Jack the Ripper fiction
Encyclopedia
Jack the Ripper
, the notorious serial killer who terrorised Whitechapel in 1888, features in works of fiction
ranging from gothic novels published at the time of the murders to recent motion pictures, televised dramas and computer games.
Important influences on the depiction of the Ripper include Marie Belloc Lowndes' 1913 novel The Lodger, which has been adapted for the stage and film, and Stephen Knight's 1976 work Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, which expanded on a conspiracy theory involving freemasons, royalty and the medical profession that features in many subsequent dramatisations. The literature of the late Victorian era
, including Arthur Conan Doyle
's first Sherlock Holmes
stories and Robert Louis Stevenson
's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, has provided rich inspiration for story-makers who have fused these fictional worlds with the Ripper. The Ripper makes appearances throughout the science fiction
and horror
genres and is internationally recognised as an evil character. The association of the Ripper with death and sex is particularly appealing to heavy metal
and rock
musicians, who have incorporated the Ripper murders into their work.
in Mitre Square
as a key plot element, was published in October 1888. Among works by other authors, In Darkest London by Margaret Harkness, who used the pseudonym John Law, was published in 1889. Harkness depicts the Ripper as a non-Jewish slaughterman who hides among the Jews in the East End of London
.
Ripper stories appealed to an international audience. A "reputedly unsavoury" anthology of short stories
in Swedish, Uppskäraren ("The Ripper") by Adolf Paul
, was published in 1892, but it was suppressed by Russian authorities.
The character of Sherlock Holmes
has been used often in Jack the Ripper fiction. The Spanish-language Jack El Destripador was an "amusing Sherlock Holmes pastiche" published shortly after the murders. Holmes was also used later in Michael Dibdin
's The Last Sherlock Holmes Story
(1978), Ellery Queen
's A Study in Terror
(1966), John Sladek
's Black Aura (1974), and Barrie Roberts
' Sherlock Holmes and the Royal Flush (1998) amongst others. In 2009, Lyndsay Faye presents the Jack the Ripper mystery through Sherlock Holmes genre fiction in Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson.
The first influential short story, "The Lodger" by Marie Belloc Lowndes, was published in McClure's Magazine in 1911 and novelised in 1913. It features a London couple, Mr and Mrs Bunting, who suspect that their lodger, Mr Sleuth, is a mysterious killer known as "The Avenger", clearly based on the Ripper. Whether Sleuth really is "The Avenger" is left open: the focus of the story is on the Buntings' psychological terror, which may be entirely unfounded, rather than the actions of "The Avenger". In 1927, "The Lodger" was the subject of an Alfred Hitchcock
-directed film: The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
, and four other adaptations were filmed in later years.
In 1926, Leonard Matters
proposed in a magazine article that the Ripper was an eminent doctor, whose son had died from syphilis
caught from a prostitute. According to Matters, the doctor, given the pseudonym "Dr Stanley", committed the murders in revenge and then fled to Argentina. He expanded his ideas into a book, The Mystery of Jack the Ripper, in 1929. The book was marketed as a serious study, but it contains obvious factual errors and the documents it supposedly uses as references have never been found. It inspired other works such as the theatre play Murder Most Foul and the film Jack the Ripper
. Jonathan Goodman's 1984 book Who He? is also written as if it is a factual study, but the suspect described, "Peter J Harpick", is an invention whose name is an anagram of Jack the Ripper.
Robert Bloch
's short story "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" (published in Weird Tales
in 1943) cast the Ripper as an eternal who must make human sacrifice
s to extend his immortality
. It was adapted for both radio (in Stay Tuned for Terror) and television (as an episode of Thriller in 1961 written by Barré Lyndon
). The science-fiction anthology Dangerous Visions
(1967) featured an unrelated Ripper story by Bloch, "A Toy for Juliette
", and a sequel by Harlan Ellison
, "The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World
", written with Bloch's permission. Bloch's work also includes The Will to Kill (1954) and Night of the Ripper
(1984).
The many novels influenced by the Ripper include: A Case to Answer (1947) by Edgar Lustgarten
, The Screaming Mimi (1949) by Fredric Brown
, Terror Over London (1957) by Gardner Fox
, Ritual in the Dark (1960) and The Killer (1970) by Colin Wilson
, Sagittarius (1962) by Ray Russell
, A Feast Unknown (1969) by Philip José Farmer
, A Kind of Madness (1972) by Anthony Boucher
, Nine Bucks Row (1973) by T. E. Huff, The Michaelmas Girls (1975) by John Brooks Barry, Jack's Little Friend (1975) by Ramsey Campbell
, By Flower and Dean Street (1976) by Patrice Chaplin, The Private Life of Jack the Ripper (1980) by Richard Gordon, White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987) by Iain Sinclair
, Anno Dracula
(1992) by Kim Newman
, A Night in the Lonesome October
(1993) by Roger Zelazny
, Ladykiller (1993) by Martina Cole
, Savage (1993) by Richard Laymon
, The Pit
(1993) by Neil Penswick, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994) by Peter Ackroyd
, Pentecost Alley (1996) by Anne Perry
, and Matrix
(1998) by Mike Tucker
and Robert Perry. Lyndsay Faye's Dust and Shadow
appeared in 2009.
More recently, Giles Richard Ekins, has made use of the Ripper killings in his novel Sinistrari which includes appendices on the victims and prime suspects, and Gary M. Dobbs has offered a solution to the mystery in his novel, A Policeman's Lot. In the 2007-2010 set of novels written by Talia Gryphon, Jack the Ripper is featured as a main villain and Dracula's right-hand man, capturing both Gillian Key and Kimber Whitecloud and keeping them hostage. In Key to Redemption he is later killed against Gillian near Castle Rachlav. Also there is "A Handbook for Attendants on the Insane: the autobiography of Jack the Ripper as revealed to Clanash Farjeon", the pseudonym of Alan Scarfe
.
'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". Unlike the earlier versions, the film is set in 1888, rather than in the year of the film's making. 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".
Room to Let (1949) was 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 Films. 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
, a male Dr Jekyll transforms into the evil predatory woman Sister Hyde and is also responsible for the Ripper murders. InTerror in the Wax Museum (1973), a murderer disguises himself as a waxwork of the Ripper.
The Veil
episode "Jack the Ripper" (1958) was 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) was 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
. Part of the conspiracy plotline was followed in the TV series Jack the Ripper
(1988) starring Michael Caine
as Inspector Frederick Abberline
. In the 1997 film The Ripper, Samuel West
starred as Prince Eddy, who was revealed as the Ripper. 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 differs significantly from Caine's heroic Abberline and exhibits aspects of both Sherlock Holmes (deductive powers, drug addiction) and Robert Lees (psychic ability, foresight).
The Ruling Class
(1972) is a satire on the British aristocracy, and it also linked the Ripper to the British upper class. Jack Gurney, the mentally ill 14th Earl of Gurney played by Peter O'Toole
, spends part of the film believing himself to be Jack the Ripper, and performs a pair of Ripper murders. The black comedy Deadly Advice (1994) features Jane Horrocks
as a serial killer who imagines that she is given advice by the incarnations of famous murderers. John Mills
plays Jack the Ripper as an outwardly mild-mannered hairdresser. "Just be the sort of person nobody suspects," he tells her. 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.
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 Terror at London Bridge (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. Ripper Man (1994) depicts a killer who believes himself to be the reincarnation of George Chapman
, who was suspected of being Jack the Ripper after his arrest and execution for murder in 1903.
Released in the same year as From Hell, and consequently overshadowed by it, were Ripper
and Bad Karma
(retitled 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.
Walter Sickert
was an English artist inspired by the seediness of the East End of London
. His works include "Jack the Ripper's Bedroom".
is a graphic novel
about the Ripper case by Alan Moore
and Eddie Campbell
, which took its name from the "From Hell" letter
supposedly written by the Ripper. It is based on Stephen Knight conspiracy theory
, which accused royalty and freemasons of complicity in the crimes and was popularised by his book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution. In the Appendix to the graphic novel, Moore clearly states that he lends no credibility to the Knight theory and only used it for dramatic purposes. Royalty and the Ripper also featured in Blood of the Innocent
by Rickey Shanklin, Marc Hempel
and Mark Wheatley
in 1986, and a story ("Royal Blood") in DC Comics
' Hellblazer
series in 1992.
Issue #100 of Marvel Comics Master of Kung Fu (1981) featured a story titled "Red of Fang and Claw, All Love Lost". In it, the Ripper was an experiment of Fu Manchu
's, who escaped and hid in London. The hero fought him at the end of the story. DC Comics' Gotham by Gaslight
(1989), features a Victorian era
version of the superhero
Batman
hunting the Ripper in New York City
. The two fictional worlds, both dark and gothic, complement one another and sit easily together. Jack the Ripper featured in Grant Morrison
's Doom Patrol
in 1989, Wonder Woman: Amazonia
and Predator: Nemesis
in 1997, and in a Judge Dredd
story: "Night of the Ripper!". A story in the Justice League of America series fused with H. G. Wells
' The Island of Dr. Moreau and features Jack the Ripper as an orangutan
, while the immortal super-villain Vandal Savage
has claimed to be responsible for the Ripper murders. The comic Whitechapel Freak (2001) by David Hitchcock uses Jack the Ripper as an underlying background figure in a story that focuses on a travelling freak show. The Ripper is a legless man "strapped onto the shoulders of a midget". Rick Geary
's Jack the Ripper story in a 1995 volume of his A Treasury of Victorian Murder is a straighter retelling.
The CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
graphic novel Serial is about a Jack the Ripper copy-cat killer in present-day Las Vegas during a "Ripper-Mania" Convention, leading to hundreds of Ripper case enthusiasts as suspects in the murders.
Jack the Ripper appears in the Japanese manga
Soul Eater
by Atsushi Ookubo as the main protagonist's 99th collected soul. He is portrayed as a long, thin man with giant metal claws and a long, sharp nose. In the 2006 manga
Kuroshitsuji
by the Japanese manga artist
Toboso Yana, Jack the Ripper is portrayed as a mysterious person who had been responsible for the multiple yet common deaths of prostitutes in Victorian London. A few chapters later, it is revealed that Jack the Ripper is actually two people working together: a masquerading shinigami
and a doctor of noble lineage.
In the Italian comic book
Martin Mystère
, a vampire
Richard Van Helsing
discovers that the Ripper is an ancient mythical force, divided into several knives, which force their holders to kill. Van Helsing searches for and destroys the knives, including one which is destroyed by Sherlock Holmes
.
In the manga "Hell Blade" from 2009, the main character is Jack the Ripper himself, tracking down its preys in London in 1888.
