Jack the Ripper!

It's time to walk the foggy streets of London in search of the most infamous serial killer of them all. Michael guides you through the sordid history of Saucy Jack and the Ripper murders before doing a survey of the most well-known Ripper films. He then recommends two of the best, Hammer's HANDS OF THE RIPPER (1971) and 1979's MURDER BY DECREE. Grab your deerstalkers and bullseye lanterns, the game is afoot!

Thanks for joining us. Leave us a review...if you dare. 

IG https://www.instagram.com/fridaynightfrightspodcast/

 Blue Sky https://bsky.app/profile/fridaynightfrights.bsky.social

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_07 0:00

I understand you know something of the Whitechapel murders.

SPEAKER_05 0:03

I have seen the man known as Jack the Ripper.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Friday Night Frights. I'm Michael Huey. I'm a uh theater professor, author, actor, big horror guy. And uh before we get to the crux of our episode, I just want to talk about this year's Oscars. Uh I'm recording this two days after uh the Oscar ceremony, and horror movies did so well this year. I believe a total of eight, I want to say, Academy awards went to horror films. Amy Madikan won uh best supporting female actor for weapons. Uh Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor, male actor for um for Centers. Center's also won uh Best Original Screenplay to uh director and screenwriter Ryan Kugler, and Frankenstein won a couple of awards, including Best Costume and Makeup. So it's a great time to be a horror fan. And let's hope that 2026 um has that kind of quality in it. That's what I'm hoping for. All right. So, podcasts and true crime are practically synonymous. I mean, how many true crime podcasts are there? Well, today we are talking about the movies inspired by one of the most infamous true crime cases of all time, and I'm talking about the Jack the Ripper murders. It's been the subject of countless films, very few of which have actually any bearing on the real case or have any sort of authenticity whatsoever. Uh, but today what we're gonna do is we're gonna do kind of a survey of Jack the Ripper movies, and then I've picked two that you could watch as a double feature, two that I think are among the very best uh Jack the Ripper films. And we'll talk about them as we go along. But first, I just want to say that, you know, I say that I'm an actor, and um about 25 years ago, my son was born. And, you know, for the most part, I was being a dad, you know, taking care of a newborn and uh a little kid, and was wondering how I could get back into acting. So I decided to write a show for myself. And the subject I chose was Jack the Ripper. Uh, and so I wrote a one-man show where I played a bunch of different characters, real characters, that uh people who lived during that time and who were part of the case itself. Uh my wife, who is a theater director, Brooke, she uh directed the show, and she also was really instrumental in shaping the script. But to do that, I read, I don't know, maybe 10 books about the Jack the Ripper case. Some of them are just straight histories, this is what happened, uh history written by historians, so they have a lot of uh, you know, the facts are checked and everything. But then a lot of them sort of begin with all the facts and then say, but this is who Jack the Ripper was, because we don't know. No one ever caught the murderer, you know, there there's no definite this is Jack the Ripper. Uh but at that time it was sort of a cottage industry that, you know, there would be a book come out every so often that sort of said, no, this is the Jack the Ripper, I have figured out who the suspect is. So I sort of began to really get interested um in the subject itself. And and did the show. I've done the show, which is called Jack countless times uh all over the US and even have performed it in the in the UK. So before we get into the movies, I just want to kind of give you a little bit of background about Jack the Ripper and why I think it was it is such a uh a story and a series of crimes that have stuck with us for almost 140 years now. So Jack the Ripper is the name given a serial killer who was around during the autumn of 1888 in London, Victorian London, in a part of the east end of London called Whitechapel, primarily in Whitechapel. And this was a very, very impoverished place. In fact, the author Jack London spent some time there a few years after the Ripper murders, and then he wrote a book about his time living there called The Abyss. You know, there were many people on the streets, uh, children on the streets. It was a very, very sad place. So the killer known as Jack the Ripper killed at least five victims, five canonical victims. Some people argue for more, some people possibly argue for less, but generally five, starting in August of 1888, and the last one is in November. So a couple of reasons I think this case lingers. Uh number one is the atmosphere itself. I mean, this is 1888. In 