Downer Ending: Anna throws herself off a balcony to stop her split personality from killing. Meanwhile, the psychiatrist who's been trying to treat her the whole film bleeds out from a stab wound she gave him earlier. Overall, it is a Good Looking Film as usual for the always Visually Interesting Hammer Studios and is one of the most Violent in its Catalog. Overall, a solid effort from Hammer that lovers of 70s horror cinema should find to be satisfactory. An expensive-looking, well acted, nicely scripted - and very gory - period piece, Hands Of The Ripper shows that when called for, Hammer could still deliver lush and reasonably intelligent gothics even into the 70s.

Things get worse for the poor sap when he gets stabbed through the kidneys with a ceremonial sword (although in typically British "stiff upper lipped" style, he manages to put on a brave front for the servants), and as he follows Anna to her date with destiny in the whispering gallery at St Paul's Cathederal, you can't help feeling a bit sorry for him.

Though Eddowes clearly had financial difficulties, her friends and family members described her as a “very jolly woman,” who was often heard singing. While some sources described her as a “prostitute,” her relatives were adamant that she was not a sex worker. However, some of her loved ones did claim that she had a drinking problem. Now some of you might now also wonder why she committed five murders if she was just after Mary Kelly but the author has a perfectly reasonable explanation for that, too: Mary Ann Nichols and Annie Chapman were just practise. After all killing and mutilating is hard work and you need to make sure that you can really do it even if you already have some knowledge about anatomy like Lizzie. And Lizzie knew about anatomy because her husband was a surgeon and she always watched him during operation...you know just like watching 8 seasons of Criminal Minds have made me a proper profiler. This article needs an improved plot summary. Please help improve the plot summary. ( March 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)

The publicity that followed the murder turned Catherine's funeral into an event. Thousands joined the procession, which included a wagon for relatives and a wagon for the press.And since the police had apparently failed to capture the killer, they struggled to calm residents. A Times report recorded the massive inflow of tips that the authorities received: Hands Of The Ripper is one of the strongest films ever released by Hammer if you’re judging it on it’s violence. Anna slashes throats, impales bodies and stabs eyes out of heads with a vigor rarely seen by an actress in a horror film from any studio. The beautiful Rees gives Anna a near childlike quality (When she’s not murdering anyone) that makes her eventual fate all the more tragic. Her eyes glaze over most convincingly as she hears her father’s voice urging her to kill again & again & again! Porter, who appeared in one of my favorite Hammer films of all time (“The Lost Continent” 1968) gives an extremely measured performance as Dr. Pritchard in which the relationship between himself and Anna begins as a professional one (He’s just heard of a doctor named Freud (!) who’s done some groundbreaking work on the human psyche) but the lines begin to fade etween the two of them as the film continues with Pritchard actually enabling Anna in her murderous ways by not admitting to the police that she’s the killer. While it’s unknown if the kidney actually originated from Eddowes’ body, there’s no question that it was a horrific sight. Londoners who were already on edge from the previous murders were now in full-blown panic mode. Disney Villain Death: Anna throws herself off a high balcony to stop her split personality from killing anymore. What helps to make the film work is the distinguished cast, lead by a stern and commanding Eric Porter (THE LOST CONTINENT) as Dr. Pritchard, whose philosophy that the end always justifies the means leads him to coldly dismiss the bodies that Anna has recently murdered. Angharad Rees, who plays the young schizophrenic girl, does a great, scary believable job of conveying the difficult impression that there are two personalities in her body trying to get out. The supporting cast is also effective, especially Keith Bell and Derek Godfrey.

Actually the doctor's mental condition is more interesting than that of the girl he's studying: He pulls a "Vertigo" on her by giving her his late wife's room, providing Anna her clothes to wear and is obsessed with healing her because he couldn't heal his wife. At one point he nigh kisses Anna wearing his wife's clothes when the topic of life-after-death surfaces. That spells out their dysfunctional relationship. The couple had, Kelly told an inquest, last been together on Saturday morning when they pawned a pair of boots and immediately spent the half-crown on drink and food. He recalled supping in bare feet. The case for a woman murderer is overwhelming, but unfortunately it does not sit well in some quarters where such a theory flies in the face of long-held beliefs," Morris was quoted as saying in the Daily Telegraph. "Because everyone believes that the murderer was a man, all the evidence that points to a woman has been ignored."Given the time it was made, and the flow of influences, we must suppose that Hands of the Ripper was taking its cues from the Italian horror industry, but I don't think that's quite right. The thing is, there's never a minute's doubt that Anna is the killer - not from us, and not really from the other characters. There is, I suppose, some mystery around whether psychosis or possession is responsible for her actions, but L.W. Davidson's screenplay doesn't really care about answering that question. I would go so far as to say that we have in this film one of the earliest direct antecedents to the slasher movie, in which we are invited to watch a string of violent murders with no pretext of a mystery behind them at all, as there would be in a giallo: Anna is more in the line of Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, a killer known to us from the outset, whose actions are meant tob e satisfying spectacle in and of themselves. And it is very much a modern day tragedy, a squalid tale of a life that once offered so much becoming lost in a sewer-smelling swamp of domestic abuse, addiction and red light exploitation. The author is also rather desperate to convince that readers that it is totally obvious that the Ripper must have been a woman because the victims weren't sexually assaulted and a man would have done this. He repeats this over and over in almost every third chapter (he is rather fond of repeating things, I guess if you cut out all the repetitions you'd loose at least a third of the book). Visiting a medium with some friends, psychoanalyses Dr. John Pritchard discovers that the sounds of the "spirits" have actually been made by a girl called Anna,who was hidden away from view.Leaving with the group,Pitchard notices an MP enter the building,and pay to have sex with Anna,in what Pitchard realises is a secret brothel.Waiting round for his carriage (as you do!) Pitchard hears a blood curdling scream.Rushing in,Pitchard is horrified to find that Anna has brutally killed the medium. Trotzdem lässt sich die Theorie relativ schlüssig lesen und man ist leicht versucht, ihr Glauben zu schenken. Ich halte die Möglichkeit eines weiblichen oder gar als Frau verkleideten Rippers für durchaus denkbar. Vielleicht war sogar ein Duo aus Mann und Frau am Werk - wer weiß?!