's morality play
Die Büchse der Pandora
(1904), in which the Ripper murders Lulu, the central character. Lulu is the personification of sinful Lust
who meets her comeuppance when she unwittingly flirts with the Ripper. In the original stage production, Wedekind played the part of the Ripper. The play was later adapted into the film Pandora's Box
(1928, directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst
), and the opera Lulu
(by Alban Berg
), both of which also end with the murder of Lulu by the Ripper. It was also made into three films in 1923, 1962 and 1980 respectively, and a play Lulu by Peter Barnes premièred in 1970.
André de Lorde
's Jack l'Eventreur was part of the Grand Guignol
's output in Paris. Marie Belloc Lowndes' novel and short story The Lodger was adapted for the stage as The Lodger: Who Is He? by Horace Annesley Vachell
. In 1917, Lionel Atwill
's first role in Broadway theatre
was as the title character. Phyllis Tate
also based her opera The Lodger
, first performed in 1960, on Lowndes' story.
Murder Most Foul by Claude Pirkis was first performed in 1948. The character of the murderer, Dr. Stanley, was taken from The Mystery of Jack the Ripper by Leonard Matters, first published in 1929. Doug Lucie's Force and Hypocrisy is based on the royal conspiracy theory of Stephen Knight.
's 1959 instrumental "Jack the Ripper" begins with an evil laugh and a woman's scream. These devices were also used in "Jack the Ripper
" (1963), originally recorded by Screaming Lord Sutch
and covered by The White Stripes
, The Horrors
, Black Lips
, The Sharks
and Jack & The Rippers.
Jack the Ripper: The Musical (1974), with lyrics by Ron Pember
and music by Dennis DeMarne, influenced Stephen Sondheim
's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
. The mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap
(1984) features a vignette in which the band discusses the possibility of composing a rock opera about Jack the Ripper's life, called Saucy Jack. In 1996, a rock opera entitled Yours Truly: Jack the Ripper with lyrics by Frogg Moody and Dave Taylor was performed and, in a break from recent practice, portrayed the Ripper as an ordinary everyday man.
Metal bands are particularly keen to associate themselves with the "bloodshed and sleaze" image of the Ripper. Songs entitled "Ripper" were recorded by Judas Priest
in 1976, and Praying Mantis
in 1979. American deathcore
band Whitechapel
derived its name from the inner-city district Whitechapel
in London, the location of the Jack the Ripper murders. Accordingly, the band's debut album The Somatic Defilement
is a first-person narrative
concept album
based on Jack the Ripper. The Texan metal group Ripper went for a more direct choice of name, vocalists with the groups Meridian and Sodomizer adopted the names Jack D. Ripper and Ripper, respectively. Gothic metalcore sextet Motionless in White
released a song entitled "London in Terror" as a single from their debut album Creatures
. Californian death metal band Brain Drill
have a song titled "Nemesis of Neglect".
Songs inspired by the Ripper were recorded by artists as varied as Morrissey
, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
, The Legendary Pink Dots
, Thee Headcoats
, The Buff Medways and Bob Dylan
. Radio Werewolf
's album The Fiery Summons features "From Hell" which uses words from the letters attributed to the Ripper
.
The band Screech Owls released a song called 'Jack The Ripper' on their first EP 'Jacknife' in 1994
episode "Wolf in the Fold" (1967), writer Robert Bloch
reused parts of his short-story "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper", which had already appeared as a 1961 television episode of Thriller. An eternal entity, referred to as "Redjac", feeds on fear, and has committed a string of murders, including those attributed to Jack the Ripper, as a means of sustaining itself. By the end of the 1960s, the Ripper was established in American television as a "universal force of evil", who could be adapted to suit any villainous niche.
In an episode of The Twilight Zone
from 1963 entitled "The New Exhibit", Martin Balsam
plays the curator of a wax museum who becomes so obsessed by five wax figures of murderers, including Jack the Ripper, that he commits murder to protect them. In the Cimarron Strip
episode "Knife in the Wilderness" (1968), written by Harlan Ellison
, Jack continues his work across America ending in Cimarron City where he meets his end at the hands of Indians. In the Get Smart
episode "House of Max" (1970), Jack the Ripper is an animated wax dummy. (When the Scotland Yard detective declares that "Jack the Ripper is not a man," Max wonders out loud, "Jacqueline the Ripper?".)
In the first episode of the Soul Eater
anime, Jack the Ripper is depicted as a demonic monster who eats innocent souls for power, and has a mechanical armor, with claws and a pumpkin-like mask. His kishin egg (pure evil soul) is eaten by the title character when he kills Ripper.
In The Sixth Senses
"With Affection, Jack the Ripper" (1972) a man is driven mad during an paranormal
experiment when he inhabits the body of Jack the Ripper. A Fantasy Island
episode, also titled "With Affection, Jack the Ripper" (1980), was written by the same writer as the episode of The Sixth Sense, Don Ingalls. Lynda Day George
plays criminologist Lorraine Peters who uses a time portal to confirm her suspicion that Jack the Ripper was a doctor, Albert Fell, played by Victor Buono
. Fell follows her back through the portal, grabs Peters and takes her back to 1888, where the enigmatic Mr. Roarke intervenes fortuitously, and Fell dies moments later while fleeing. The name Fell is clearly lifted from Margery Allingham's 1948 radio play Room to Let. A time portal is also used in "A Rip in Time" (1997), the first episode of the short-lived TV series Timecop
, in which a timetravelling cop travels back to 1888 to catch a criminal who has killed, and displaced, Jack the Ripper. The Babylon 5
episode "Comes the Inquisitor
" (1995) features a character named Sebastian who is Jack the Ripper, abducted by the alien Vorlon
s in the year 1888 and made into their inquisitor so that he can test (through torture) beings who are called to lead an important cause.
Jack the Ripper (1973) by Elwyn Jones
and John Lloyd
linked with the police drama Z Cars. The program featured Z Cars detectives Barlow and Watt, played by Stratford Johns
and Frank Windsor
respectively, investigating the murders from an historical perspective. In the first episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker
(1974), titled "The Ripper", reporter Carl Kolchak pursues a supernatural killer whose victims match the patterns of the original Ripper murders. The killer has superhuman strength and is invulnerable to weapons, but Kolchak dematerialises the apparently immortal being by electrocuting him. An episode of The Outer Limits
titled "Ripper
" (1997) was set in 1888 and starred Cary Elwes
as Dr. Jack York, who kills women whom he believes are possessed by an alien entity. In an episode of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, "The Knife" (2001), the explorers meet the two men blamed for the murders in Stephen Knight's royal conspiracy theory: Sir William Gull and Robert Anderson. Spike Milligan
parodied the Ripper-genre in the "sublimely daft" The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town
. The 2007 science-fiction series Sanctuary
details the possession of John Druitt (implied to be historical Ripper suspect Montague John Druitt) by a demonic energy creature which ultimately turns him into the Ripper. In the seventh season of Smallville
, a doctor called Curtis Knox says he can cure meteor-freaks, but is lying so he can kill them. Knox is discovered to be immortal and claims to be Jack the Ripper. In the Canadian series Murdoch Mysteries
, the opening episode of the second season involves late 19th-century detectives investigating a series of murders which they describe as being very similar to the ones that occurred in Whitechapel. In the 2009 ITV1
miniseries Whitechapel
, a copycat killer commits murders on the same date, time and fashion as the Jack the Ripper murders, and the police struggle to catch up.
The animated series, "Magic Master", has a villain named Jacquelyn who uses Jack the ripper as her personal ghost.
A 2011 episode of Doctor Who
entitled A Good Man Goes to War
reveals that Jack was defeated - and, in fact, eaten - by a female Silurian
warrior named Madame Vastra living undercover in 1888 England.
Master of Darkness
(1992), where he is revealed to be an animated wax doll upon defeat. Also in 1992, Jack the Ripper featured in the dungeon crawl
style RPG Waxworks
. Jack is one of the historically-based characters in the World Heroes
fighting game
series, making his debut in World Heroes 2: Jet in 1994. Ripper (1996) deals with a copycat serial killer in a futuristic New York City in the year 2040, and in Jack the Ripper (2003) the player takes on the role of a reporter sent to cover similar murders in New York in 1901, 13 years after the Ripper's murders, it turns out to be the work of the Ripper. Duke Nukem: Zero Hour
(1999) is a "light-hearted gunplay romp set in Victorian London" that features Jack the Ripper. He is one of the principal villains in the action-horror Shadow Man
(1999), and Jack also appears in the gothic horror platform game MediEvil 2 (2000), but as a tall green monster with giant claws, long sharp teeth and a top hat, rather than as a human. A character named Jack the Ripper appeared as a third character in the Virtual Boy
game Jack Bros.
Mystery in London: On the Trail of Jack the Ripper
(2007) fuses the Ripper story with Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, while Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper (2009) fuses with the fictional world of Sherlock Holmes
.
In Splatterhouse (2010 video game), Dr. Henry West became the mysterious Jack the Ripper after a series of murders he committed, as he claimed to be "bored" while in London.
Jack the Ripper
"Jack the Ripper" is the best-known name given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer, that was disseminated in the...
, the notorious serial killer who terrorised Whitechapel in 1888, features in works of fiction
Fiction
Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
ranging from gothic novels published at the time of the murders to recent motion pictures, televised dramas and computer games.
Important influences on the depiction of the Ripper include Marie Belloc Lowndes' 1913 novel The Lodger, which has been adapted for the stage and film, and Stephen Knight's 1976 work Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, which expanded on a conspiracy theory involving freemasons, royalty and the medical profession that features in many subsequent dramatisations. The literature of the late Victorian era
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
, including Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
's first Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
stories and Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, has provided rich inspiration for story-makers who have fused these fictional worlds with the Ripper. The Ripper makes appearances throughout the science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
and horror
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
genres and is internationally recognised as an evil character. The association of the Ripper with death and sex is particularly appealing to heavy metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
and rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
musicians, who have incorporated the Ripper murders into their work.
Literature
Works of fiction inspired by the Whitechapel murders arose immediately after the atrocities were committed. The short gothic novel The Curse Upon Mitre Square by John Francis Brewer, which features the murder of Catherine EddowesCatherine Eddowes
Catherine Eddowes was one of the victims in the Whitechapel murders. She was the second person killed on the night of Sunday 30 September 1888, a night which already had seen the murder of Elizabeth Stride less than an hour earlier...
in Mitre Square
Mitre Square
Mitre Square is a small square in the City of London. It measures about by and is connected via three passages with Mitre Street to the SW, to Creechurch Place to the NW and, via St James's Passage , to Duke's Place to the NE....
as a key plot element, was published in October 1888. Among works by other authors, In Darkest London by Margaret Harkness, who used the pseudonym John Law, was published in 1889. Harkness depicts the Ripper as a non-Jewish slaughterman who hides among the Jews in the East End of London
East End of London
The East End of London, also known simply as the East End, is the area of London, England, United Kingdom, east of the medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames. Although not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries, the River Lea can be considered another boundary...