1887, the first Sherlock Holmes story was published in the Strand magazine. So we have this image of Victorian London, the fog-shrouded streets, the cobblestones. And when we think of Jack the Ripper, we think of a gentleman in an opera cape and a top hat with a cane and maybe a doctor's bag walking through the streets. And I think a lot of that image, imagery, has come from films. I don't think any of that is true. So it it has that atmosphere, the the uh the Victorian London aesthetic, you know, if you will. There were many social issues that the crimes brought out. The plight of women. Jack the Ripper's victims were, you know, five women and they were all what we would now call sex workers, but they had to live work on the street because their lives before then had been pretty tragic and pretty horrible. Um and so by studying the victims, we learned something about what it was like for all women at that time. At the same time, the penny press was exploding in London. And so there were so many newspapers, and these murders were business. And so as a result, you know, uh uh people hawking the newspaper on the street corners, you know, were shouting another Ripper murder. I mean, it became a sensation because the press needed it to be a sensation because they wanted to sell papers. Uh another thing that happened is there are various letters that were written to the police and the press, purportedly from the killer, purportedly from Jack the Ripper. In fact, that's where the name came from, Jack the Ripper, from one of those letters. Writing letters to the press became a thing, a way of trolling. And there's an entire book uh that I read about the letters of Jack the Ripper, in which it says that people all over the country would write letters to the press pretending to be Jack the Ripper, you know, and make up these, you know, macabre, morbid sort of uh uh letters. And some of them were arrested and prosecuted and did jail time for for that. There are a couple of these letters that people are like, hmm, maybe that was from the actual murderer, but many people who study this, and they're called riperologists, are are pretty convinced that none of the letters actually came from the killer. But anyway, uh the police had it tough then. You know, the uh uh forensics were long way off, and even uh criminal detection methods were still kind of being developed. So for them to catch the killer, they almost had to catch him in the act itself. Uh so it was incredibly difficult, you know, and and the East End of London, Whitechapel, was teeming with people, from what I've read. So still no one knows who did this. And you know, every so often a new suspect comes up, and there are some crazy suspects, let me just say that. Uh there is a book that purports that Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, was Jack the Ripper. At the time, people thought an actor, who I believe his name was Richard Mansfield, who was performing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in a theater in London, and people thought, oh my gosh, he's so good at changing into Mr. Hyde, he must be the murderer. So, you know, uh, you know, if you were alive in Victorian London and male, or not even have to be male, really, because there is a whole Jilder Ripper theory, you probably have become a suspect at some point. However, I did just read that last year some scientists tested some DNA from, I believe, an apron from one of the victims and uh matched it to a person, uh, Aaron Kosminsky, who is often mentioned as a suspect. Uh however, you know, there are other scientists who are very critical of the methods uh and say there's not enough data from that and there's data missing, et cetera, et cetera. So the search goes on for who is Jack the Ripper. I will say if you're interested in the facts of the story, probably the best book to read is The Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Philip Sugden. It is the very first one I read, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. So a case like that is gonna spawn a lot of films. So let's kind of do a survey of Jack the Ripper movies up to today. So we're going to start with uh from 1927, from the silent era, The Lodger, a story of the London Fog, which was the third film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Um as I said, The Lodger is um well, the Lodger is a book uh that was written, I believe, in the 1910s. And it's a story about um uh a family home who rents their rooms, and they have one room rented to a very quiet, unassuming man who they believe might be a murderer. And in the uh The Lodger from 1927, uh it is a uh a killer who is stalking women with blonde hair who is called the Avenger. Uh for that's 1927, uh, the Hitchcock film, which you uh can stream um on uh Criterion Channel. It's also on HBO Max, and Criterion also has a Blu-ray of that. That film was remade in 1944, uh, directed by John Brahm, who directed uh quite a few well-known British film nours, including Hangover Square and The Locket.

