Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #111104 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-06-27
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 82 minutes

Customer Reviews

Jack the Ripper with Poverty Row charm; not very good but endearing because it tries so hard
"Jack the Ripper...what a revolting, stupid name!" says Mr. Slade. He has every reason to be offended. Note that while elements of the plot are discussed, almost everything is laid out for the viewer in the film's first 15 minutes. It's 1888 and Jack has been at work off and on for several weeks. His victims are all women who have been entertainers at one time or another. Jack's knives leave messy leftovers.

Late one night with the London fog swirling around the gaslit streets, Mr. and Mrs. Harley (Rhys Williams and Frances Bavier) hear a knock on their door. It's a Mr. Slade (Jack Palance) who is answering their notice of a room to let. He not only takes the room but also their small, third floor attic. He needs it, he tells Mrs. Harley, so that he can conduct his experiments. Mr. Slade is a pathologist. He seems nice enough, the Harley's dog takes to him at once and he pays a month in advance. When he learns that the Harley's niece, Lily Bonner (Constance Smith), will be staying in the house, and that she is a showgirl on the stage, he is obviously distracted. Her act, Lily Bonner and Her Girls, is getting a lot of notice. We even get to see her do two full numbers. Prince Edward is seen clapping approvingly. But the swirling fog keeps blanketing the city, more women are found brutally cut to death, and Mr. Slade keeps returning home at very late hours. The police put every resource they can into the hunt. Queen Victoria makes it clear that no married man could be capable of such crimes and recommends that all bachelors be rounded up. The police investigation is led by Inspector Paul Warwick (Byron Palmer), a smart copper who is attracted to Lily as soon as he meets her. And it seems that Slade is attracted to Lily, too. He confesses to Lily that his unease and loneliness is due to his mother, a woman "incapable of love, only lust," who left home when he was a child. His father took ten years to drink himself to death with absinthe. "Did you ever see your mother again?" Lily asks Slade. Yes, he says. She'd become a street walker. I saw her once. We also have a sense of Slade's unbalanced torment. Often his late evenings are spent simply in lonely and unhealthy contemplation. "Sometimes I walk close by the river," he tells Lily. "The river is like liquid night flowing peacefully out to infinity." We know what's coming; there are no surprises. After a rousing night-time chase through London's damp streets, the last thing we see is the swirling waters of the Thames.

Oh, what a grade B hamfest this movie is. I mean that in a kind way because the movie is fun to watch. There are so many things wrong with it that the movie has a kind of endearing, well-intentioned amateurishness about it.

Jack Palance, young and tormented, with his small sunken eyes, prominent cheek bones, strong chin and heavy brow, does a credible job. So do Frances Bavier and Rhys Williams. But the rest of the cast...Byron Palmer as Inspector Warwick can scarcely act. He has a handsome, unformed face with a plump little mouth. The actress playing Daisy, the young maid in the Harley household, tries earnestly to do a good job. Variations of English accents come and go, and wobble around like the light from the oil lamps. "Asking" becomes "awsking" and "nasty" becomes "nawsty." The stunt double driving the horse-drawn carriage at the climax bears little resemblance to Palance. Constance Smith as Lily Bonner is not a natural singing entertainer. Her Girls are as ragged as dancers as Smith's English accent is. Some of the dialogue is so ripe it's just tasty. "You're the same as my mother," Slade shouts, "the same as all of them...mocking love and living for lust! Your beauty must be cut away!"

Why on earth buy this movie or watch it? Well, all these faults give it a kind of Poverty Row charm. The film is trying hard to be a Jack the Ripper psycho-thriller. The producers just couldn't round up the talent or the budget to come close, but they tried. It's a very close re-make, we're told, of the 1944 film, The Lodger," which starred Laird Cregar. There's also a good deal of nostalgia, in my opinion, around many of the old programmers from the Forties and early Fifties. Sure, this is a movie to watch while folding the laundry or paying bills. The price is right, so why not?

The DVD picture looks fine. There are no extras of any significance.

a descent man in the attic
This review refers to the clean and crisp DVD transfer made available by MGM as another "midnite movie" package: "a bluprint for murder" & "man in the attic". As expressed in my previous comment though, blueprint is clearly superior. Man in the attic deals with another entrance to Jack the ripper. This time, the feature is starred descently by a young Jack Palance. Good things in this movie include a good inside look at the ripper's mind and the strong woman character of Lily Bonner played by Constance Smith. Bad things, two or three singings that you easily skip using the forward command.

Jack "The Knife" Palance...
A mysterious pathologist named Slade (Jack Palance) takes a room in a boarding house in London, run by a woman (Frances "Aunt B" Bavier) and her husband. Of course, this happens during the infamous Jack The Ripper murder spree, which adds menace and suspicion to the proceedings. Slade not only takes a room, but also works on secret projects in the attic! He comes and goes like a shadow and stays out all night "working". Could he be the Ripper? Scotland Yard is stumped and 5,000 cops can't catch the fiend. Is he right under their collective noses? Palance is restrained and enigmatic as Slade. He is like a seething predator under a cloak of calm. I liked him in this. The story isn't historically correct, but is enjoyable enough for late night viewing...