.
Ripper stories appealed to an international audience. A "reputedly unsavoury" anthology of short stories
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
in Swedish, Uppskäraren ("The Ripper") by Adolf Paul
Adolf Paul
Adolf Paul was a writer in the German, Swedish, and Finnish languages...
, was published in 1892, but it was suppressed by Russian authorities.
The character of Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
has been used often in Jack the Ripper fiction. The Spanish-language Jack El Destripador was an "amusing Sherlock Holmes pastiche" published shortly after the murders. Holmes was also used later in Michael Dibdin
Michael Dibdin
Michael Dibdin , was a British crime writer.-Life:Dibdin was born in Wolverhampton, the son of a physicist, and was brought up from the age of seven in Lisburn, Northern Ireland where he attended Friends' School...
's The Last Sherlock Holmes Story
The Last Sherlock Holmes Story
The Last Sherlock Holmes Story is a non-canonical Sherlock Holmes pastiche novel by Michael Dibdin.The novel is an account of Holmes' attempt to solve the Jack the Ripper murders. Holmes suspects the Ripper to be his nemesis, James Moriarty...
(1978), Ellery Queen
Ellery Queen
Ellery Queen is both a fictional character and a pseudonym used by two American cousins from Brooklyn, New York: Daniel Nathan, alias Frederic Dannay and Manford Lepofsky, alias Manfred Bennington Lee , to write, edit, and anthologize detective fiction.The fictional Ellery Queen created by...
's A Study in Terror
A Study in Terror
A Study in Terror is a 1965 British thriller film directed by James Hill and starring John Neville as Sherlock Holmes and Donald Houston as Dr. Watson...
(1966), John Sladek
John Sladek
John Thomas Sladek was an American science fiction author, known for his satirical and surreal novels.- Life and work :...
's Black Aura (1974), and Barrie Roberts
Barrie Roberts
Barrie Roberts was an author, folk singer, freelance journalist, and criminal lawyer.-Biography:Born in Hampshire in 1939, Roberts was educated at Churcher's College....
' Sherlock Holmes and the Royal Flush (1998) amongst others. In 2009, Lyndsay Faye presents the Jack the Ripper mystery through Sherlock Holmes genre fiction in Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson.
The first influential short story, "The Lodger" by Marie Belloc Lowndes, was published in McClure's Magazine in 1911 and novelised in 1913. It features a London couple, Mr and Mrs Bunting, who suspect that their lodger, Mr Sleuth, is a mysterious killer known as "The Avenger", clearly based on the Ripper. Whether Sleuth really is "The Avenger" is left open: the focus of the story is on the Buntings' psychological terror, which may be entirely unfounded, rather than the actions of "The Avenger". In 1927, "The Lodger" was the subject of an Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
-directed film: The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog is a silent film directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1926 and released on 14 February 1927 in London and on 10 June 1928 in New York City. The film, based on a story by Marie Belloc Lowndes and a play Who Is He? co-written by Belloc Lowndes, concerns the hunt for a...
, and four other adaptations were filmed in later years.
In 1926, Leonard Matters
Leonard Matters
Leonard Warburton Matters was an Australian journalist who became a Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom.He was born a British subject in Adelaide, Australia, and fought in the Second Boer War in South Africa...
proposed in a magazine article that the Ripper was an eminent doctor, whose son had died from syphilis
Syphilis
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...
caught from a prostitute. According to Matters, the doctor, given the pseudonym "Dr Stanley", committed the murders in revenge and then fled to Argentina. He expanded his ideas into a book, The Mystery of Jack the Ripper, in 1929. The book was marketed as a serious study, but it contains obvious factual errors and the documents it supposedly uses as references have never been found. It inspired other works such as the theatre play Murder Most Foul and the film Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper (1959 film)
Jack the Ripper was a 1959 film produced and directed by Monty Berman and Robert S. Baker and is loosely based on Leonard Matters' theory that the Ripper was an avenging doctor. The black-and-white film starred Lee Patterson and Eddie Byrne and co-starred Betty McDowall, John Le Mesurier, and...
. Jonathan Goodman's 1984 book Who He? is also written as if it is a factual study, but the suspect described, "Peter J Harpick", is an invention whose name is an anagram of Jack the Ripper.
Robert Bloch
Robert Bloch
Robert Albert Bloch was a prolific American writer, primarily of crime, horror and science fiction. He is best known as the writer of Psycho, the basis for the film of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock...
's short story "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" (published in Weird Tales
Weird Tales
Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....
in 1943) cast the Ripper as an eternal who must make human sacrifice
Human sacrifice
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more human beings as part of a religious ritual . Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practised in various cultures throughout history...
s to extend his immortality
Immortality
Immortality is the ability to live forever. It is unknown whether human physical immortality is an achievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering...
. It was adapted for both radio (in Stay Tuned for Terror) and television (as an episode of Thriller in 1961 written by Barré Lyndon
Barré Lyndon
Barré Lyndon was a British playwright and screenwriter. The pseudonym was presumably taken from the title character of Thackeray's novel....
). The science-fiction anthology Dangerous Visions
Dangerous Visions
Dangerous Visions is a science fiction short story anthology edited by Harlan Ellison, published in 1967.A path-breaking collection, Dangerous Visions helped define the New Wave science fiction movement, particularly in its depiction of sex in science fiction...
(1967) featured an unrelated Ripper story by Bloch, "A Toy for Juliette
A Toy for Juliette
"A Toy for Juliette" is a short story by Robert Bloch from Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions, about Jack the Ripper, being pulled into a dystopic future by a sadistic femme fatale and her mysterious grandfather. There, she attempts to seduce him, only for Jack to find a knife underneath a pillow...
", and a sequel by Harlan Ellison
Harlan Ellison
Harlan Jay Ellison is an American writer. His principal genre is speculative fiction.His published works include over 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media...
, "The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World
The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World
"The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World", is a short story from Harlan Ellison's 1967 anthology, Dangerous Visions, in which he presents a collection of several different views of science fiction and fantasy, through 34 authors...
", written with Bloch's permission. Bloch's work also includes The Will to Kill (1954) and Night of the Ripper
Night of the Ripper
Night of the Ripper is a novel written by American writer Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho. The story is set during the reign of Queen Victoria and follows the investigation of Inspector Abberline in attempting to apprehend Jack the Ripper and includes some famous Victorians such as Sir Arthur...
(1984).
The many novels influenced by the Ripper include: A Case to Answer (1947) by Edgar Lustgarten
Edgar Lustgarten
Edgar Marcus Lustgarten was a British broadcaster and noted crime writer.His books included crime fiction, but most were accounts of true-life criminal cases. The legal justice system and courtroom procedures were his main interests and his writings reflect this...
, The Screaming Mimi (1949) by Fredric Brown
Fredric Brown
Fredric Brown was an American science fiction and mystery writer. He was born in Cincinnati.He had two sons: James Ross Brown and Linn Lewis Brown ....
, Terror Over London (1957) by Gardner Fox
Gardner Fox
Gardner Francis Cooper Fox was an American writer best known for creating numerous comic book characters for DC Comics. Comic-book historians estimate that he wrote over 4,000 comics stories....
, Ritual in the Dark (1960) and The Killer (1970) by Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
Colin Henry Wilson is a prolific English writer who first came to prominence as a philosopher and novelist. Wilson has since written widely on true crime, mysticism and other topics. He prefers calling his philosophy new existentialism or phenomenological existentialism.- Early biography:Born and...
, Sagittarius (1962) by Ray Russell
Ray Russell
Ray Russell was an American writer of short stories, novels, and screenplays. In 1991 he received the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement....
, A Feast Unknown (1969) by Philip José Farmer
Philip José Farmer
Philip José Farmer was an American author, principally known for his award-winning science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories....
, A Kind of Madness (1972) by Anthony Boucher
Anthony Boucher
Anthony Boucher was an American science fiction editor and author of mystery novels and short stories. He was particularly influential as an editor. Between 1942 and 1947 he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle...
, Nine Bucks Row (1973) by T. E. Huff, The Michaelmas Girls (1975) by John Brooks Barry, Jack's Little Friend (1975) by Ramsey Campbell
Ramsey Campbell
John Ramsey Campbell is an English horror fiction author.Since he first came to prominence in the mid-1960s, critics have cited Campbell as one of the leading writers in his field: T. E. D. Klein has written that "Campbell reigns supreme in the field today", while S. T...
, By Flower and Dean Street (1976) by Patrice Chaplin, The Private Life of Jack the Ripper (1980) by Richard Gordon, White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987) by Iain Sinclair
Iain Sinclair
Iain Sinclair FRSL is a British writer and filmmaker. Much of his work is rooted in London, most recently within the influences of psychogeography.-Life and work:...
, Anno Dracula
Anno Dracula (novel)
Anno Dracula is a 1992 novel by British writer Kim Newman, the first in the Anno Dracula series. It is an alternate history using 19th century English historical settings and personalities, along with characters from popular fiction...
(1992) by Kim Newman
Kim Newman
Kim Newman is an English journalist, film critic, and fiction writer. Recurring interests visible in his work include film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternate fictional versions of history...
, A Night in the Lonesome October
A Night in the Lonesome October
A Night in the Lonesome October is a satirical novel by Roger Zelazny published in 1993, near the end of his life. It was his last book.The book is divided in 32 chapters, each representing one "night" in the month of October . The story is told in the first-person, akin to journal entries...
(1993) by Roger Zelazny
Roger Zelazny
Roger Joseph Zelazny was an American writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels, best known for his The Chronicles of Amber series...
, Ladykiller (1993) by Martina Cole
Martina Cole
Martina Cole is a British crime writer. She was brought up in Aveley, and has released seventeen novels about crime some of which examine London's gangster underworld. Four of her novels, Dangerous Lady, The Jump, The Take and The Runaway have been adapted into high-rating television dramas...
, Savage (1993) by Richard Laymon
Richard Laymon
Richard Carl Laymon was an American author of suspense and horror fiction, particularly within the splatterpunk subgenre. He was born in Chicago, Illinois and lived as a child in California...
, The Pit
The Pit (Doctor Who)
The Pit is an original novel written by Neil Penswick and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It features the Seventh Doctor and Bernice...
(1993) by Neil Penswick, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994) by Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd CBE is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a particular interest in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot and Sir Thomas More he won the Somerset Maugham Award...
, Pentecost Alley (1996) by Anne Perry
Anne Perry
Anne Perry is an English author of historical detective fiction. Perry was convicted of the murder of her friend's mother in 1954.-Early life:Born Juliet Marion Hulme in Blackheath, London, the daughter of Dr...
, and Matrix
Matrix (Doctor Who novel)
Matrix is a BBC Books original novel written by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who.-Summary:...