SPEAKER_05 10:32

Yours is a beauty which could destroy a Lynn.

SPEAKER_03 10:35

Is that a compliment?

SPEAKER_05 10:37

It could destroy you. Have you thought of that?

SPEAKER_03 10:40

That's a very queer thing to say, and besides, I don't think I'm beautiful at all. I uh take a great deal of trouble to give that impression, though.

SPEAKER_05 10:48

It is one thing if a woman is beautiful merely for herself, but when she exhibits the loveliness of her body upon the stage.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

Same story, uh, Victorian era London, um family home. You know, a couple have rented rooms to someone they think might be uh Jack the Ripper, and uh that stars Merle Auberon, George Sanders, and Laird Krieger. Laird Krieger, who is, I think, well known to Film Noir fans as um uh as an actor in a lot of those films and plays a uh terrific, uh terrific villain. Uh there's even a 21st-century film called Lodger, I think it's from 2009, uh, that takes place in L.A. where uh police uh are assuming that someone is copying Jack the Ripper. Uh so the Lodger is a well-known uh Jack the Ripper-esque story. Now we're going to move up to the 50s, and in 1959 we get a film that deals with the actual murderer himself, and it is appropriately called Jack the Ripper.

SPEAKER_06 11:56

Here at last, the amazing authentic story of Jack the Ripper, the unknown killer whose mass murders shocked the world. The actual cases in the actual setting. London, a city torn apart by fear and hate, as the mob humbled for the blood of the human monster Scotland Yard could never catch.

SPEAKER_07 12:15

Every lunatic and sensation seeker in London has given himself up as Jack the Ripper.

SPEAKER_06 12:21

Stupid me.

SPEAKER_07 12:22

I didn't christen him, sir, but the one who did knew what he was talking about. Have you ever seen any of his victims?

SPEAKER_02 12:30

So Jack the Ripper came out in 1959. It is directed by Monty Berman and Robert S. Baker to uh British directors. The script was written by uh Hammer scribe, Jimmy Sangster, who wrote The Curse of Frankenstein, uh Dracula, and a lot of the early Hammers as well. Jack the Ripper is an interesting film. It has a lot of great atmosphere. Um, you get the kind of the traditional like the cobblestone streets and you know, uh sort of uh street musicians playing and everything. Uh and it opens with a uh a woman who is one of the victims who at uh at the at the beginning is not named, and she sort of staggers through the streets, she's drunk, and she encounters the killer who we do not see his face, and he is looking for someone named Mary Clark. Mary Clark. Mary Clark, are you Mary Clark? And he has this incredibly creepy voice. Um and so we see him kill her. So Jack the Ripper, this this this one from 1959 is is pretty good. I mean, um it it's a little bit Americanized because they hired uh an actor, Lee Patterson, who's actually Canadian, uh, to be in it. But he um in the first scene with him, he's in a pub, and some of the locals think that he might be Jack the Ripper, and so we have sort of a uh pub brawl. Uh Lee Patterson has got a 50s pompadour, so he seems a little out of place, although he's a pretty likable actor. Uh some other folks in that you might be familiar with. Eddie Byrne, Eddie Byrne, who was in uh Hammers the Mummy, uh, plays the uh Inspector O'Neill, sort of in in charge of all this. So Jack the Ripper was recently just re-released uh by Severin uh Blu-ray on 4K with extensive extras. And uh there are two different versions of this film. There's a U.S. and a UK cut and an international one. I believe the international one has some gore and some nudity in it. So it's it was it was kind of pushing boundaries a little bit, Jack the Ripper. Um that's from 1959. You know, you have to uh admit that, as I said earlier, that Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper just totally go hand in hand. And so it's at some point uh that story is going to happen, and it does in 1965 with A Study in Terror. Uh A Study in Terror is directed by uh James Hill, a British film and uh TV director, who uh is probably best known for making the movie Born Free. Uh here John Neville plays Sherlock Holmes, British actor John Neville, Donald Houston plays uh Watson. Uh I have not seen Study Terror. It's it's a little tough to find. Uh I believe there is a DVD of it, but I am not aware, and they're Region II Blu-rays, but I'm not aware of uh anywhere that it's streaming right now. But as far as I know, that is the first time we have Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper uh in a uh in a film together. Uh moving on to the 1970s, so one of the most beloved uh films with Jack the Ripper as a character is Time After Time from 1979, which is directed by Nicholas Mayer. Mayer is best known for writing the Sherlock Holmes pastiche, the 7% solution. Um as a director, he also directed Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan. But anyway, in Time After Time, uh Jack the Ripper uh is a character. And in the Victorian age, he gets in a time machine created by the writer H.G. Wells. And he escapes into modern-day 1979 San Francisco, and Wells goes after him.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

But Wells has not come here as a tourist. His visit will be somewhat more dangerous. For he is pursuing Jack the Ripper, a villain who has eluded his fate by escaping into time.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Ninety years ago, I was a freak. Today I'm an amateur.

SPEAKER_02 16:48

It's a terrific movie, uh, and people absolutely love Time After Time. Malcolm McDowell from Clockwork Orange Fain plays Wells, and David Warner plays the Ripper. Mary Steenbergen is um, I believe, uh Wells' romantic interest in that film. But uh Time After Time is, as I said, completely beloved, and it's it is streaming, and there's a Blu-ray from Warner Archive if you're interested. In the 80s, there was a Jack the Ripper TV miniseries that starred Michael Cain as Inspector Aberline, who is a real um person from that time, and Jane Seymour was in that also. It was a two-part miniseries, I believe, and it's streaming on Tubi, and there's also a DVD. And that brings us to the most recent sort of period Jack the Ripper film, uh, and it is uh From Hell.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

Inspector, I know your reputation for making brilliant guesses that turn out to be right. Someone told me you claimed to dream the answers.

