Really Surprised!

Perfectly adorable

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

As a young child, Anna witnesses the brutal murder of her mother by her father, Jack the Ripper. Now, as a pretty young woman (played by the enchanting Angharad Rees), Anna goes into a trance whenever she sees flickering light, with a subsequent kiss causing her to become possessed by the murderous spirit of dear old daddy (a contrived combo of occurrences that comes into play several times during the course of the film, allowing for a number of grisly murders). Seeking to study Anna at close quarters, aspiring psychologist Dr. John Pritchard (Eric Porter) takes the young woman under his wing, but must help to hide his young ward's bloodthirsty behaviour.From Hammer studios, Hands of the Ripper is a delightfully dippy and gloriously gruesome take on the Ripper mythos. The plot is extremely silly, Pritchard covering up for a serial murderer being utterly ridiculous, even if the killer in question doesn't know what she is doing, but the outbursts of extreme violence make this a real treat for gore-hounds despite the lack of logic. The first of Anna's victims is charlatan spiritualist Mrs. Golding (Dora Bryan) who is pinned to a door with a fire poker, housemaid Dolly (Marjie Lawrence) is stabbed in the neck with a broken mirror, drunken whore Long Liz (Lynda Baron) has hatpins pushed through her hand and into her eye, a medium is stabbed with her spectacles (!?!), and Dr. Pritchard is run through with a sword (which he removes by hooking the hilt over a door handle and falling to the floor. Yeowch!). That other staple of '70s Hammer films, gratuitous female nudity, is limited to a brief glimpse of a topless Rees in the bath.The film ends with a tragic yet fitting climax that takes place in the Whispering Gallery of St. Paul's Cathedral, the fatally wounded Pritchard calling to Anna to join him—which she does by climbing over the edge of the gallery and falling to her death.7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb.

TCM just aired this and like all the other Hammer films I enjoyed it a great deal. They're not cinematic achievements but they are fun and that's one of film's aspects I really appreciate. I also tend to look at technical aspects and the first thing that struck me is how fake the moustaches looked. The beards looked better but now I wonder. The second, I'm embarrassed to write, was Marjie Lawrence's cleavage which may not be how she would like to be remembered given her extensive body of work. Did they really dress like that in Victorian England? I'd also never seen Angharad Rees before nor had I even heard of her but then I found out this was her first co-starring and second film role and I was intrigued. And, incidentally, that's another thing I like about Hammer: they find and highlight young talent. Anyway lots of good talent here, a lot from TV, presumably because they come cheaper. Some goofs like when Rees begins to sit while her host invites her to do so. But I'm getting technical again. Eric Porter is great. He manages to save the day even skewered by a cavalry sabre. Which brings up another goof: the thing must be five feet long but you can't see the other end sticking out of Porter's body. Good final scene, good score, worth a viewing.

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."

Anna sees her father (Jack the Ripper) stab her mother to death when she's a little girl. Twenty years later she's been adopted and knows nothing about her past--but she kills people when she flashes back to seeing her mother killed. Dr. John Pritchard (Eric Porter) knows she does this but wants to try to find out why and cure her while the bodies pile up.Interesting Hammer horror that mixes psychology with extreme violence. I originally caught this on network TV ages ago where all the violence was cut out. There's not a lot of it but what there is is VERY strong and incredibly gruesome. Even the R rated version released here in the US is edited! I finally saw it uncut on a Portuguese DVD. The color is a little faded and the end credits stop abruptly but it's letter-boxed and complete. The story is a little slowly paced but I was never bored and the violence shocked me--and I'm a hardened horror movie fan! The acting was excellent by Porter and Angharad Rees (playing the unfortunate Anna). The psychology is a little bit silly but the movie is strong and well-done. If you can see this uncut I recommend it.