(1998) by Mike Tucker
Mike Tucker
Mike Tucker is a special effects expert who worked for many years at the BBC Television Visual Effects Department, and now works as an Effects Supervisor for his own company, The Model Unit. He is also the author of a variety of spin-offs relating to the television series Doctor Who and...
and Robert Perry. Lyndsay Faye's Dust and Shadow
Dust and Shadow
Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson is a non-canonical Sherlock Holmes pastiche novel by Lyndsay Faye which pits Sherlock Holmes against Jack the Ripper....
appeared in 2009.
More recently, Giles Richard Ekins, has made use of the Ripper killings in his novel Sinistrari which includes appendices on the victims and prime suspects, and Gary M. Dobbs has offered a solution to the mystery in his novel, A Policeman's Lot. In the 2007-2010 set of novels written by Talia Gryphon, Jack the Ripper is featured as a main villain and Dracula's right-hand man, capturing both Gillian Key and Kimber Whitecloud and keeping them hostage. In Key to Redemption he is later killed against Gillian near Castle Rachlav. Also there is "A Handbook for Attendants on the Insane: the autobiography of Jack the Ripper as revealed to Clanash Farjeon", the pseudonym of Alan Scarfe
Alan Scarfe
Alan John Scarfe is a British-born Genie Award winning Canadian actor. He is a former Associate Director of the Stratford Festival and the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool...
.
Film
Marie Belloc Lowndes' book The Lodger has been made into five films: Alfred HitchcockAlfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
's The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog is a silent film directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1926 and released on 14 February 1927 in London and on 10 June 1928 in New York City. The film, based on a story by Marie Belloc Lowndes and a play Who Is He? co-written by Belloc Lowndes, concerns the hunt for a...
(1927), The Lodger
The Lodger (1932 film)
The Lodger is a British thriller film directed by Maurice Elvey and starring Ivor Novello, Elizabeth Allan and Jack Hawkins. It is based on the novel The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes, also filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1927, by John Brahm in 1944, as Man in the Attic directed by Hugo Fregonese,...
(1932), The Lodger
The Lodger (1944 film)
The Lodger is a 1944 horror film about Jack the Ripper, based on the novel of the same name by Marie Belloc Lowndes. It stars Merle Oberon, George Sanders and Laird Cregar, features Sir Cedric Hardwicke and was directed by John Brahm from a screenplay by Barré Lyndon.Lowndes' story had previously...
(1944), Man in the Attic
Man in the Attic
Man in the Attic is a 1953 mystery film directed by Hugo Fregonese. It was released in the United States on December 23 by Twentieth Century Fox...
(1953), and The Lodger
The Lodger (2009 film)
The Lodger is an 2009 mystery/thriller film directed by David Ondaatje and starring Alfred Molina, Hope Davis and Simon Baker. It is based on the novel The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes, filmed previously by Alfred Hitchcock in 1927, by Maurice Elvey in 1932, by John Brahm in 1944, and as Man in...
(2009). Hitchcock decided to cast romantic lead Ivor Novello
Ivor Novello
David Ivor Davies , better known as Ivor Novello, was a Welsh composer, singer and actor who became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century. Born into a musical family, his first successes were as a songwriter...
as the title character in his version of The Lodger, with the consequence that the film company, Gainsborough Pictures
Gainsborough Pictures
Gainsborough Pictures was a British film studio based on the south bank of the Regent's Canal, in Poole Street, Hoxton in the former Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch, London. Gainsborough Studios were active between 1924 and 1951. Built as a power station for the Great Northern & City Railway it...
, 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
Maurice Elvey
Maurice Elvey was the most prolific film director in British history. He directed nearly 200 films between 1913 and 1957. During the silent film era he directed as many as twenty films per year....
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
Laird Cregar
-Early life and career:Samuel Laird Cregar was the youngest of six sons of Edward Matthews Cregar, a cricketer and member of a team called the Gentlemen of Philadelphia. They toured internationally in the late 1890s and early 1900s...
, as the villain "Jack the Ripper". Unlike the earlier versions, the film is set in 1888, rather than in the year of the film's making. The 1953 version, Man in the Attic with Jack Palance
Jack Palance
Jack Palance , was an American actor. During half a century of film and television appearances, Palance was nominated for three Academy Awards, all as Best Actor in a Supporting Role, winning in 1991 for his role in City Slickers.-Early life:Palance, one of five children, was born Volodymyr...
as "Slade", covers much the same ground. The 2009 film casts Simon Baker
Simon Baker
Simon Baker is an Australian actor. Since 2008, he has starred in the CBS television series The Mentalist.-Early life:...
as "Malcolm Slaight".
Room to Let (1949) was similar to The Lodger story but was based on a 1948 radio play by Margery Allingham
Margery Allingham
Margery Louise Allingham was an English crime writer, best remembered for her detective stories featuring gentleman sleuth Albert Campion.- Childhood and schooling :...
. It was one of the first horror pictures made by Hammer Films. Valentine Dyall
Valentine Dyall
Valentine Dyall was an English character actor, the son of veteran actor Franklin Dyall. Dyall was especially popular as a voice actor, due to his very distinctive sepulchral voice, he was known for many years as "The Man in Black", narrator of the BBC Radio horror series Appointment With Fear.In...
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
Hands of the Ripper
Hands of the Ripper is a 1971 British horror film directed by Peter Sasdy for Hammer Film Productions.-Plot:It is set in London in Edwardian times, and stars Angharad Rees as Anna, a vulnerable young woman who is exploited by her guardian , a medium, and haunted by the subconscious memory of her...
, the Ripper's daughter played by Angharad Rees
Angharad Rees
Angharad Mary Rees is a Welsh actress, best-known for her British television roles during the 1970s, garnering notice for her leading role as Demelza in the 1970s BBC drama series Poldark.-Career:...
grows up to become a murderess after she sees her father kill her mother. In Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde
Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde
Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde is a 1971 British film directed by Roy Ward Baker based on the short story Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. The film was made by British studio Hammer Film Productions and was their second adaptation of the story after their 1960 film The...
, a male Dr Jekyll transforms into the evil predatory woman Sister Hyde and is also responsible for the Ripper murders. InTerror in the Wax Museum (1973), a murderer disguises himself as a waxwork of the Ripper.
The Veil
The Veil
The Veil is the title of an American horror/suspense anthology television series produced in 1958 by Hal Roach Studios.The series was hosted by Boris Karloff, who also acted in every episode but one, and was allegedly based upon real-life reports of supernatural happenings and the unexplained...
episode "Jack the Ripper" (1958) was a made-for-television film introduced by Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff
William Henry Pratt , better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein , Bride of Frankenstein , and Son of Frankenstein...
, 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
Robert James Lees
Robert James Lees was a British spiritualist, medium, preacher, writer and healer of the late Victorian era and early twentieth century known today for claims that he knew the identity of Jack the Ripper, responsible for the Whitechapel murders of 1888.-Early life:The son of William Lingham Lees...
had used psychic powers to track the Ripper to the home of a London physician. Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper (1959 film)
Jack the Ripper was a 1959 film produced and directed by Monty Berman and Robert S. Baker and is loosely based on Leonard Matters' theory that the Ripper was an avenging doctor. The black-and-white film starred Lee Patterson and Eddie Byrne and co-starred Betty McDowall, John Le Mesurier, and...
(1959), produced by Monty Berman
Monty Berman
Nestor Montague Berman was a British cinematographer and film and television producer.-Early career:...
and Robert S. Baker
Robert S. Baker
Robert Sidney Baker was a British film and television producer, who at times was also a cinematographer and director.- Movie career :...
and written by Jimmy Sangster
Jimmy Sangster
James Henry Kinmel Sangster was an English screenwriter and director, known for his work for horror film producers Hammer Film Productions, including scripts for The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula .Sangster originally worked as a production assistant at...
is loosely based on Leonard Matters
Leonard Matters
Leonard Warburton Matters was an Australian journalist who became a Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom.He was born a British subject in Adelaide, Australia, and fought in the Second Boer War in South Africa...
' theory that the Ripper was an avenging doctor. It borrowed icons from previously successful horror films, such as Dracula
Dracula (1958 film)
Dracula, also known as Horror of Dracula in the United States, is a 1958 British horror film. It is the first in the series of Hammer Horror films inspired by the Bram Stoker novel Dracula. It was directed by Terence Fisher, and stars Peter Cushing, Michael Gough, Carol Marsh, Melissa Stribling and...
(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
Ewen Solon
Ewen Solon was a New Zealand-born actor, who worked extensively in both the United Kingdom and Australia....
, 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
Pandora's Box (film)
Pandora's Box is a 1929 German silent melodrama film based on Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora . Directed by Austrian filmmaker Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the film stars Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, and Francis Lederer...
(Die Büchse der Pandora) was a 1929 German silent film directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Georg Wilhelm Pabst
-Biography:Pabst was born in Raudnitz, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary , the son of a railroad employee.Returning from the United States, he was in France when World War I began...
based on Frank Wedekind
Frank Wedekind
Benjamin Franklin Wedekind , usually known as Frank Wedekind, was a German playwright...
's play about a woman, Lulu, played by Louise Brooks
Louise Brooks
Mary Louise Brooks , generally known by her stage name Louise Brooks, was an American dancer, model, showgirl and silent film actress, noted for popularizing the bobbed haircut. Brooks is best known for her three feature roles including two G. W...
. 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
Gustav Diessl
Gustav Diessl was an Austrian artist, and film and stage actor.-Biography:Diessl was born Gustav Karl Balthasar in Vienna. In 1916, he was an extra on different stages in Vienna but was soon recruited into the army for World War I...
. An earlier German film, Paul Leni
Paul Leni
Paul Leni born Paul Josef Levi was a German filmmaker and a key figure in German Expressionist filmmaking, making Backstairs and Waxworks in Germany, and The Cat and the Canary , The Chinese Parrot , The Man Who Laughs , and The Last Warning in...
's Waxworks
Waxworks (film)
Waxworks is a 1924 fantasy/horror silent film directed by Paul Leni. The film is about a writer who accepts a job from a waxworks proprietor to write a series of stories about the exhibits of Caliph of Baghdad , Ivan the Terrible and Jack the Ripper in order to boost business.Although...
(Das Wachsfigurenkabinett) from 1924, used a Ripper-style event in one of three dreamed vignettes. The "Jack" character was played by Werner Krauss
Werner Krauss
Werner Johannes Krauss was a German stage and film actor.-Early life:Krauss was born at the parsonage of Gestungshausen in Upper Franconia, where his grandfather was Protestant pastor. He spent his childhood in Breslau and from 1901 attended the teacher's college at Kreuzburg...