SPEAKER_08 17:54

Sometime this evening a bag tale was marked as George Yellow. That doesn't sound much out of the ordinary. It was the way she was done, Inspector. It was the way that she was done that cries out for a man of your talent. He can foresee the victims.

SPEAKER_03 18:11

Your vision's about me.

SPEAKER_02 18:14

Directed by uh the Hughes brothers, the Hughes brothers who gave us the movie's Dead Presidents and Menace to Society, From Hell is based on a graphic novel by Alan Moore. Moore is best known for the graphic novels of The Watchmen. Um, and I've read uh the graphic novel From Hell, and it's very good. In the film, Johnny Depp plays Inspector Aberline, and Heather Graham, the American actress, plays Mary Kelly, who's Jack the Ripper's canonical final victim. Um there's a lot of great period detail in this. Um I personally find this movie a little disappointing because of the casting of the two leads, but you can judge for yourself, because it is streaming everywhere, and there there is a Blu-ray. So that's kind of a look at some of the key Jack the Ripper films uh throughout the years. I'm not going to talk in a little bit more in detail about two I think you should you should watch. So the first one is from my beloved British Hammer Studios. Now it is amazing that once Hammer started doing classic horror films back in 1958, it took them until the 70s to touch Jack the Ripper. Stunning. And they did it twice. Once with Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, which is sort of a mashup of every Victorian horror story you can think of. First of all, it's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, that story, except with uh uh a female variant. And then you've got also Birkin Hare, uh, the body snatchers, pushed into that. And in Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, Jekyll, who's played by Ralph Bates, sort of becomes Jack the Ripper because he needs something from young women for his experiments, so that's why he is going and killing women on the streets in the east end of London. But Hammer's one true Ripper film is from 1971, and it's Hands of the Ripper.

SPEAKER_10 20:17

Between the 2nd of April, 1888 and September the 17th, 1889, a dreadful fear descended over the streets of London. No one who saw that face leave. Except one small child whom he spared. Because she was his own flesh and blood.

SPEAKER_03 20:36

There was another murder. They're looking for Jack the Ripper. It's you.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

This is a terrific later hammer film, I think. Um it's got a lot going for it. So it opens with a scene in 1888, and you see the typical guy with the top hat and the opera clique cloak coming back to his home where his wife and his little blonde child, a little baby girl, uh, is in her crib, and he is sort of, you never see the guy's face, but he's sort of harried and hurried, and his wife's saying, Oh my god, there was another ripper murder tonight. And then he puts his hand on her on her shoulder, and you see it's covered in blood. And the wife looks up at her husband and goes, Oh my god, you're Jack the Ripper. Well, you can imagine things do not end well for the wife at that point, with the little girl looking on the whole time. So now we jump forward in time a little bit to a seance. And we see all of these people sitting around as a phony medium tries to summon from someone from the spirit world. Uh, and the someone from the spirit world is given voice, voice by a young woman named Anna, who is behind a curtain. Well, one of the people there at the seance is uh Dr. John Pritchard. Uh Pritchard is a psychotherapist, an analyst, uh, played by Eric Porter. And he finds Anna behind the curtain. And they sort of get to know each other briefly. And then I don't want to give too much away about what happens in this plot, but let's just suffice it to say that Anna has very violent tendencies. In fact, the medium is so frustrated with her being found by one of the guests at her seance that she sort of decides to sell Anna to this gross man. And Anna doesn't take a wall to that, let's just say. So the plot becomes Pritchard trying to psychoanalyze Anna, trying to find out why she is like she is, trying to stop her from continuing these acts of violence. And it's a Hammer movie, so things do get worse. It's directed by Peter Sasdy, and Sasdy directed one of my favorite of the Dracula sequels from Hammer, Taste the Blood of Dracula, which is interesting to me because it has a good story, and Hands of the Ripper is in the same league, I think. It's also sort of a slasher movie in a way, because there are some really nicely staged murder set pieces of Anna's handiwork, and it has a terrific finale that takes place in St. Paul's Whispering Gallery, the in St. Paul's Cathedral in London. If you've never been to the Whispering Gallery, it's sort of a circular seating area where if you the way it's designed, if you sit on one side and whisper or murmur, someone on the other's total other side can hear what you're saying. Now, Hammer did not actually shoot inside St. Paul's, they recreated it, but it is a terrific finale. I will say there one thing about this film, there is something towards the end of the film that stretches credibility a bit for some people, but I got a feeling that if you've gone with it up to that point, you're going to stick with it. But Hands of the Ripper is uh really quite wonderful. It's got a great cast. Uh Pritchard is played by uh Eric Porter, who is, you know, again, one of those actors, British actors, who is just incredibly solid. Maybe you haven't heard of him. Probably best known. He's also in um the film Day of the Jackal. Um and I'm just also checking here. Also played uh Moriarty, Professor Moriarty, in the 1980s uh BBC television Sherlock Holmes uh with Jeremy Brett. So he's a terrific actor. Anna or Anna is played by uh Angrid Rees. So it's a uh a really good cast, it looks beautiful, uh Gothic element is there, even though it's a little bit later than the Victorian period, is terrific. And it's again works as sort of a proto-slasher because uh Anna's violent outbursts, and uh I won't I won't go into too much detail as to why she's doing what she's doing. Uh you can probably figure it out pretty quickly. It's a movie that looks, looks great and kind of harkens back to hammer films from the past, from their glory days. So that's the first one I would start with if we're going with chronological order, 1971's Hands of the Ripper. Now, as I said earlier, Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper work absolutely perfectly together. And for my money, the best Holmes Ripper film is from 1979, and it's Murder by Decree.

