You have to love the brief appearance of the Elephant Man into the thick of the action and the secret society of Freemasons who operate below ground. Although some of the choice language is a little too modern to be that convincing the rest of the dialogue, the sets, the scenery and the costumes are spot-on. Attention to detail also contributes to this movie's success and I would go so far as to say that this is the most authentic-looking Jack the Ripper film that I've yet to see. Scenes of the victims being stalked at night by the cruel killer are highly suspenseful, heightened by the dark, baroque music that accompanies them and a high class of acting from all concerned. Police surgeons repeatedly vomit at the sight of the mutilated corpses and quick flash cuts show us all we need to know about the severity of the crimes, so on a visceral level at least FROM HELL offers pure horror, sometimes nausea-inducing and all the more effective for it. Entrails are torn out and wrapped around necks and throats are slashed emitting geysers of crimson gore. For a change the gory murders and surgical operations that Jack carries out on his deeply unfortunate victims are shown in graphic detail, rather than only being spoken of like in previous versions of the tale, and no expense is spared in giving us graphic, stomach-churning scenes of the cloaked Ripper calmly sawing out the internal organs of his female victims, kneeling above their prone bodies. Everything about this film screams style and class. And now, to mark the new millennium, two brothers best known for their gangster rap movies have given the world FROM HELL, which is for a change based on a graphic novel (which I haven't read) of the Ripper story rather than the real-life murder investigation itself. It's a good but flawed telling of the story marred only by the TV-movie level it never rises above. In 1988, to mark the centenary of the Ripper murders, a supposedly definitive television miniseries was made in America starring Michael Caine as the investigating policeman.
In the 1970s, European horror veteran Jess Franco gave us his typically sleazy variant with 1976's nasty JACK THE RIPPER, with Klaus Kinski in the leading role, whilst Spanish stalwart Paul Naschy made his own variant. An infamous black and white British version of the tale, made in 1959 by a cheap rival to Hammer, has fallen into obscurity but is still best remembered for the final reel, in which the killer is caught beneath a lift and the screen turns to glorious blood red colour for an instant to capture his gory demise. Right back in the creaky old days of the silents he made his appearances in the likes of 1926's WAXWORKS and Hitchcock's THE LODGER. The story of Jack the Ripper has long been of interest in the horror cinema.
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