, who had achieved enormous success with his portrayal of the evil title character in the influential early horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a 1920 silent horror film directed by Robert Wiene from a screenplay by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. It is one of the most influential of German Expressionist films and is often considered one of the greatest horror movies of the silent era. This movie is cited as...
.
A Study in Terror
A Study in Terror
A Study in Terror is a 1965 British thriller film directed by James Hill and starring John Neville as Sherlock Holmes and Donald Houston as Dr. Watson...
(1965) and Murder by Decree
Murder by Decree
Murder by Decree is an Anglo-Canadian thriller film involving Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson in the case of the serial murderer Jack the Ripper...
(1979) both pit Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
against the Ripper. A Study in Terror, and its companion novel written by Ellery Queen
Ellery Queen
Ellery Queen is both a fictional character and a pseudonym used by two American cousins from Brooklyn, New York: Daniel Nathan, alias Frederic Dannay and Manford Lepofsky, alias Manfred Bennington Lee , to write, edit, and anthologize detective fiction.The fictional Ellery Queen created by...
, 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
Christopher Plummer
Arthur Christopher Orne Plummer, CC is a Canadian theatre, film and television actor. He made his film debut in 1957's Stage Struck, and notable early film performances include Night of the Generals, The Return of the Pink Panther and The Man Who Would Be King.In a career that spans over five...
as Sherlock Holmes and James Mason
James Mason
James Neville Mason was an English actor who attained stardom in both British and American films. Mason remained a powerful figure in the industry throughout his career and was nominated for three Academy Awards as well as three Golden Globes .- Early life :Mason was born in Huddersfield, in the...
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
Frank Finlay
Francis Finlay, CBE is an English stage, film and television actor.-Personal life:Finlay was born in Farnworth, Lancashire, the son of Margaret and Josiah Finlay, a butcher. A devout Catholic, he belongs to the British Catholic Stage Guild. He was educated at St...
plays Inspector Lestrade
Inspector Lestrade
Inspector G. Lestrade is a fictional character, a Scotland Yard detective appearing in several of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle used the name of a friend from his days at the University of Edinburgh, a Saint Lucian medical student by the name of Joseph Alexandre Lestrade....
. Part of the conspiracy plotline was followed in the TV series Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper (1988 TV series)
Jack the Ripper is a 1988 four-part television movie/mini-series portraying a fictionalized account of the hunt for Jack the Ripper, the unidentified serial killer responsible for the Whitechapel murders of 1888...
(1988) starring Michael Caine
Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine, CBE is an English actor. He won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in both Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules ....
as Inspector Frederick Abberline
Frederick Abberline
Frederick George Abberline was a Chief Inspector for the London Metropolitan Police and was a prominent police figure in the investigation into the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888.-Early life:...
. In the 1997 film The Ripper, Samuel West
Samuel West
Samuel Alexander Joseph West is an English actor and theatre director. He is perhaps best known for his role in Howards End and his work on stage. He also starred in the award-winning play ENRON...
starred as Prince Eddy, who was revealed as the Ripper. In 2001, the Hughes Brothers
Hughes Brothers
Albert Hughes and Allen Hughes , known together professionally as the Hughes brothers, are American film directors, producers and screenwriters...
made the comic book From Hell
From Hell
From Hell is a comic book series by writer Alan Moore and artist Eddie Campbell, originally published from 1991 to 1996, speculating upon the identity and motives of Jack the Ripper. The title is taken from the first words of the "From Hell" letter, which some authorities believe was an authentic...
into a film of the same name
From Hell (film)
From Hell is a 2001 American crime drama horror mystery film directed by the Hughes brothers. It is an adaptation of the comic book series of the same name by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell about the Jack the Ripper murders.-Plot:...
starring Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp
John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol...
as Abberline. The film again sticks to the Knight storyline, though Depp's character differs significantly from Caine's heroic Abberline and exhibits aspects of both Sherlock Holmes (deductive powers, drug addiction) and Robert Lees (psychic ability, foresight).
The Ruling Class
The Ruling Class
The Ruling Class is a 1972 British black comedy film. It is an adaptation of Peter Barnes' satirical stage play which tells the story of a paranoid schizophrenic British nobleman who inherits a peerage. The film costars Alastair Sim, William Mervyn, Coral Browne, Harry Andrews, Carolyn Seymour,...
(1972) is a satire on the British aristocracy, and it also linked the Ripper to the British upper class. Jack Gurney, the mentally ill 14th Earl of Gurney played by Peter O'Toole
Peter O'Toole
Peter Seamus Lorcan O'Toole is an Irish actor of stage and screen. O'Toole achieved stardom in 1962 playing T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia, and then went on to become a highly-honoured film and stage actor. He has been nominated for eight Academy Awards, and holds the record for most...
, spends part of the film believing himself to be Jack the Ripper, and performs a pair of Ripper murders. The black comedy Deadly Advice (1994) features Jane Horrocks
Jane Horrocks
Barbara Jane Horrocks is an English voice, stage, screen and television actress, voice artist, musician, and singer. She is best known for her role as "Bubble" in the TV series Absolutely Fabulous as well as her distinctive voice....
as a serial killer who imagines that she is given advice by the incarnations of famous murderers. John Mills
John Mills
Sir John Mills CBE , born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills, was an English actor who made more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades.-Life and career:...
plays Jack the Ripper as an outwardly mild-mannered hairdresser. "Just be the sort of person nobody suspects," he tells her. 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
Amazon Women on the Moon
Amazon Women on the Moon is a 1987 American satirical comedy film that parodies the experience of watching low-budget movies on late-night television...
is a 1987 comedy film that parodies theories of the Ripper's identity by speculating that Jack the Ripper was the Loch Ness Monster
Loch Ness Monster
The Loch Ness Monster is a cryptid that is reputed to inhabit Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. It is similar to other supposed lake monsters in Scotland and elsewhere, though its description varies from one account to the next....
in disguise. Marcel Carné
Marcel Carné
-Biography:Born in Paris, France, the son of a cabinet maker whose wife died when their son was five, Carné began his career as a film critic, becoming editor of the weekly publication, Hebdo-Films, and working for Cinémagazine and Cinémonde between 1929 and 1933. In the same period he worked in...
's Drôle de Drame (1937) is another parody of the Ripper, featuring Jean-Louis Barrault
Jean-Louis Barrault
Jean-Louis Barrault was a French actor, director and mime artist, training that served him well when he portrayed the 19th-century mime Jean-Gaspard Deburau in Marcel Carné's 1945 film Les Enfants du Paradis .Jean-Louis Barrault studied with Charles Dullin in whose troupe he acted...
as an East End
East End of London
The East End of London, also known simply as the East End, is the area of London, England, United Kingdom, east of the medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames. Although not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries, the River Lea can be considered another boundary...
vegetarian who slaughters butchers in revenge for their slaughter of animals.
Night After Night After Night (1969) was a low-budget production that cast a high court judge (played by Jack May
Jack May
Jack May was an English actor. Born in Henley-on-Thames, he was educated at Forest School, Walthamstow and after war service with the Royal Indian Navy in India was offered a place at RADA, but he instead went to Merton College, Oxford...
) as a demented copycat Ripper who attacks prostitutes in London's Soho
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...
. 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
The New York Ripper
The New York Ripper, original title Lo squartatore di New York, is a 1982 Italian horror film directed and co-written by Lucio Fulci.The film score was written by Francesco De Masi...
(1982) have little relation to the Ripper beyond the title. The Ripper of Notre Dame was directed and co-written by Jesús Franco
Jesús Franco
Jesús "Jess" Franco is a Spanish film director, writer, cinematographer and actor. His career took off in 1961 with his cult classic The Awful Dr. Orloff, which received wide distribution in the United States and England...
, whose Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper (1976 film)
Jack the Ripper is a 1976 German thriller film directed by Jesus Franco and starring Klaus Kinski. In this Swiss-German film Klaus Kinski portrays Jack the Ripper.-Cast:* Klaus Kinski – Dr...
(1976) stars Klaus Kinski
Klaus Kinski
Klaus Kinski, born Klaus Günter Karl Nakszynski , was a German actor. He appeared in more than 130 films, and is perhaps best-remembered as a leading role actor in Werner Herzog films: Aguirre, the Wrath of God , Nosferatu the Vampyre , Woyzeck , Fitzcarraldo and Cobra Verde .-Early...
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
Fear City
Fear City is a 1984 American action-thriller directed by Abel Ferrara. The lead roles are played by Billy Dee Williams and Tom Berenger.-Plot:...
(1984), Night Ripper (1986) and Jack's Back
Jack's Back
Jack’s Back is a 1988 horror film directed and written by Rowdy Herrington and starring James Spader and Cynthia Gibb.-Plot:In Los Angeles, a young doctor is suspected when a series of Jack the Ripper copycat killings is committed...
(1988) received poor reviews, as did the Japanese pink film Assault! Jack the Ripper
Assault! Jack the Ripper
is a 1976 Japanese film in the "Violent Pink" genre of Nikkatsu's Roman porno series. It was directed by Yasuharu Hasebe and stars Tamaki Katsura and Yutaka Hayashi.-Synopsis:...
. Edge of Sanity (1989) is lent "post-Psycho
Psycho (1960 film)
Psycho is a 1960 American suspense/psychological horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins. The film is based on the screenplay by Joseph Stefano, who adapted it from the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch...
gravitas" by the casting of Anthony Perkins
Anthony Perkins
Anthony Perkins was an American actor, best known for his Oscar-nominated role in Friendly Persuasion and as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho , and its three sequels.-Early life:...
as "Dr Jekyll" and his alter-ego "Jack Hyde", but was still condemned by critics "as a tasteless exercise". The Dolph Lundgren
Dolph Lundgren
Dolph Lundgren is a Swedish actor, director, and martial artist. He belongs to a generation of film actors who epitomise the movie action hero stereotype including Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme.A graduate in chemical...
vehicle Jill the Ripper (2000) reverses the traditional genders of victims and villains, with a female Ripper and male victims.
In Time After Time
Time After Time (1979 film)
Time After Time is a 1979 American fantasy film written and directed by Nicholas Meyer. His screenplay is based largely on a novel by Karl Alexander and a story by Steve Hayes. It concerns British author H. G...
(1979), based on the novel of the same title, Jack escapes in a time machine
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
to modern-day San Francisco and is pursued by H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
. The pursuer was originally slated to be Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
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 Terror at London Bridge (1985), starring David Hasselhoff
David Hasselhoff
David Michael Hasselhoff is an American actor, singer, producer and businessman. He is best known for his lead roles as Michael Knight in the popular 1980s US series Knight Rider and as L.A. County Lifeguard Mitch Buchannon in the series Baywatch...