SPEAKER_09 25:34

London, 1888. The fogs of autumn have settled in. Silence hovers over the city. Not the silence of night, but the silence of fear and murder. Murder by decree. Something stalks the streets. Something possessed of animal cunning and fury, something nameless and incomprehensible. Out of the vortex of murder spins an ever-spiraling web of bizarre clues. Only one man can unravel that web. That man is Sherlock Holmes.

SPEAKER_02 26:16

So murder by decree begins with this lovely shot, like sort of uh, you know, aerial shot of Victorian London. And so you see it's dark, it's kind of dirty looking. It's and then we go down to street level, and uh the period detail in this film is really nice too. I mean, uh you go back to 1959's Jack the Ripper, and they they get the fog and everything, you know, the pretty well, but not as good as, say, Hammer does it uh in in their films and in this one. This is this is, I think, hammer level of period detail. And we get to the street level, um, it's quiet, it's dark, and we see this dark coach moving in slow motion, you know, driven by a man dressed completely in black whose face is covered by a black mask. It's incredibly ominous. And then we cut to um a theater where we're waiting for the curtain. I'm not sure whether it's a concert or maybe uh opera, I'm not sure. And uh Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, played by Christopher Plummer and James Mason, respectively, and I'll have much more to say about them a little later, uh, are waiting for the curtain start. The curtain has been held because the uh Prince of Wales is coming to the uh the show this evening. And so he's late. So everybody's waiting for him. So finally, Prince Albert shows up, and there's a smattering of applause, and then from the upper gallery, from the cheap seats, he begins to get booed and jeered. Well, this offends Watson's patriotic sensibilities. I mean, in the books, Watson is a uh former military man, and so he starts a chant of God save his Royal Highness, and that sort of gets more of the crowd to to applaud, and they sort of override the the boos and the jeers coming from the upper balcony from the you know the lower class people, right? That socioeconomic dichotomy there in that one scene is really important for this whole story and also for the character development of um of uh Watson and and Holmes. Um so pretty soon after that, uh Holmes is of course called in to help the uh Scotland Yard um investigate the Ripper murders. Uh Inspector Lestrade, Holmes's nemesis, who is always ten steps behind the great detective, uh brings him in, and then we're off to the races. So this film has so much going for it. It I think it skews a bit more realistic than other Jack the Ripper uh movies. Uh it it does take one of the popular theories about who Jack the Ripper was and runs with it. Um and a few of the movies that I've talked about do that. I I I personally think the the I'm not going to go into the what the theory is, because you need to see the movie to find that out. And if you don't know, it it will be a terrific surprise at the end. I I don't think this is a a believable theory, uh frankly, but it really works for a movie. Um there is such great camaraderie between Christopher Plummer and James Mason in this film. I if you don't know um these these two actors, well, and you um who doesn't know Christopher Plummer? He's probably best known as Captain Bontrap in in the sound of music. Uh he is the patriarch in Knives Out, the recent murder mystery from Ryan Johnson. Uh he is a consummate actor, and he's really good Holmes here. He he's his Holmes SKU is a little more humane, I think, maybe than uh perhaps if you've seen Benedict Cumberpatch uh in Sherlock or maybe Jeremy Brett in the 80s TV series. Uh but he's he's a terrific, terrific Holmes. James Mason, who plays Watson, is a little bit older than the typical Watson, but I think Plummer is a little bit older than the typical Holmes as well. And James Mason is the British actor with a velvet voice. Uh he's probably best known as uh he was Captain Nemo in the 20,000 Leagues Into the Sea movie. He's the villain in North by Northwest, and he's uh Humbert Humber in uh the film Lolita. So they're terrific together. There is one extremely charming scene where uh James Mason, as Watson, is trying to skewer a single green pea on his plate.

