Starring Lee Patterson, Eddie Byrne, Betty McDowall, Ewen Solon, John Le Mesurier
Directed by Robert S. Baker & Monty Berman
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
An American detective comes to Whitechapel to help the British police in their efforts to track down Jack The Ripper, and falls for the beautiful ward of a doctor who seems a strong suspect.
Baker & Berman, who produced a number of British thrillers on film before doing the same on television, also photographed and directed this adaptation of the well known Ripper crimes, scripted by Jimmy Sangster. According to the publicity for a recent Blu-ray release from Severin, some shocking scenes of nudity and violence were included in the film's initial release, although they weren't included in the print I viewed on Amazon Prime. At any rate, the movie is much like other filmed versions of the story including The Lodger, The Phantom Fiend, and Man In The Attic, with bureaucrats pushing the police to solve the crimes, the requisite scenes of revealing dancers at a music hall, and murders staged in shadows, albeit with some twists and turns unique to Sangster's script. I liked Eddie Byrne very much as the inspector determined to do his best while being besieged by his superiors and the riffraff of Whitechapel, and Solon and Le Mesurier are sharp and distinguished in character parts as doctors at the hospital where all the Ripper autopsies are performed. The sets are quite good, there are nicely staged crowd scenes, and the music is effective. It's an entertaining picture, not the best of its kind I'd say, but a fine effort regardless.
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