, Jack's spirit is transported to Arizona in a cursed stone from London Bridge
London Bridge (Lake Havasu City)
London Bridge is a bridge in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, United States, that is the reconstruction of the 1831 London Bridge that spanned the River Thames in London, England until it was dismantled in 1967. The Arizona bridge is a reinforced concrete structure clad in the original masonry of the...
. In The Ripper (1985), his spirit is instead concealed in a cursed ring. Ripper Man (1994) depicts a killer who believes himself to be the reincarnation of George Chapman
George Chapman (murderer)
George Chapman was a Polish serial killer known as the Borough Poisoner. Born Seweryn Antonowicz Kłosowski in Poland, he moved as an adult to England, where he committed his crimes...
, who was suspected of being Jack the Ripper after his arrest and execution for murder in 1903.
Released in the same year as From Hell, and consequently overshadowed by it, were Ripper
Ripper (film)
Ripper is a 2001 Canadian-British horror film, directed by John Eyres. The film stars A. J. Cook and Bruce Payne. It was written and produced by John A. Curtis and Evan Tylor and by production companies Prophecy Entertainment and Studio Eight Productions.- Plot :Molly Keller Ripper (also known as...
and Bad Karma
Bad Karma (2002 film)
Bad Karma is a 2002 film directed by John Hough. Patsy Kensit stars as a mental patient who believes she is the reincarnated lover of Jack the Ripper and believes her psychiatrist is the reincarnated mass murderer...
(retitled as Hell's Gate). Ripper centres on psychology student Molly Keller (played by A. J. Cook
A. J. Cook (actress)
Andrea Joy "A.J." Cook-Andersen is a Canadian actress best known for her role as Supervisory Special Agent Jennifer "JJ" Jareau in the CBS crime drama Criminal Minds...
) 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
Patsy Kensit
Patricia Jude Francis "Patsy" Kensit is an English actress, singer, model and former child star, known for her television and film appearances. Her films include Lethal Weapon 2 and she has been married to rock stars Jim Kerr and Liam Gallagher, as well as herself fronting the band Eighth Wonder...
as the Ripper's female accomplice.
Art
Walter Sickert
Walter Richard Sickert , born in Munich, Germany, was a painter who was a member of the Camden Town Group in London. He was an important influence on distinctively British styles of avant-garde art in the 20th century....
was an English artist inspired by the seediness of the East End of London
East End of London
The East End of London, also known simply as the East End, is the area of London, England, United Kingdom, east of the medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames. Although not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries, the River Lea can be considered another boundary...
. His works include "Jack the Ripper's Bedroom".
Comics
From HellFrom Hell
From Hell is a comic book series by writer Alan Moore and artist Eddie Campbell, originally published from 1991 to 1996, speculating upon the identity and motives of Jack the Ripper. The title is taken from the first words of the "From Hell" letter, which some authorities believe was an authentic...
is a graphic novel
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
about the Ripper case by Alan Moore
Alan Moore
Alan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...
and Eddie Campbell
Eddie Campbell
Eddie Campbell is a Scottish comics artist and cartoonist who now lives in Australia. Probably best known as the illustrator and publisher of From Hell , Campbell is also the creator of the semi-autobiographical Alec stories collected in Alec: The Years Have Pants, and Bacchus , a wry adventure...
, which took its name from the "From Hell" letter
From Hell letter
The "From Hell" letter is a letter posted in 1888 by a person who claimed to be the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper....
supposedly written by the Ripper. It is based on Stephen Knight conspiracy theory
Conspiracy theory
A conspiracy theory explains an event as being the result of an alleged plot by a covert group or organization or, more broadly, the idea that important political, social or economic events are the products of secret plots that are largely unknown to the general public.-Usage:The term "conspiracy...
, which accused royalty and freemasons of complicity in the crimes and was popularised by his book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution. In the Appendix to the graphic novel, Moore clearly states that he lends no credibility to the Knight theory and only used it for dramatic purposes. Royalty and the Ripper also featured in Blood of the Innocent
Blood of the Innocent
Blood of the Innocent is the name of a comic book created by Rickey Shanklin, Marc Hempel and Mark Wheatley which was published by WaRP Graphics in 1985.-About the series:...
by Rickey Shanklin, Marc Hempel
Marc Hempel
Marc Hempel is an American cartoonist/comics artist best known for his work on The Sandman with Neil Gaiman.-Biography:...
and Mark Wheatley
Mark Wheatley (comics)
Mark Wheatley is an American illustrator, writer, editor, and publisher in the comic book field. Wheatley's comic book and pulp creations include Breathtaker, Mars, and Blood of the Innocent, all illustrated by his frequent collaborator Marc Hempel...
in 1986, and a story ("Royal Blood") in DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
' Hellblazer
Hellblazer
Hellblazer is a contemporary horror comic book series, originally published by DC Comics, and subsequently by the Vertigo imprint since March 1993, the month the imprint was introduced, where it remains to this day...
series in 1992.
Issue #100 of Marvel Comics Master of Kung Fu (1981) featured a story titled "Red of Fang and Claw, All Love Lost". In it, the Ripper was an experiment of Fu Manchu
Fu Manchu
Dr. Fu Manchu is a fictional character introduced in a series of novels by British author Sax Rohmer during the first half of the 20th century...
's, who escaped and hid in London. The hero fought him at the end of the story. DC Comics' Gotham by Gaslight
Batman: Gotham by Gaslight
Gotham by Gaslight is a DC Comics one-shot by Brian Augustyn and Mike Mignola, with inks by P. Craig Russell. It spawned a sequel, Master of the Future , also written by Augustyn, but with art by Eduardo Barreto....
(1989), features a Victorian era
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
version of the superhero
Superhero
A superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...
Batman
Batman
Batman is a fictional character created by the artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. A comic book superhero, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 , and since then has appeared primarily in publications by DC Comics...
hunting the Ripper in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. The two fictional worlds, both dark and gothic, complement one another and sit easily together. Jack the Ripper featured in Grant Morrison
Grant Morrison
Grant Morrison is a Scottish comic book writer, playwright and occultist. He is known for his nonlinear narratives and counter-cultural leanings, as well as his successful runs on titles like Animal Man, Doom Patrol, JLA, The Invisibles, New X-Men, Fantastic Four, All-Star Superman, and...
's Doom Patrol
Doom Patrol
The Doom Patrol is a superhero team appearing in publications from DC Comics. The original Doom Patrol first appeared in My Greatest Adventure #80...
in 1989, Wonder Woman: Amazonia
Wonder Woman: Amazonia
Wonder Woman: Amazonia is a comic book one-shot published by DC Comics under its Elseworlds imprint. As with all Elseworlds it tells a non-canon story of a DC hero, this time Wonder Woman, outside of regular continuity and is set in the 19th Century...
and Predator: Nemesis
Predator (comics)
The Predator comic books are part of the Predator franchise published by Dark Horse Comics.-Stories:*Predator **1-4 by Mark Verheiden, Chris Warner and Ron Randall, June 1989-March 1990...
in 1997, and in a Judge Dredd
Judge Dredd
Judge Joseph Dredd is a comics character whose strip in the British science fiction anthology 2000 AD is the magazine's longest running . Dredd is an American law enforcement officer in a violent city of the future where uniformed Judges combine the powers of police, judge, jury and executioner...
story: "Night of the Ripper!". A story in the Justice League of America series fused with H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
' The Island of Dr. Moreau and features Jack the Ripper as an orangutan
Orangutan
Orangutans are the only exclusively Asian genus of extant great ape. The largest living arboreal animals, they have proportionally longer arms than the other, more terrestrial, great apes. They are among the most intelligent primates and use a variety of sophisticated tools, also making sleeping...
, while the immortal super-villain Vandal Savage
Vandal Savage
Vandal Savage is a fictional character, a supervillain published by DC Comics. He first appeared in Green Lantern vol. 1 #10 , and was created by Alfred Bester and Martin Nodell....
has claimed to be responsible for the Ripper murders. The comic Whitechapel Freak (2001) by David Hitchcock uses Jack the Ripper as an underlying background figure in a story that focuses on a travelling freak show. The Ripper is a legless man "strapped onto the shoulders of a midget". Rick Geary
Rick Geary
Rick Geary is an American cartoonist and illustrator.-Biography:Rick Geary was born on February 25, 1946 in Kansas City, Missouri. Geary was initially introduced to comics readers with his contributions to the Heavy Metal and National Lampoon magazines...
's Jack the Ripper story in a 1995 volume of his A Treasury of Victorian Murder is a straighter retelling.
The CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is an American crime drama television series, which premiered on CBS on October 6, 2000. The show was created by Anthony E. Zuiker and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer...
graphic novel Serial is about a Jack the Ripper copy-cat killer in present-day Las Vegas during a "Ripper-Mania" Convention, leading to hundreds of Ripper case enthusiasts as suspects in the murders.
Jack the Ripper appears in the Japanese manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
Soul Eater
Soul Eater (manga)
is a Japanese manga written and illustrated by Atsushi Ōkubo. Set at the "Death Weapon Meister Academy," the series revolves around three teams consisting of a weapon meister and human weapon...
by Atsushi Ookubo as the main protagonist's 99th collected soul. He is portrayed as a long, thin man with giant metal claws and a long, sharp nose. In the 2006 manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
Kuroshitsuji
Kuroshitsuji
is a manga written and illustrated by Yana Toboso. Since its debut on September 16, 2006, it has been serialized in Square Enix's shōnen manga magazine Monthly GFantasy....
by the Japanese manga artist
Mangaka
is the Japanese word for a comic artist or cartoonist. Outside of Japan, manga usually refers to a Japanese comic book and mangaka refers to the author of the manga, who is usually Japanese...
Toboso Yana, Jack the Ripper is portrayed as a mysterious person who had been responsible for the multiple yet common deaths of prostitutes in Victorian London. A few chapters later, it is revealed that Jack the Ripper is actually two people working together: a masquerading shinigami
Shinigami
is the personification of death in Japan. It's unclear when the concept entered Japanese culture; it may have been imported from China , or possibly been imported from Europe during the Sengoku era—that period in European history featured a common motif of the Grim Reaper gathering souls...
and a doctor of noble lineage.
In the Italian comic book
Italian comics
Italian comics are comics made in Italy. They are locally known as fumetto – plural form fumetti – although this latter term is often used in English to describe a specific comic genre . The most popular Italian comics have been translated into many languages...
Martin Mystère
Martin Mystère
Martin Mystère is an Italian comic book. Created by writer Alfredo Castelli and drawn by Giancarlo Alessandrini, it was first published in Italy by Sergio Bonelli Editore in 1982....
, a vampire
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
Richard Van Helsing
Abraham Van Helsing
Professor Abraham van Helsing is a protagonist from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula.Van Helsing is a Dutch doctor with a wide range of interests and accomplishments, partly attested by the string of letters that follows his name: "M.D., D.Ph., D.Litt., etc." The character is best known as a...
discovers that the Ripper is an ancient mythical force, divided into several knives, which force their holders to kill. Van Helsing searches for and destroys the knives, including one which is destroyed by Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
.
