Waste of time

Just perfect...

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Good concept, poorly executed.

In the 50s and 60s British film producers made 2 versions of their films.One the version that would be shown in UK cinemas and the other for more broadminded tastes the other side of the channel.So about half way through the film in the music hall the dancers have just finished the can can.They go back to their dressing room.They start talking in French ,with English subtitles,and all the dancers are undressed.This goes on for the next 5 minutes or so till the next murder.I have often pondered what happened to the continental versions and here some enterprising soul has cut the relevant scenes into the film.It certainly livens it up as it is not one of the better Ripper films,since it deals with it as a who dunnit.The final scenes with the lift though are the most effective part of the film.

Considering an obviously small budget this film is well written and has an authentic "foggy Victorian look" about it,aided by a complimentary Stanley Black score.It's real merit is the fine character performances especially Euan Solon as a very autocratic hospital surgeon and it is also interesting to see John Le Mesurier far removed from his mild mannered Sargeant Wilson of Dad's Army.The East End/Whitechapel appears to be inhabited by an array of unsavoury characters from music hall impresarios,run of the mill pickpockets and aggressive vigilante thugs.Still,the plot unwinds at a reasonable pace and the Lee Patterson/Betty McDowell romance doesn't interfere too much with the grizzly goings on in the streets.The final unmasking of Jack is quite unsettling in its brutality,but all the loose ends are nicely tied up with the realisation that due to circumstance(i.e. Jack the Ripper is killed) the true identity of the killer will always be known to the police but not the public.Well worth a look if you like this genre of film.

Jack the Ripper (1959) ** (out of 4) Atmospheric and moody version of the infamous serial killer. This isn't quite as good as the version with Klaus Kinski but it remained entertaining throughout. The director does a great job building up the atmosphere of 1888 London but for some strange reason he never pushes the "mystery" surrounding the case. He throws a lot of suspects at us but for some reason he never tries to build up a mystery film as to who the killer is. There's a big twist at the end, which makes one think the film is going to do something with it but it never does. I'm not exactly sure what the filmmakers were going for but the movie still works.

I remember seeing this movie in the theater when I was 12 years old in Washington, D.C.,and it scared the hell out of me. It was a wonderful eerie period piece. It was black and white throughout the whole movie until the very end when Jack was crushed under the elevator. As his blood seeped up through the floor boards, the movie changed to glorious color to show the red of the blood, and the horror of the men in the elevator looking down at the floor. Most effective! I bought this video tape from England, but that colorized blood-seeping scene was not included. I don't even think it had the blood seeping up in black and white. I was later to learn that this colorized ending was added to the American release. But as far as I know it is not available in VHS or DVD. I was really disappointed when this novel scene did not appear in my video. At least I have the memory of it as a child and the effect it had on me then.