From Hell | Through the Shattered Lens

Who was Jack the Ripper?

That’s a question that people have been asking for 129 years. Arguably the world’s first famous serial killer, Jack the Ripper killed at least five prostitutes in the Whitechapel section of London. Some claim that he killed as many as twenty. He may have also written several taunting letters to the police. Again, some say that the letters are authentic and some say that they were hoaxes. Hell, there’s even some people who say that Jack the Ripper himself is a myth and the five murders attributed to him were actually five unconnected crimes. It was speculated that Jack the Ripper was a butcher, a surgeon, or maybe a midwife. Just as suddenly as the murders began, they ended. The London police claimed that he had committed suicide by jumping into the Thames. Few people believed them then and even less now.

The reason that there is so much uncertainty is because Jack the Ripper was never caught. He was never identified. There were stories of confessions, though many of them came from the mentally infirm or they were heard by someone who was a friend of someone who claimed to be the Butcher of Whitechapel. At one point, there was even a claim that Jack’s diary had been found.

As a horror fan, a true crime fanatic, and a lover of history, I’ve read quite a few theories about who Jack the Ripper was. Nearly every prominent (or, at the very least, remembered) Victorian has been accused of having been Jack the Ripper. Oscar Wilde has been accused of hiding a confession in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Various members of the Royal Family have been fingered as the culprit. Even Lewis Carroll could not escape accusation. The true crime author Patricia Cornwell wrote an entire book where she (wrongly) accused the painter Walter Sickert. Cornwell’s case could basically be summed up as follows: “Walter Sicket’s paintings were weird. Walter Sickert must be Jack the Ripper.” Apparently, she managed to destroy one of Sickert’s paintings while looking for clues.

The truth of the matter is that Jack the Ripper was probably some guy who no one has ever heard of, most probably one of the unknown men who lived and worked in the shadows of Whitechapel. For all the talk of Jack being a doctor, it can be argued that the surgical precision of his murders has been overstated. He didn’t get away with murder because he was particularly clever. Instead, he got away with it because, in 1888, even fingerprinting was considered to be a radical science.

But, honestly, that’s not very intriguing. For those of us who have researched the case, it’s far more interesting to speculate that Jack the Ripper was either a famous person or that the murders were all the result of a huge conspiracy.

That’s certainly the appeal of From Hell, the 2001 film from The Hughes Brothers. Making the same basic case as Bob Clark’s Murder By Decree, From Hell argues that the Jack the Ripper murders were the result of a royal conspiracy. In reality, that theory has been discredited but it certainly is the most cinematic of all the possibilities.

And, speaking of cinematic, it must be said that From Hell is very stylish movie. Though the title comes from one of Jack the Ripper’s letters, From Hell also could just as easily be used to describe the film’s vision of Whitechapel. Whitechapel is full of shadows and secrets and the blood flows freely. If Mary Kelly (Heather Graham) isn’t killed by Jack the Ripper, it’s just as likely she’ll be killed by one of her clients. Even as the murders are committed, life and business in Whitechapel goes on. What other choice is there? It’s either risk being killed or starve.

It falls to Frederick Abberline (Johnny Depp) to solve the murders. The real-life Abberline was an almost legendary detective who lived for decades after the final Jack the Ripper murder. The movie’s Abberline is an opium addict who always seems to be on the verge of a breakdown. When he and Mary Kelly fall in love, you’re not really sure if it’s something to be happy about. Abberline seems just as likely to go crazy as everyone else.

From Hell is an uneven and somewhat overlong movie but I like it. Heather Graham and Johnny Depp give somewhat odd performances but the oddness fits right in with the Hughes Brothers’s vision of a world that’s been turned permanently upside down. It’s a movie that’s full of atmosphere and the story is intriguing even if it’s never exactly convincing. For obvious reasons, I can’t reveal who plays Jack the Ripper but I will say that he gives a very good performance. When he says that, “One day, men will look back and say that I gave birth to the 20th century,” you believe him.

A week ago, I had a very odd dream, one that was more disturbing than frightening. I saw myself walking down a fog-covered street in London. Simply by the way I was dressed and the distant sounds of horses crossing cobblestone streets, I knew that this was towards the end of the 19th century. I walked down the street, aware that there were people near me who I could hear but couldn’t see because of the thick fog. Finally, I reached a shabby-looking boarding house. As I watched myself starting to open the front door, I realized that, in my dream, I was Mary Kelley, the final victim of Jack the Ripper. And, by stepping into that boarding house, I was heading towards my own death. That’s when I woke up.

