, lending them a horrifying grandeur. Instead, Ian Holm’s Gull has little