'' (1927),
Alfred Hitchcock's film adaptation of
The Lodger Marie Belloc Lowndes' book
The Lodger has been made into five films:
Alfred Hitchcock's
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927),
The Lodger (1932),
The Lodger (1944),
Man in the Attic (1953) and
The Lodger (2009). Hitchcock decided to cast romantic lead
Ivor Novello as the title character in his version of
The Lodger, with the consequence that the film company,
Gainsborough Pictures, insisted on a re-write to make Novello's character more sympathetic. In a change from the original story, whether the lodger is the killer is no longer left ambivalent at the end. Instead, the lodger's strange behaviour arises because he is a vigilante, trying to catch the real killer. Novello remade the film in 1932 with a more dramatic ending, in which he throttles the killer, who is his demented brother, the "Bosnian Murderer". Novello played both roles, and
Maurice Elvey directed. It was released in an abridged version as
The Phantom Fiend in 1935. The 1944 version dispensed with the ambivalence of the novel and instead casts the lodger, "Slade" played by
Laird Cregar, as the villain "Jack the Ripper". The 1953 version,
Man in the Attic with
Jack Palance as "Slade", covers much the same ground. The 2009 film casts
Simon Baker as "Malcolm Slaight". as the character "Dr John Pritchard" in
Hands of the Ripper. In the film, the kindly Dr Pritchard adopts the Ripper's murderous daughter.
Room to Let (1950) is similar to
The Lodger story but was based on a 1948 radio play by
Margery Allingham. It was one of the first horror pictures made by
Hammer Film Productions.
Valentine Dyall plays the lodger, "Dr. Fell", who has escaped from a lunatic asylum where he has been incarcerated for 16 years since committing the
Whitechapel murders. Hammer released two Ripper-inspired films in 1971. In
Hands of the Ripper, the Ripper's daughter (played by
Angharad Rees) grows up to become a murderess after she sees her father kill her mother. In
Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, Dr. Henry Jekyll transforms into the evil predatory woman Sister Hyde and is also responsible for the Ripper murders. In
Terror in the Wax Museum (1973), a murderer disguises himself as a waxwork of the Ripper.
The Veil episode "Jack the Ripper" (1958) is a made-for-television film introduced by
Boris Karloff, in which a clairvoyant identifies the Ripper as a respectable surgeon whose death has been faked to cover his incarceration in a lunatic asylum. The story's basis was an 1895 newspaper report that
Robert James Lees had used psychic powers to track the Ripper to the home of a London physician.
Jack the Ripper (1959), produced by
Monty Berman and
Robert S. Baker and written by
Jimmy Sangster, is loosely based on
Leonard Matters' theory that the Ripper was an avenging doctor. It borrowed icons from previously successful horror films, such as
Dracula (1958) and
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), by giving the Ripper a costume of a top hat and cape. The plot is a standard "whodunit" with the usual false leads and a denouement in which the least likely character, in this case "Sir David Rogers" played by
Ewen Solon, is revealed as the culprit. As in Matters' book,
The Mystery of Jack the Ripper, Solon's character murders prostitutes to avenge the death of his son. However, Matters used the ploy of the son dying from venereal disease, while the film has him committing suicide on learning his lover is a prostitute. In a reversal of this formula, the German film
Das Ungeheuer von London City (1964), released as
The Monster of London City in 1967, casts the son as the villain with the father as the victim of syphilis. ''
Pandora's Box (Die Büchse der Pandora'') is a 1929 German silent film directed by
Georg Wilhelm Pabst based on
Frank Wedekind's play about a woman, Lulu, played by
Louise Brooks. Her uninhibited lifestyle leads her to walk the streets of London until she meets her end in an encounter with Jack the Ripper, played by
Gustav Diessl. An earlier German film,
Paul Leni's
Waxworks (
Das Wachsfigurenkabinett) from 1924, used a Ripper-style event in one of three dreamed vignettes. The "Jack" character was played by
Werner Krauss, who had achieved enormous success with his portrayal of the evil title character in the influential early horror film
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
A Study in Terror (1965) and
Murder by Decree (1979) both pit
Sherlock Holmes against the Ripper.
A Study in Terror, and its companion novel written by
Ellery Queen, feature the often insane family of the Duke of Shires, with a motive provided by one of his son's becoming enamoured of a prostitute.