SPEAKER_07 30:53

What an what are you doing?

SPEAKER_05 30:56

I'm trying to corner the last pea on my plate.

SPEAKER_02 31:01

And James Mason makes that into a scene that is memorable, which says a lot for him as an actor. That's just the tip of the iceberg in who is in this movie. Uh some really wonderful actors, great British actors like David Hemmings. Uh, you've got Anthony Quayle, John Gilgood is in this movie, uh, the absolutely wonderful Frank Finlay is Inspector Lestrade. Finlay is uh in Richard Lester's Three Musketeers and Four Musketeers. He's also Ben Helsing in the 1970s BBC Dracula that starred Louis Jourdain. Uh Jean-Vieve Bougeau plays Annie Crook. Now, Annie, this character is uh in uh in Murder by Decree, and I like this is based on a real person, um, at least in this particular Jack the Ripper theory that knows all the victims. And so somehow she is key. And uh when Holmes meets her, she's in a mental hospital. Um a terrific role for Jean-Vievier Bougeot. And Donald Sutherland, the great Donald Sutherland, is playing a psychic named Robert Lees, who's a real person who claims to have seen the Ripper uh at his uh at his work. So Murder by Decree, the one thing I will say about it, you might look at it and go, hmm, this is directed by Bob Clark. Well who's Bob Clark? Well, Bob Clark is probably best known for most people for having been the director of the 1970s sex comedy Porkies, which of course spawned several sequels. He's also the director of a movie that if you're in the United States around Christmas time, you can't escape a Christmas story. Yeah, Bob Clark gave us both of those movies. But he also gave us the uh early slasher film Black Christmas from 1974, which is a film that is beloved by horror fans. So this is not the first time he has sort of um put his toe in the in the horror genre. And I definitely think that murder by decree qualifies, no question, as horror. Hands with the Ripper is definitely a horror movie. You know, it's uh it's a practically a slasher movie. But Murder by Decree, the way it's staged, um, you know, some of the depictions of the killings and everything, and just the the atmosphere of dread and fear that it successfully conjures really to me makes it a horror movie. So Murder by Decree is uh is readily available. I believe there's uh even a 4K now, if I'm not mistaken, from uh Kino Lorber. Uh and it's you can also stream it on Tubi, uh, I believe. So so many great options here with uh with Jack the Ripper films, but for me, I would go with Hands of the Ripper from 1971 uh from Hammer and from 1979, Murder by Decree. Uh certainly Hands of the Ripper falls into uh the line of Jack the Ripper movies that have nothing really to do with the actual murders. Uh, if you're interested in that, I would suggest reading a book. Uh but Murder by Decree does, I think, give you a little more atmosphere that that that of what it might have been like. I would say closer than From Hell, uh, which is the 2001 film uh with Johnny Depp and Heather Graham. All right, that's all we have for you today. Hey, we'd love it if you'd follow us on our social media at Friday Night Frights Podcast on Instagram. Uh we're also on Blue Sky, Friday Night Frights Podcast. Uh, you know, we have this is our episode 12. We have 11 more episodes. And as I mentioned earlier, uh about the Oscars and horror doing so well. We have uh a review of Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, one of our episodes, as well as a review of Ryan Kugler's Sinners, which is a terrific vampire movie. If you've not seen Sinners, do it now. Go see Frankenstein now. So until next time, if I were you, I would avoid the foggy streets of London after midnight.

SPEAKER_04 35:25

There's a man who walked the streets of London leave at night. With a little black bag that's also tight. He's got a big black hole cannon down his back. With the black fellows beat, joining the blood.