28 March 2024
Jack the Ripper (1976)
90 min.
Directed by Jess Franco.
With Klaus Kinski, Josephine Chaplin, Andreas Mankopff, Herbert Fux, Lina Romay, Ursula von Wiese.
A gory, visceral imagining of the infamous Jack the Ripper legend courtesy of director Jess Franco.

This one stars Kinski as the uncontrollable madman.

Kinski is Jack, a London doctor by day, nutcase by night who seeks out the city's prostitutes and hacks them up.

(Seems he's still got unresolved anger from his mother being a street walker, so he's taking it out on any lady of the night he comes in contact with!)

With a baffled Scotland Yard hopelessly confused about the case, the chief Inspector's girlfriend (lovely Josephine Chaplin) steps in to bait the bloody killer in hopes of trapping him once and for all.

All the red excess here is fun, the screen performances are game (particularly Kinski who clearly revels in these types of outings).

But undone by bad dubbing and haphazard pacing, so certainly it's not the definitive telling of the 19th century's most notable Whitechapel serial killer.

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