In the manga "Hell Blade" from 2009, the main character is Jack the Ripper himself, tracking down its preys in London in 1888.
Theatre and opera
The Ripper features at the end of Frank WedekindFrank Wedekind
Benjamin Franklin Wedekind , usually known as Frank Wedekind, was a German playwright...
's morality play
Morality play
The morality play is a genre of Medieval and early Tudor theatrical entertainment. In their own time, these plays were known as "interludes", a broader term given to dramas with or without a moral theme. Morality plays are a type of allegory in which the protagonist is met by personifications of...
Die Büchse der Pandora
Pandora's Box (play)
Pandora's Box is a play by the German dramatist Frank Wedekind. It forms the second part of his pairing of 'Lulu' plays , both of which depict a society "riven by the demands of lust and greed".G. W. Pabst directed a silent film version , which was loosely based on the play, in 1929...
(1904), in which the Ripper murders Lulu, the central character. Lulu is the personification of sinful Lust
Lust
Lust is an emotional force that is directly associated with the thinking or fantasizing about one's desire, usually in a sexual way.-Etymology:The word lust is phonetically similar to the ancient Roman lustrum, which literally meant "purification"...
who meets her comeuppance when she unwittingly flirts with the Ripper. In the original stage production, Wedekind played the part of the Ripper. The play was later adapted into the film Pandora's Box
Pandora's Box (film)
Pandora's Box is a 1929 German silent melodrama film based on Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora . Directed by Austrian filmmaker Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the film stars Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, and Francis Lederer...
(1928, directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Georg Wilhelm Pabst
-Biography:Pabst was born in Raudnitz, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary , the son of a railroad employee.Returning from the United States, he was in France when World War I began...
), and the opera Lulu
Lulu (opera)
Lulu is an opera by the composer Alban Berg. The libretto was adapted by Berg himself from Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora .-Composition history:...
(by Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
), both of which also end with the murder of Lulu by the Ripper. It was also made into three films in 1923, 1962 and 1980 respectively, and a play Lulu by Peter Barnes premièred in 1970.
André de Lorde
André de Lorde
André de Latour, comte de Lorde was a French playwright, the main author of the Grand Guignol plays from 1901-1926. His evening career was as a dramatist of terror; during daytimes he worked as a librarian in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. He wrote 150 plays, all of them devoted mainly to the...
's Jack l'Eventreur was part of the Grand Guignol
Grand Guignol
Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol — known as the Grand Guignol — was a theatre in the Pigalle area of Paris . From its opening in 1897 until its closing in 1962 it specialized in naturalistic horror shows...
's output in Paris. Marie Belloc Lowndes' novel and short story The Lodger was adapted for the stage as The Lodger: Who Is He? by Horace Annesley Vachell
Horace Annesley Vachell
Horace Annesley Vachell was a prolific English writer of novels, plays, short stories, essays and autobiographical works.Born in Sydenham, Kent on 30 October 1861, he was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst. After a short period in the Rifle Brigade, he went to California where he became partner in...
. In 1917, Lionel Atwill
Lionel Atwill
Lionel Atwill was an English stage and film actor born in Croydon, London, England.He studied architecture before his stage debut at the Garrick Theatre, London in 1904. He become a star in Broadway theatre by 1918, and made his screen debut in 1919. He acted on the stage in Australia but was most...
's first role in Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
was as the title character. Phyllis Tate
Phyllis Tate
Phyllis Tate was an English composer known for forming unusual instrumentations in her compositions. Her musical style has been called avant-garde and she is recognized for appealing to amateur performers and children....
also based her opera The Lodger
The Lodger (opera)
The Lodger is an opera in two acts composed by Phyllis Tate. The libretto is by David Franklin, after the 1913 novel of the same name by Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes...
, first performed in 1960, on Lowndes' story.
Murder Most Foul by Claude Pirkis was first performed in 1948. The character of the murderer, Dr. Stanley, was taken from The Mystery of Jack the Ripper by Leonard Matters, first published in 1929. Doug Lucie's Force and Hypocrisy is based on the royal conspiracy theory of Stephen Knight.
Music
Link WrayLink Wray
Fred Lincoln "Link" Wray Jr was an American rock and roll guitarist, songwriter and occasional singer....
's 1959 instrumental "Jack the Ripper" begins with an evil laugh and a woman's scream. These devices were also used in "Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper (song)
"Jack the Ripper" is a song by English musician Screaming Lord Sutch, released as a 7" single in the UK and Germany in 1963 on Decca. It was produced by Joe Meek and recorded in his Holloway Road studio in Islington, England...
" (1963), originally recorded by Screaming Lord Sutch
Screaming Lord Sutch
David Edward Sutch , also known as "Screaming Lord Sutch, 3rd Earl of Harrow", or simply "Screaming Lord Sutch", was a musician from the United Kingdom...
and covered by The White Stripes
The White Stripes
The White Stripes was an American rock band, formed in 1997 in Detroit, Michigan. The group consisted of the songwriter Jack White and drummer Meg White . Jack and Meg White were previously married to each other, but are now divorced...
, The Horrors
The Horrors
The Horrors are an English band from Southend on Sea, formed in 2005. Their debut Strange House, was released in 2007 and reached number thirty-seven on the UK Albums Chart, their second album Primary Colours was released in 2009 and peaked at number 25 in the UK...
, Black Lips
Black Lips
Black Lips are a "Flower Punk" band from Atlanta, Georgia.-History:The band formed in 1999 in Dunwoody, Georgia after guitarist Cole Alexander and bassist Jared Swilley left the Renegades, and guitarist Ben Eberbaugh left the Reruns. Alexander and Swilley were known for their crude antics both...
, The Sharks
The Sharks
The Sharks are a new wave band founded in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1979, by Doug Phillips , Steve Zero , Sam Lugar , and Dave Schaeffer.-History:...
and Jack & The Rippers.
Jack the Ripper: The Musical (1974), with lyrics by Ron Pember
Ron Pember
Ron Pember is a British actor, best known for his role as Alain Muny in the 1970s BBC drama series Secret Army.Pember played the part of the psychopathic taxman in the Red Dwarf episode "Better Than Life"...
and music by Dennis DeMarne, influenced Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 1936 British film produced and directed by George King.-Plot:The film features Tod Slaughter in one of his most famous roles as barber Sweeney Todd. Sweeney Todd was wrongly sentenced to life in prison. After his release 15 years later, he begins...
. The mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap
This Is Spinal Tap
This Is Spinal Tap is an American 1984 rock musical mockumentary directed by Rob Reiner about the fictional heavy metal band Spinal Tap...
(1984) features a vignette in which the band discusses the possibility of composing a rock opera about Jack the Ripper's life, called Saucy Jack. In 1996, a rock opera entitled Yours Truly: Jack the Ripper with lyrics by Frogg Moody and Dave Taylor was performed and, in a break from recent practice, portrayed the Ripper as an ordinary everyday man.
Metal bands are particularly keen to associate themselves with the "bloodshed and sleaze" image of the Ripper. Songs entitled "Ripper" were recorded by Judas Priest
Judas Priest
Judas Priest are an English heavy metal band from Birmingham, England, formed in 1969. The current line-up consists of lead vocalist Rob Halford, guitarists Glenn Tipton and Richie Faulkner, bassist Ian Hill, and drummer Scott Travis. The band has gone through several drummers over the years,...
in 1976, and Praying Mantis
Praying Mantis (band)
Praying Mantis are an English rock band. Although a part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal scene, they pursued a musical direction more melodic and AOR-sounding than their contemporaries.-Career:...
in 1979. American deathcore
Deathcore
Deathcore is an extreme metal music genre that combines elements of death metal with elements of metalcore or hardcore punk, or both. It is defined by an "excessive" use of death metal riffs, blast beats and use of hardcore punk breakdowns...
band Whitechapel
Whitechapel (band)
Whitechapel is an American deathcore band from Knoxville, Tennessee. The group comprises vocalist Phil Bozeman, guitarists Ben Savage, Alex Wade, Zach Householder; bassist Gabe Crisp and drummer Ben Harclerode. Their band name is derived from a district in the built-up inner city of London, known...
derived its name from the inner-city district Whitechapel
Whitechapel
Whitechapel is a built-up inner city district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, London, England. It is located east of Charing Cross and roughly bounded by the Bishopsgate thoroughfare on the west, Fashion Street on the north, Brady Street and Cavell Street on the east and The Highway on the...
in London, the location of the Jack the Ripper murders. Accordingly, the band's debut album The Somatic Defilement
The Somatic Defilement
The Somatic Defilement is the first album by the American deathcore band Whitechapel. The album was released on July 31, 2007, through Candlelight Records.-Overview:...
is a first-person narrative
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
concept album
Concept album
In music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical." Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing...
based on Jack the Ripper. The Texan metal group Ripper went for a more direct choice of name, vocalists with the groups Meridian and Sodomizer adopted the names Jack D. Ripper and Ripper, respectively. Gothic metalcore sextet Motionless in White
Motionless in White
Motionless in White is an American metalcore band from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Formed in 2005, the group is known for its dark horror-themed lyrics and physical appearances, that of which heavily correspond to gothic imagery. Motionless in White is currently signed to Fearless Records and have...
released a song entitled "London in Terror" as a single from their debut album Creatures
Creatures (Motionless in White album)
Creatures is the debut album by American metal band Motionless in White, released on October 12, 2010 through Fearless Records. The album spawned three singles, "Abigail", "Immaculate Misconception", and the title track, all three of which had accompanied music videos as well...
. Californian death metal band Brain Drill
Brain Drill
Brain Drill is an American death metal band formed in 2005 from Ben Lomond, California. They are signed to Metal Blade Records and released their full length debut album entitled Apocalyptic Feasting on February 5, 2008...
have a song titled "Nemesis of Neglect".
Songs inspired by the Ripper were recorded by artists as varied as Morrissey
Morrissey
Steven Patrick Morrissey , known as Morrissey, is an English singer and lyricist. He rose to prominence in the 1980s as the lyricist and vocalist of the alternative rock band The Smiths. The band was highly successful in the United Kingdom but broke up in 1987, and Morrissey began a solo career,...
, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are an Australian alternative rock band, formed in Melbourne in 1983. The band is fronted by Nick Cave and has featured international personnel throughout their career.-Formation and early releases :...
, The Legendary Pink Dots
The Legendary Pink Dots
The Legendary Pink Dots are an Anglo-Dutch experimental rock band formed in London in August 1980. Although far outside the mainstream , LPD have released more than 40 albums, have a devoted worldwide following, and tour frequently.-Overview:The Legendary Pink Dots formed in August 1980 in London...
