Excellent adaptation.

Best movie of this year hands down!

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Not bad at all, I lust say, even as it is on low standards for the tile being. But back then this must be a gory flick. All based on the Jack The Ripper case but pure fiction. Jack has a daughter and she does see Jack killing her mother. A doctor takes the daughter in his house to study her about doing weird stuff.Of course you know where this is going. For a Hammer production this one is made before Hammer did put in a lot of nudity. And even on part of the flick itself it sin't a Gothic story like we've seen from Hammer. It's just an underestimated flick.It wasn't boring at any moment and when killings take place it all looks creepy due the use of the camera. For geeks of Hammer it's a must see and for old school horror fans too but if you want to see a typical Hammer then this isn't going to satisfy you. Excellent acting, good story and well done effects.Gore 1/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 2,5/5 Story 2,5/5 Comedy 0/5

Hammer did appear to be running out of steam as the 1960s gave way to the 1970s, and any of their later films that didn't star Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing or, better, both, was usually a bit disappointing. But not this one. There is much wrong with this film, mostly in the screenplay and the motivations, but it looks downright terrific throughout, is tremendously atmospheric at the right moments, and is about as convincingly late Victorian in aspect as any Technicolor film I can recall. The performances pretty much make the movie, especially those of Eric Porter, arguably one of the most underrated English actors of his time, at least on film (probably because all of his abilities came with a countenance that was not all that close-up-friendly or charismatic - think Kenneth Branagh twenty years later; he really looks like a leading man version of John Le Mesurier!), but he was a major stage and TV actor (watch the TV version of SEPARATE TABLES to be properly aghast at his abilities), who portrays a seemingly sane doctor doing very insane things without realizing it; Derek Godfrey, one of England's more perfect suave and classy villains; Marjorie Rawlings as a psychic who eschews crystal balls and sounds from afar; and England's national treasure, Dora Bryan, in an unusually nasty role (but when she stops being nasty, things only get worse for her!). Really, the film is perfectly cast throughout. When our seemingly sane doctor does come to his senses, he then goes almost mad to save the life of his daughter-in-law-to-be, for whom he has shown absolutely no real interest, concern or affection during the rest of the film and this is one of the screenplay's sore points. How mad? Well, cinema up to 1971 is notably short of scenes involving a sword being removed from a still-living body by use of a stationary doorknob. Take my word for it that it is a very effective moment, but how could it not be? There are others. But, no matter, because for the most part it works just fine. Lots of gore, yes, but to a more or less reasonable purpose and end; after all, nobody is going to watch this thinking it's a sequel to MARY POPPINS! The finale is near Hitchcockian in that the Hammer people actually make good use of a real landmark for the film's conclusion; offhand, I can't recall them ever having done so before. But the St. Paul Cathedral Gallery of Whispers is really something to see (and hear, I would imagine), and the director and cinematographer make much of it. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that they make nearly as much of it as Hitchcock made of a similar holy place in VERTIGO. Well, that's my opinion, anyway. One of the better non-Lee or -Cushing Hammer horrors. (Warning: Stay away from the chopped-up American TV version, which also includes a gratuitous soundtrack of a doctor - Sigmund Freud, perhaps? - EXPLAINING MOTIVATIONS AND PLOT POINTS IN OVERDUB WHILE THE STORY IS IN PROGRESS! What were they thinking?)

A great title for a great Hammer horror film, bursting with the Gothic atmosphere we all know and love. Instead of the latest monster, be it Dracula or Frankenstein, Hammer opted for the psychological thriller in this film, in much the same way as DEMONS OF THE MIND or FEAR IN THE NIGHT. And it works. The setting is the grim and gloomy back streets of London, familiar to us from things like THE CREEPING FLESH. Personally I love this type of setting myself, and Hammer were among the best at bringing us sleazy horror full of prostitutes and sexual repulsion.What helps to make the film work is the distinguished cast, lead by a stern and commanding Eric Porter (THE LOST CONTINENT) as Dr. Pritchard, whose philosophy that the end always justifies the means leads him to coldly dismiss the bodies that Anna has recently murdered. Rees, who plays the young schizophrenic girl, does a great, scary believable job of conveying the difficult impression that there are two personalities in her body trying to get out. The supporting cast is also effective, especially Keith Bell and Derek Godfrey.While the score may not be one of Hammer's most memorable, the images on screen always hold the viewer's attention. I think that Hammer made a brave and correct decision to move away from the more traditional monster horrors in the early '70s and tackle some more psychological terrors, and this film's treatment of a mental disorder is both intriguing and sometimes frightening. The pacing is also good, and the film seems to fly by, while the ending at St Paul's Cathedral is a powerful finale where death and destruction are the order of the day.Of course, as the more lenient approach to gore arrived in the '70s, Hammer decided to fill their films with as much of it as possible. Thus, there are four gruesome occurrences in this film, each worse than the previous one. A woman is impaled through a thick wooden door; another woman has her throat slashed in graphic detail (Fulci would be proud). A seductive lesbian prostitute has a handful of hatpins shoved straight into her eye, but the most cringe-worthy moment is when Porter gets a sword stabbed into his side and has to pull it out by hooking it on a door handle and ripping himself off it. Good drama, definitely. Despite what the critics might say, HANDS OF THE RIPPER is a disturbing exercise in fear and deserves another look.

Following a grisly accident in her past, a woman sent to live with a wealthy bureaucrat learns a special trigger causes her to kill those around her and forces him to uncover the dark secret behind this in order to save her.This is quite a rather middling effort which is about equally bad and good points. The best points here is based on the Victorian setting which is quite effectively utilized at detailing the type of society without focusing on the traditional tropes that are featured in these films. By including their aristocracy-like air in how they react to each other and the manner in which they refer to the authorities in which they sign over the guardianship to get her in their care and how they gather at the police station is all about exploring these Victorian-era settings that are so common-place in these films yet are all accomplished in the realm of a slasher effort and is quite enjoyable for that reason. The fact that there's a twist to the slashing here in which it's based on the hypnotism effect which gets triggered at the most inopportune times so there's never a true indication of when she's going to snap which allows these to come as a real shock while also being shocking at the ingenuity needed to kill off her victims as this has a rather fun time doling out a really unique series of kills within this that is far more inventive and grisly than most slashers of the time. These issues here work but there's some problems that crop up in that the discovery of her hypnotic state and resulting killing mode are so late in the film that it really makes the psychology he attempts to use in aiding him look incredibly weak and pointless. Trying this is quite impressive overall, but there's just so many scenes that go by so slowly of him trying out his hand at this type of methodology that it leaves a gaping questions about his excellence in the field as well as not managing to accomplish anything of any value which causes this to feel incredibly drawn-out despite being only a traditionally-paced effort. This really holds the film down somewhat as they're two quite imposing drawbacks even though it's still quite enjoyable.Today's Rating/R: Graphic Violence and Nudity.