Over on my twitter profile, I describe myself as being a “sweet little thing with morbid thoughts.” I guess my fascination with the mystery of Jack the Ripper is an example of those morbid thoughts. Out of all of the Ripper’s victims, Mary Kelley has always been the one that I’ve felt “closest” to. She was murdered on November 9th, 1888. I was born on November 9th, 1985. Like me, she was a fallen Irish Catholic. Like me, she had red hair. While the other Ripper victims were all in their 40s, Kelley was only 25 years old and, for the longest time, I believed I was destined to die between my 25th and 26th birthdays. (I’m 25 years old so hopefully, that was just my imagination working overtime.) I think what truly made Kelly’s murder stand out in my mind is that she was killed in her own room, probably attacked while she was either asleep or passed out. Being attacked while asleep has always been one of my phobias, one of the reasons why I’m often happier with insomnia than sleep.

Still, until my dream, I had given much thought to Jack the Ripper or any of his victims for quite some time. After the dream, I ordered a copy of The Jack The Ripper Encyclopedia from Amazon and then I rewatched my personal favorite of all the Jack the Ripper films, Bob Clark’s Murder By Decree.

Released in 1979, Murder by Decree mixes the facts of the Ripper case and the fictional characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson with the same Royal Conspiracy theory that lies at the heart of the better known film From Hell. Unlike From Hell, Murder By Decree is an almost bloodless film. Instead of emphasizing the savagery of the Ripper murders, Clark chose to focus on creating an oppresively grim and paranoid atmosphere. Whether it’s the ominous image of the Ripper’s carriage slowly moving through the London fog or Holmes’ visit to a nightmarish insane asylum, Clark’s London is a grim and forbidding dreamscape that almost seems to have sprung from some lost example of German expressionism.

Into this dark and oppressive atmosphere, Murder By Decree drops the familiar and comforting characters of Holmes and Watson (played, respectively, by Christopher Plummer and James Mason). I have to admit that I’ve never actually been able to bring myself to read any of the Holmes stories (though I’ve tried) but the characters are both so iconic that I feel as if I had. Both Holmes and Jack the Ripper are characters that everyone feels they knew about even if they’re not sure when they first heard of them. Though this might sound rather gimmicky to have these two characters meet, a good deal of the film’s strength comes from the contrast between the nostalgic innocence of Holmes and Watson and the harsh reality of Jack the Ripper’s London. By the end of the film, when Holmes’ voice cracks as he describes the conspiracy behind the Ripper movies, he’s gone from being an icon to being a stand-in for everyone who has ever been disillusioned by what they previously believed in.

Plummer makes for a surprisingly physical Holmes but he does a good job with the role, bringing a surprising vulnerability to the detective. James Mason, meanwhile, makes for a perfect sidekick and he and Plummer both have the type of chemistry that Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law could only dream about. The rest of the cast is made up of familiar English and Canadian character actors and they all give memorable performances. Donald Sutherland is excellent as a haunted psychic but my favorite supporting performance probably comes from David Hemmings who plays a shadowy police inspector. This is because every time I see Hemmings on-screen, I’m reminded of Dario Argento’s Deep Red.

If I do have any issues with this film, it’s that it promotes the long discredited Royal/Masonic Conspiracy as a solution. (This theory will be familiar to anyone who has seen or read From Hell.) However, of all the various solutions that have been offered up in an attempt to explain and understand Jack the Ripper, the whole political conspiracy angle is undoubtedly the most cinematic and Clark makes good use of it here. This is a film in which a growing sense of paranoia and unease seems to pervasively fill every scene just as surely as the London fog. The viewer, in the end, is thankful to actually have the familiar characters of Holmes and Watson to identify with because otherwise, the worldview of Murder By Decree is almost unbearably dark.

By the way, the role of Mary Kelley in this film is played by a fellow redhead, the Canadian actress Susan Clark who tended to show up in a lot of low-budget, Canadian movies in the 70s. Though she doesn’t have many scenes, she is sympathetic presence and Plummer’s reaction to his inability to save her from Jack the Ripper is a scene that has haunted me since the first time I watched this movie and every time since.