Hands of the Ripper
| release date | October 17 1971 |
| studio | Universal Pictures |
| director | Peter Sasdy |
| writer | L.W. Davidson, Edward Spencer Shew |
| starring | Eric Porter, Angharad Rees, Jane Merrow, Keith Bell, Derek Godfrey |
| tagline | A new terror-filled X film |
| trailer 1 | Trailer #1 |
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“Hands Of The Ripper” is a later-period Hammer film that features some fine murder sequences and enough character development to keep the viewer interested until the end. After a pre-titles sequence that postulates that Jack The Ripper had a daughter whom he traumatized by murdering her mother in front of her, the narrative skips to the now-18 year-old girl Anna (Angharad Rees) being forced to provide the spirit voice for her guardian’s fake seances and provide her body for gentlemen callers after the seances are over. After one such encounter leaves her guardian murdered, she comes to the attention of Dr. Pritchard (Eric Porter) who, suspecting that she has been traumatized as a child, decides to take responsibility for her in an effort to cure her. He says it’s for science, but he’s obviously fallen for her. Unfortunately, he can’t keep others from innocently triggering her trances and murderous impulses.
Along with the gruesome murder sequences (approximately five of them), the film is helped along by the performances of Porter and Rees, who are both sympathetic characters: she’s not responsible for her actions, and he just wants to help her (whatever his motives may be). But this makes the doctor responsible for all the film’s subsequent murders and he finds himself getting in much deeper water than he ever dreamed. The doctor finds that all his best efforts only hurt the girl and all around them (this is foreshadowed at their first meeting when the doctor, bent on exposing Anna as the source of the spirit voices, deliberately steps on her dainty foot – a pretty nasty act on the part of a doctor. Almost all the rest of his actions seem to be in an effort to make up for that indiscretion). The acting is uniformly good all around, but it is Rees’s performance as the seemingly delicate young murderous that is at the heart of the picture.
The picture does have some flaws: Rees goes into her trance so often that she spends half the film wandering around mute with a vacant look on her face. After the doctor discovers the first murder in his home, I was left wondering how he was going to get rid of the body, but the film sidesteps this question and never alludes to it again (after another murder, Anna and the doctor simply leave the body on the floor and quickly make their exit). A subplot concerning the doctor’s blind soon-to-be-daughter-in-law is obviously a set-up for a finale in which the poor girl will be set upon by Anna. And considering that Anna’s final trigger for murder is a kiss, it’s a bit curious that more women end up kissing her than men.
Still, fans of Hammer horror would do well to try this one on for size. Although tough to find in video stores, Netflix boasts a good-looking copy.