Two Stabs at Jack the Ripper: Arts + Words: Joel Wicklund: CenterstageChicago.com

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Two Stabs at Jack the Ripper

Stalking the cinema for the foreseeable future.

Thursday Mar 31, 2005. By Joel Wicklund

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It doesn't take an expert in psychology to see that we regularly mythologize evil. Maybe it's the way we indulge the dark side in all of us, how we soften real-life madness by restricting it to the confines of fiction, or perhaps a little of both. But there is no denying that it's what we have always done and probably will continue to do. A sadistic, 15th-century prince in what is now Romania was transformed by Bram Stoker into the undead Transylvanian vampire we all know as Count Dracula. The grisly crimes of serial killer Ed Gein inspired elements of "Psycho," "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Silence of the Lambs."

Though history's evildoers are usually dramatically reinvented and renamed, one of the most notorious has not needed much disguising, as his identity was never revealed. Clouded in mystery, Jack the Ripper has fascinated novelists and filmmakers for decades. Preying on prostitutes in London between 1888 and 1891, Jack the Ripper (as the tabloids named him) was officially tied to five murders and unofficially linked to several others. His ghastly killings made for sensational newspaper accounts, speculative fiction and, of course, the movies.

The Ripper has come to the screen, in one form or another, dozens of times. The first significant feature about him was also the first suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. "The Lodger" (1926) is based on a popular 1913 novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes, the source for several other films as well as plays and many radio adaptations. The killer is not called the Ripper, but the Avenger, and he may or may not be the curious stranger renting a room from an older, married couple who live with their beautiful young daughter, a model sporting the blond locks favored by the killer.

This is very early Hitchcock (his third feature as a solo director) and lacks the assuredness of his best-known films, but it remains an engaging thriller nearly 80 years after its premiere, with some striking close-ups, creative camera angles and expressive visual effects. There are scenes that were clearly the inspiration for later Hitchcock favorites, including a brief bathtub teaser that brings to mind a certain famous shower scene.

Hitchcock was at the mercy of a script that lightened up Lowndes' story considerably (the changes either mandated by the studio or actor Ivor Novello, a romantic lead), but the inventive director manages to build to an exciting climax even after our expectations of something more sinister are dashed. Unfortunately, I don't know of a DVD or VHS copy that has a decent print of this silent landmark, which certainly deserves a proper restoration and re-release. For this column, I viewed the film on a Laserlight DVD that paired it with Hitchcock's 1936 film "Sabotage." While "Sabotage" looks decent on this disc, "The Lodger" is barely adequate in quality. It's a scratchy, badly faded print with some night scenes and title cards that are nearly impossible to decipher. But it will have to do until a better copy comes along as the film itself is a must for both Hitchcock fans and Ripper film aficionados.

In 1926, the Ripper was just getting started on a long reign of terror on the silver screen. By the time of 1953's "Man in the Attic," there had already been two more official adaptations of "The Lodger," including a very good 1944 feature of the same name. "Man in the Attic" is quite similar to that version, but it improves upon it in a key area with the very fine performance of Jack Palance as the title character. Playing the lodger initially as painfully shy and proper, Palance manages to engender sympathy for him before making his psychosis evident through sweaty, unstable exchanges. Anybody who knows Palance only as the western heavy in "Shane" or for his colorful, Oscar-winning performance in the comedy "City Slickers" will find his complex work here a revelation.

"Man in the Attic" is a handsomely produced 20th Century Fox crowd-pleaser that somehow manages to work a couple of lively musical numbers into its gothic tale of a deranged killer with an Oedipal complex. But even with the big studio gloss, director Hugo Fregonese keeps the atmosphere heavy with the required elements for any faithful Ripper film: dimly lit cobblestone streets shrouded in fog and ominous shadows emerging from dark alleys. Like other films of the era, it sanitizes the story a bit (with glamorous showgirls taking the place of street hustlers), but where many Ripper films insist on some sort of clear-cut resolution, this one offers a slightly ambiguous ending suggesting the killer's fate, as it was in real life, remains unknown.

VCI's DVD of "Man in the Attic" features a fine print of the movie and a small selection of publicity stills as an extra. And yes, "Andy Griffith" fans, that is Aunt Bea (actress Frances Bavier) as the amusing landlady who takes in the lethal lodger.

There are other worthy Ripper movie for devotees to enjoy, including two fun flicks that put fictional genius detective Sherlock Holmes on the case (1965's "A Study in Terror" and 1979's "Murder by Decree") and Albert and Allen Hughes' intelligent, underrated 2001 adaptation of the acclaimed comic book, "From Hell," with Johnny Depp as a psychic, opium-addicted Scotland Yard investigator on the murderer's trail. Long-since elevated from history to myth, Jack the Ripper will undoubtedly stalk the cinema for the foreseeable future.

Films featured in DVDetours™ may be difficult to find at many video stores but are widely available from some of the online rental services, such as Netflix, Green Cine, QwikFliks and Blockbuster Online. Inventories vary from company to company and DVDetours has no connection to any of these services.

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