Hands of the Ripper **** (1971, Eric Porter, Angharad Rees, Jane Merrow, Dora Bryan, Derek Godfrey, Keith Bell) – Classic Movie Review 3109

‘The Hands of Jack the Ripper Live Again… As His Fiendish Daughter Kills Again… And Again…And Again…’

Director Peter Sasdy’s 1971 Hammer Films British chiller Hands of the Ripper stars Angharad Rees as the beautiful but deadly young main character Anna who, after witnessing her father, Jack the Ripper, murder her mother, as an infant, is seemingly possessed by the spirit of her late father and forever destined to kill when she is in a lover’s embrace. Fifteen years later, the traumatic memories of her mother’s death and of her father kissing her cause Anna to enter a trance sparked off by any glittering light and she stabs to death anyone who decides to kiss her, but later has no memory of it.

Fifteen years after her mother’s death, Anna is a troubled young woman taken in by Mrs Golding (Dora Bryan), a woman who lives on her earnings as a phony medium/ clairvoyant and the money she can making renting Anna out to rich gentlemen like politician Mr Dysart (Derek Godfrey).

Eric Porter also stars as Dr John Pritchard, a sympathetic Freudian psychiatrist who attends one of Mrs Golding’s séances and befriends Anna after she is implicated in a bloody murder. He gets her out of jail after she is arrested, brings her to live in his home, and sets out to try to unlock her secrets and cure her, but becomes obsessed with Anna with her instead, covering up the murders that follow, with the obvious results expected of a horror movie.

Hands of the Ripper is an imaginative, gruesome, adeptly handled Hammer horror, with excellent, creepy performances from a strong cast of good actors, fine pacing by director Sasdy, classy production design in Roy Stannard’s designs and a highly effective climax at the Whispering Gallery of London’s St Paul’s Cathedral. For this, a most impressive replica had to be built when permission was requested and turned down to film on location, though it looks like there might be one exterior shot of the Cathedral.

All this and more than a liberal dash of psychoanalysis make it one of the best Hammer horror films of the Seventies. With a fair amount of gore and nasty stabbing, and a fairly high body count, it was considered by some to be gratuitously violent back in the day, and is still grisly and gruesome in several places.

It is Porter’s film, and he is quite outstanding in a classy, intense and credible performance, but Rees and Godfrey also have much to do, and do it impressively, while Bryan, Marjorie Rhodes and Lynda Barron make the most of their fairly short screen time in entertainingly extravagant campy turns. It is a shame Jane Merrow and Keith Bell do not have better roles to play. Their characters are just left on the fringes, used only as plot or dialogue devices.

It also stars Keith Bell as Pritchard’s son Michael, Jane Merrow as Michael’s blind fiancée Laura, ‘guest star’ Dora Bryan as Mrs Golding, Derek Godfrey as Dysart, Marjorie Rhodes (last film) as Pritchard’s kindly housekeeper Mrs Bryant, and Lynda Barron as lesbian prostitute Long Liz (named after one of Jack the Ripper’s real-life victims, Elizabeth Stride, nicknamed Long Liz), who later befriends Anna and takes her in.

Also in the cast are Marjie Lawrence, Margaret Rawlings, Elizabeth MacLennan, Barry Lowe, A J Brown, April Wilding, Molly Weir, Charles Lamb, Norman Bird and Ann Way.

It is written by Lewis W Davidson from an original story by Edward Spencer Shew.

It is shot at Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England, in Eastmancolor. The film uses the large Baker Street set at Pinewood, left over from the previous year’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.

Sasdy, born on May 27, 1935 in Budapest, Hungary, cites it as his favourite of his films. He is also known for Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) and Countess Dracula (1971).

It is the second Hammer film to use Jack the Ripper as its subject matter following Room to Let (1950). It was filmed in the same year as Hammer’s Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971) that also has a Jack the Ripper story element.

The BBFC cut the UK cinema version to remove a close-up of a hat-pin in a woman’s eye (now restored), while US censors removed 16 seconds from the murder sequences.

It was released in a double bill with Hammer’s Twins of Evil (1971).

Hands of the Ripper is directed by Peter Sasdy, runs 85 minutes, is made by Hammer Films, is released by Rank Film Distributors (1971) (UK) and Universal Pictures (1972) (US), is written by Lewis W Davidson, based on an original story by Edward Spencer Shew, is shot in Eastmancolor by Kenneth Talbot, is produced by Aida Young, is scored by Christopher Gunning and designed by Roy Stannard.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3109

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com