Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Perfectly adorable

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

1888: Whitechapel in the East End of London: Inspector O' Neill (Eddie Byrne) is coming under intense pressure from the Yard, the Home Secretary and the terrified local population to bring to book a serial killer known as Jack The Ripper who murders and mutilates street women. His close friend, a visiting American policeman called Sam Lowry (Lee Patterson), is keen to help him track down the Ripper since his own force has a deep interest in the case too. The Mercy Hospital for Women falls under great suspicion of the local people who are developing a lynch mob tendency. A mute employee at the hospital, Louis Benz (Endree Muller), drops a medical bag he is carrying at the scene of a crime spilling all its surgical contents on to the pavement. Assuming him to be the Ripper, the locals pursue him through the cobbled streets arming themselves with the scalpels and surgical knives and it is only by chance that O' Neill and Lowry happen to be passing that he is saved from being hacked to pieces by the mob. O' Neill puts Benz in protective custody and the assistant chief commissioner of the Yard is keen to charge him for the murders, but O' Neill thinks that it is too easy and does not believe that the unfortunate Benz is his man. But who is the elusive Jack The Ripper and what are the motives behind his frenzied, bloody and insane killings?There has been countless films and documentaries made and numerous books written about the world's most famous unsolved case about the mysterious serial killer who terrified London's East End during 1888. Naturally, there has been countless suspects and theories behind the motives of the Ripper murders. Anybody who has even just a passing interest in the case will see the solution in this British b-pic from Monty Berman and Bob Baker coming from some distance off. Yet, the identity of the culprit is well enough concealed until the film reaches its shocking denouement. Jimmy Sangster, Hammer's regular screenwriter whom Berman and Baker hired for their copy of that studio's gothics, The Blood Of The Vampire (1958), teases us with a number of red herrings and possible suspects. Berman and Baker, here multitasking as cinematographers/directors and producers admirably rise to the occasion in generating the tension; sometimes to very high levels. The climax, for instance, where O' Neill and Lowry trap the killer in the hospital tricking him into thinking that the porter he has just stabbed to death is still alive and on the brink of regaining consciousness and could reveal his identity. As they intended, he breaks and tries to make a run for it hiding at the bottom of a lift shaft. But, the mortuary attendants use the lift to take the porter's body down to the morgue and he is crushed to death in a suitably effective and lurid moment. My DVD, an Italian import, used an American print in which that scene turns into Technicolor to reveal the Ripper's blood seeping through the floorboards of the elevator. That gimmick was not seen in UK prints of the film although it still got an 'X' certificate. The murders are fairly shockingly staged combining just the right amount of graphic horror and leaving the rest to the imagination, which is so much more effective. Effective set design and b/w cinematography succeed in creating a chilling atmosphere and convincingly recreates the fog shrouded, cobbled streets and dank alleyways of Whitechapel in the Ripper era. It has to be said as well that the picture's low budget is pretty well concealed. Berman and Baker also capture quite well the effect that the murders have on the community transforming it from a happy thriving place into one where decent people live in fear and develop a mob mentality. Performances are generally good all round with Eddie Byrne offering a good down to earth portrayal as the dogged and frustrated police inspector and John Le Mesurier is noteworthy as a surgeon whom we are teased and lead on to believe is the Ripper throughout the film sustaining the suspense. Film buffs will recognise Lee Patterson, the imported American leading man, who was a 'B' picture stalwart in Britain at this time. Many of the low budget programmers he appeared in were largely forgotten after they were first screened to fill the lower half of the double bill, but many are enjoying a resurgence in the age of DVD.All in all, Jack The Ripper's solution behind the killings can be seen coming from some one way off, but it is still a highly enjoyable atmospheric and sometimes shocking fictionalised account of the world's most famous unsolved cases.

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 stories are always rather fun. Historically, Saucy Jack killed (and mutilated in varying degrees) five known whores in Victorian England. They must have been easy prey, down and outers with bad teeth, alcohol problems, and no place to sleep. Then, too, the murders were never solved, so movie makers can dream up all kinds of plots to explain the heinous goings on. It was an actor. Or it was some mysterious lodger. Or it was Queen Victoria's psychopathic relative. Or it was Victoria herself in drag.This film endorses the common belief that the Ripper was a man of medical knowledge. (It's a lot of horse hockey. It's like the speculation that Son of Sam was a draftsman or architect because his printing was neat.) In fact, Jack is a surgeon here -- Ewan Solon, as the mythical chief surgeon of some equally mythical hospital. John Le Mesurier provides a red herring as another surgeon, an edgy one, perhaps too fond of his niece, played by Betty McDowall. Assorted other characters provide color and texture to an interesting movie that offers the viewer a satisfactory climax in which Jack the Surgeon gets squashed in the shaft beneath an elevator descending to the morgue."We know who it was but we can never prove it," concludes the requisite police inspector, Eddie Byrne. Wouldn't it be pretty to think so.It's fairly well done. The cobblestoned back streets of Whitechapel are effectively represented. The performances are all good, especially Solon's, and the characters well portrayed, except for the visiting American detective, Lee Patterson with his Elvis Presley do, put into the script presumably to appeal to American audiences.Not bad, if not exactly original or surprising in any way.

I wasn't intending on watching this film as it got a bad review in my TV guide. But when I saw John Le Mesurier (whom I most associate with the TV series "Dad's Army") becoming a prime suspect at the start of this Jack the Ripper themed whodunnit, then I just had to watch the rest.The film basically uses the Jack the Ripper case as a excuse for a whodunnit. Jack's identity is pretty easy to guess (not enough suspects!), but the motive for the killings takes a bit longer to figure out.The inclusion of an American policeman in the story does rather pander to an American audience, but it works quite well. I was cynically expecting him to solve the case before the London policeman and have a fight to the death with Jack at the the end of the film. But I was pleasantly surprised with the ending (it was vaguely reminiscent of the endings of a couple of Dario Argento's gialli).Overall it's not a great film, but if you're into whodunnits then it's worth checking out.