Murder by Decree, starring
Christopher Plummer as Sherlock Holmes and
James Mason as Watson, follows the
masonic/royal conspiracy plotline popularised by
Stephen Knight, in which a royal physician is the murderer. Coincidentally, in both movies, character actor
Frank Finlay plays
Inspector Lestrade. In the 1997 film
The Ripper,
Samuel West starred as
Prince Eddy, who was revealed as the Ripper, and the 1999 film
Love Lies Bleeding featured
Paul Rhys,
Emily Raymond and
Faye Dunaway. In 2001, the
Hughes Brothers made the comic book
From Hell into a
film of the same name starring
Johnny Depp as Abberline. The film again sticks to the Knight storyline, though Depp's character exhibits aspects of both Sherlock Holmes (deductive powers, drug addiction) and
Robert Lees (psychic ability, foresight). Peter Barnes' stage play
The Ruling Class (1968) and
its film adaptation (1972) are satires on the British aristocracy that link the Ripper to the British upper class. In an earlier black comedy,
Dr. Strangelove, the antagonist is named General Jack D. Ripper, but the comparison goes no deeper.
Amazon Women on the Moon is a 1987 comedy film that parodies theories of the Ripper's identity by speculating that Jack the Ripper was the
Loch Ness Monster in disguise.
Marcel Carné's
Drôle de Drame (1937) is another parody of the Ripper, featuring
Jean-Louis Barrault as an
East End vegetarian who slaughters butchers in revenge for their slaughter of animals. In
Shanghai Knights (2003), Jack the Ripper attempts to murder the sister of
Jackie Chan's character, only to fall over the bridge as he misses his swing.
Night After Night After Night (1969) was a low-budget production that cast a high court judge (played by
Jack May) as a demented
copycat Ripper who attacks prostitutes in London's
Soho. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s tenuous links with the Ripper case were introduced into films for commercial reasons; sexploitation horror movies
Blade of the Ripper (1970),
The Ripper of Notre Dame (1981) and
The New York Ripper (1982) have little relation to the Ripper beyond the title.
The Ripper of Notre Dame was directed and co-written by
Jesús Franco, whose
Jack the Ripper (1976) stars
Klaus Kinski as a murderous doctor whose mother was a prostitute.
What the Swedish Butler Saw (1975), in which Jack the Ripper hides in a photographic studio, is little more than softcore pornography. Thrillers
Jack the Mangler of London (1973),
Fear City (1984),
Night Ripper (1986) and ''
Jack's Back (1988) received poor reviews, as did the Japanese pink film Assault! Jack the Ripper. Edge of Sanity (1989) is lent "post-Psycho gravitas" by the casting of Anthony Perkins as "Dr Jekyll" and his alter-ego "Jack Hyde", but was still condemned by critics "as a tasteless exercise". The Dolph Lundgren vehicle Jill the Ripper'' (2000) reverses the traditional genders of victims and villains, with a female Ripper and male victims. In
Time After Time (1979), based on
the novel of the same title, Jack escapes in a
time machine to modern-day San Francisco and is pursued by
H. G. Wells. The pursuer was originally slated to be
Robert Louis Stevenson in a link to the author of
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but he was written out in favour of Wells. In
Bridge Across Time (1985), starring
David Hasselhoff, Jack's spirit is transported to Arizona in a cursed stone from
London Bridge. In
The Ripper (1985), his spirit is instead concealed in a cursed ring. The 2002 anime film
Detective Conan: The Phantom of Baker Street has a premise set around a virtual reality video game with life or death stakes where the identity of Jack the Ripper must be uncovered in order to beat the stage of the game. It's revealed that a wealthy tech developer who was involved with the game is actually a direct descendant of Jack the Ripper and committed a murder to cover up the truth about his bloodline, though ultimately he is caught and arrested and Conan and another boy beat Jack the Ripper and survive a train crash in the setting of Charing Cross Station. Released in the same year as
From Hell, and consequently overshadowed by it, were
Ripper and
Bad Karma (re-titled as ''Hell's Gate
). Ripper
centres on psychology student Molly Keller (played by A. J. Cook) who studies serial killers. Her classmates start dying at the hands of a Jack the Ripper copycat, who targets victims with the same initials as the originals. Bad Karma'' is another play on the reincarnation theme with the addition of
Patsy Kensit as the Ripper's female accomplice. In
Red Eye (2005), the antagonist is named Jackson Rippner, a name that the protagonist, Lisa Reisert, suggests is a reference to the serial killer. ==Television==