"It's a nasty night innit?"

JACK THE RIPPER (1959)

THE FIEND (1972)

Unlike the documented slayings, the controversial Tempean production JACK THE RIPPER features strangulation followed with knifings that are almost an afterthought.

DIRECTED by renowned producers Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman (who also helmed THE HELLFIRE CLUB), JACK THE RIPPER belongs to a quartet of British chillers - HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM, PEEPING TOM, CIRCUS OF HORRORS - that pushed the bar on sadism. Both the Mercy Hospital for Women, and the Whitechapel police, are laden with the archetypal angry mob as a black-clad figure with a surgical bag is haunting the East End, asking his victims "Are you Mary Clark?" Inspector O'Neill (Eddie Byrne) welcomes a visit from his friend, NYPD detective Sam Lowry (Lee Patterson), who becomes attracted to Anne Ford (Betty McDowall). While the leading red herrings are Ford's guardian Dr Tranter (John Le Mesurier) and hunchbacked orderly Louis (Endre Muller), this Saucy Jack turns out to be Sir David Rogers (Ewan Solon), who finally corners and kills Clark (Barbara Burke) as revenge for the suicide of his son, who found out his lover was a prostitute.

Loosely based on Leonard Matters' book The Mystery of Jack the Ripper and scripted by Jimmy Sangster, JACK THE RIPPER was given an aggressive promotional campaign in the States - which even included a Steve Allen novelty single - and the American version disposes of Stanley Black's score and also has a colour insert of oozing blood for Rogers' lift squashing. A spiced-up continental version adds four minutes to the running time, and was particularly popular in France. Here the murders had extended knife thrusts and exposed breasts, with the nudity quota increased by a showgirl changing room. But the most salacious difference was a private sequence where champagne is poured over Maggie (Dorinda Stevens)'s chest.

Hungarian actor Endre Muller adds monster value to this particular JACK THE RIPPER backstory.

The timing of the "Sadistic quartet" is significant. Between 1957 and 1960, Hammer had injected a large amount of hubris into the British film industry despite the best efforts of the censors. Consequently, the office of John Trevelyan could not be seen to allow one company to flourish within the new boom, even when producers were prepared to go the extra mile on gore and nudity. Yet JACK THE RIPPER was still involved in a prolonged set of altercations, the first version of the script described by a BBFC examiner as "even the title [is] too full of sordid and sadistic association to be acceptable as a film." After a meeting with Trevelyan himself the BBFC softened their stance, Berman cleverly turning up to the appointment with Sangster himself as a bargaining clip after the board's reservations on THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. This lead to a battle over cuts which give the picture a feverish edge, though Trevelyan's preference for shadow and fog is also entertained.

Matters and his source publication are an interesting topic in itself. An Adelaide-born journalist who fought in the Second Boer War and became a Labour politician, Matters proposed in a 1926 article that Jack was a doctor whose son had died from syphilis caught from Marie Kelly; dubbed "Dr Stanley," he committed the murders in revenge and then fled to Argentina (where the author had been editor of the Buenos Aires Herald). The Mystery of Jack the Ripper was an expansion of this, an alleged deathbed confession which stumbles at the first step because Kelly's autopsy found no evidence of sexual disease. Nevertheless this 1929 book was marketed as the first serious study of the Whitechapel murders, and at least has an authentic sense of the locale as all murder sites were then unchanged since 1888.

"Sinner ... Your Evil Shall Destroy You." Tony Beckley and Ann Todd prey for THE FIEND to be removed from their résumé.

A religious fanatic is the serial killer of choice for Robert Hartford-Davis' THE FIEND. The Minister (Patrick Magee) leads a sect called The Brethren, where widow Birdy Wemys (Ann Todd) has become a devoted member, together with her troubled son Kenny (Tony Beckley). The socially inept Kenny - who works as both a security guard and a swimming pool attendant - has been dominated by his mother and the church, and descents to a murder spree of what he deems to be sinful young women (one is picked up in a foyer of a cinema showing the Hammer SCARS OF DRACULA / HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN double bill). Birdy is dependent on insulin banned by The Brethren, and flat-sharing sisters Nurse Brigitte (Madeleine Hinde) and chain-smoking tabloid reporter Paddy Lynch (Suzanna Leigh) are ensnared into this sordid world in an attempt to save the mother and expose the gospel-loving, nonconformist gatherings. 

Hartford-Davis was hardly a neglected auteur, but THE BLACK TORMENT and CORRUPTION were notable entries for British horror. However THE FIEND - released in a cut version as BEWARE MY BRETHREN for United States markets - makes tedious use of puritanical ideology and plays like a tepid Pete Walker production (Kenny's use of a tape recorder to play back the death throes of his victims references another filmic mainstay, PEEPING TOM). But religious extremism was hardly a subject matter on many people's lips in early 1970s Britain, yet the overwrought Magee tries his best to raise the bar before dying on his 'Jesus Saves' cross.