, Thee Headcoats
Thee Headcoats
Thee Headcoats 1989 - 2000, was a band comprising Billy Childish, Bruce Brand, and Johnny Johnson. Childish was featured on guitar and vocals, Brand on drums and backing vocals, and Johnson on bass. The band was the most prolific of Childish's many musical projects, releasing fourteen full...
, The Buff Medways and Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
. Radio Werewolf
Radio Werewolf
Radio Werewolf was an deathrock band formed in 1984 in Los Angeles. The band split in the early 90s, and Nikolas Schreck and Zeena Lavey continued making music.-History:...
's album The Fiery Summons features "From Hell" which uses words from the letters attributed to the Ripper
From Hell letter
The "From Hell" letter is a letter posted in 1888 by a person who claimed to be the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper....
.
The band Screech Owls released a song called 'Jack The Ripper' on their first EP 'Jacknife' in 1994
Television
In the Star TrekStar Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
episode "Wolf in the Fold" (1967), writer Robert Bloch
Robert Bloch
Robert Albert Bloch was a prolific American writer, primarily of crime, horror and science fiction. He is best known as the writer of Psycho, the basis for the film of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock...
reused parts of his short-story "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper", which had already appeared as a 1961 television episode of Thriller. An eternal entity, referred to as "Redjac", feeds on fear, and has committed a string of murders, including those attributed to Jack the Ripper, as a means of sustaining itself. By the end of the 1960s, the Ripper was established in American television as a "universal force of evil", who could be adapted to suit any villainous niche.
In an episode of The Twilight Zone
The Twilight Zone
The Twilight Zone is an American television anthology series created by Rod Serling. Each episode is a mixture of self-contained drama, psychological thriller, fantasy, science fiction, suspense, or horror, often concluding with a macabre or unexpected twist...
from 1963 entitled "The New Exhibit", Martin Balsam
Martin Balsam
Martin Henry Balsam was an American actor. He is known for his Oscar-winning role as "Arnold Burns" in A Thousand Clowns and his role as "Detective Milton Arbogast" in Psycho.- Early life :...
plays the curator of a wax museum who becomes so obsessed by five wax figures of murderers, including Jack the Ripper, that he commits murder to protect them. In the Cimarron Strip
Cimarron Strip
Cimarron Strip is an American Western television series that aired on CBS from September 1967 to March 1968. Starring Stuart Whitman as Marshal Jim Crown, the series was produced by the creators of Gunsmoke...
episode "Knife in the Wilderness" (1968), written by Harlan Ellison
Harlan Ellison
Harlan Jay Ellison is an American writer. His principal genre is speculative fiction.His published works include over 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media...
, Jack continues his work across America ending in Cimarron City where he meets his end at the hands of Indians. In the Get Smart
Get Smart
Get Smart is an American comedy television series that satirizes the secret agent genre. Created by Mel Brooks with Buck Henry, the show starred Don Adams , Barbara Feldon , and Edward Platt...
episode "House of Max" (1970), Jack the Ripper is an animated wax dummy. (When the Scotland Yard detective declares that "Jack the Ripper is not a man," Max wonders out loud, "Jacqueline the Ripper?".)
In the first episode of the Soul Eater
Soul Eater
Soul Eater may refer to:* Soul Eater , a Japanese manga series by Atsushi Okubo and adapted into an anime television series** Soul Eater Evans, one of the main protagonists of the Soul Eater manga and anime....
anime, Jack the Ripper is depicted as a demonic monster who eats innocent souls for power, and has a mechanical armor, with claws and a pumpkin-like mask. His kishin egg (pure evil soul) is eaten by the title character when he kills Ripper.
In The Sixth Senses
The Sixth Sense (TV series)
The Sixth Sense is an American paranormal thriller television series featuring Gary Collins and Catherine Ferrar. Based on the 1971 television movie Sweet, Sweet Rachel, the series was broadcast by the American Broadcasting Company from January 1972 through December 1972.-Synopsis:Collins is...
"With Affection, Jack the Ripper" (1972) a man is driven mad during an paranormal
Paranormal
Paranormal is a general term that designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation" or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure...
experiment when he inhabits the body of Jack the Ripper. A Fantasy Island
Fantasy Island
Fantasy Island is the title of two separate but related American fantasy television series, both originally airing on the ABC television network.-Original series:...
episode, also titled "With Affection, Jack the Ripper" (1980), was written by the same writer as the episode of The Sixth Sense, Don Ingalls. Lynda Day George
Lynda Day George
For other entertainers with similar names, see Linda George .Lynda Day George is an American television and film actress whose career spanned three decades from the 1960s to the 1980s...
plays criminologist Lorraine Peters who uses a time portal to confirm her suspicion that Jack the Ripper was a doctor, Albert Fell, played by Victor Buono
Victor Buono
Charles Victor Buono was an American actor and comic.-Early life and career:Buono was born in San Diego, California, the son of Myrtle Belle and Victor Francis Buono . His maternal grandmother, Myrtle Glied , was a Vaudeville performer on the Orpheum Circuit...
. Fell follows her back through the portal, grabs Peters and takes her back to 1888, where the enigmatic Mr. Roarke intervenes fortuitously, and Fell dies moments later while fleeing. The name Fell is clearly lifted from Margery Allingham's 1948 radio play Room to Let. A time portal is also used in "A Rip in Time" (1997), the first episode of the short-lived TV series Timecop
Timecop (TV series)
Timecop is an American science fiction television series. The show was broadcast on the ABC network and first aired in 1997. The series was based on the Timecop movie and the "Time Cop" feature which had appeared in the comic book series Dark Horse Comics.- Cast :* Officer Jack Logan – Ted...
, in which a timetravelling cop travels back to 1888 to catch a criminal who has killed, and displaced, Jack the Ripper. The Babylon 5
Babylon 5
Babylon 5 is an American science fiction television series created, produced and largely written by J. Michael Straczynski. The show centers on a space station named Babylon 5: a focal point for politics, diplomacy, and conflict during the years 2257–2262...
episode "Comes the Inquisitor
Comes the Inquisitor
-External links:* "Comes the Inquisitor" at Wikiquote...
" (1995) features a character named Sebastian who is Jack the Ripper, abducted by the alien Vorlon
Vorlon
A Vorlon is a member of a fictional alien species in the Babylon 5 television series and fictional universe. The Vorlon species is a member of the First Ones, a group made up of the earliest species to gain sentience in the galaxy...
s in the year 1888 and made into their inquisitor so that he can test (through torture) beings who are called to lead an important cause.
Jack the Ripper (1973) by Elwyn Jones
Elwyn Jones (writer)
Elwyn Jones was a British television writer and producer, whose best-known work was perhaps the co-creation of the famous police drama series Z-Cars for BBC Television in 1962...
and John Lloyd
John Lloyd (writer)
John Hardress Wilfred Lloyd CBE is a British comedy writer and television producer. He is the great nephew of John Hardress Lloyd.-Early life and career:...
linked with the police drama Z Cars. The program featured Z Cars detectives Barlow and Watt, played by Stratford Johns
Stratford Johns
Stratford Johns, born Alan Edgar Stratford-Johns, was a popular British stage, film and television actor who is best remembered for his starring role as Detective Inspector Charlie Barlow in the innovative and long-running BBC police series Z-Cars, created by Troy Kennedy-Martin.-Early life:Johns...
and Frank Windsor
Frank Windsor
Frank Windsor is an English actor, mainly on television.He attended Queen Mary's Grammar School, Walsall. He began his career on radio and made an appearance in a 1953 film of Henry V...
respectively, investigating the murders from an historical perspective. In the first episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker
Kolchak: The Night Stalker
Kolchak: The Night Stalker is an American television series that aired on ABC during the 1974-1975 season. It featured a fictional Chicago newspaper reporter — Carl Kolchak, played by Darren McGavin — who investigates mysterious crimes with unlikely causes, particularly ones law...
(1974), titled "The Ripper", reporter Carl Kolchak pursues a supernatural killer whose victims match the patterns of the original Ripper murders. The killer has superhuman strength and is invulnerable to weapons, but Kolchak dematerialises the apparently immortal being by electrocuting him. An episode of The Outer Limits
The Outer Limits (1995 TV series)
The Outer Limits is an American television series that originally aired on Showtime,the Sci Fi Channel and in syndication between 1995 and 2002...
titled "Ripper
Ripper (The Outer Limits)
"Ripper" is an episode of The Outer Limits television show. It first aired on 7 May 1999, during the fifth season.-Introduction:London, 1888. After Dr. Jack York's misdiagnosis ends up costing a patient's life, he has descended into absinthe addiction, and spends his evenings at a brothel. Although...
" (1997) was set in 1888 and starred Cary Elwes
Cary Elwes
Ivan Simon Cary Elwes , known professionally as Cary Elwes, is an English actor. The son of Dominick Elwes and Tessa Georgina Kennedy, Elwes acted in off-Broadway plays during college and moved to the United States in the early 1980s. He is known for his role as Westley in the cult classic The...
as Dr. Jack York, who kills women whom he believes are possessed by an alien entity. In an episode of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, "The Knife" (2001), the explorers meet the two men blamed for the murders in Stephen Knight's royal conspiracy theory: Sir William Gull and Robert Anderson. Spike Milligan
Spike Milligan
Terence Alan Patrick Seán "Spike" Milligan Hon. KBE was a comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright, soldier and actor. His early life was spent in India, where he was born, but the majority of his working life was spent in the United Kingdom. He became an Irish citizen in 1962 after the...
parodied the Ripper-genre in the "sublimely daft" The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town
The Phantom Raspberry Blower
The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town was a serial written by Spike Milligan and Ronnie Barker that ran every week on The Two Ronnies sketch show in 1976 on BBC One...
. The 2007 science-fiction series Sanctuary
Sanctuary
A sanctuary is any place of safety. They may be categorized into human and non-human .- Religious sanctuary :A religious sanctuary can be a sacred place , or a consecrated area of a church or temple around its tabernacle or altar.- Sanctuary as a sacred place :#Sanctuary as a sacred place:#:In...
details the possession of John Druitt (implied to be historical Ripper suspect Montague John Druitt) by a demonic energy creature which ultimately turns him into the Ripper. In the seventh season of Smallville
Smallville
Smallville is the hometown of Superman in comic books published by DC Comics. While growing up in Smallville, the young Clark Kent attended Smallville High with best friends Lana Lang, Chloe Sullivan and Pete Ross...
, a doctor called Curtis Knox says he can cure meteor-freaks, but is lying so he can kill them. Knox is discovered to be immortal and claims to be Jack the Ripper. In the Canadian series Murdoch Mysteries
Murdoch Mysteries
Murdoch Mysteries is a Canadian drama television series that airs on Citytv, featuring Yannick Bisson as William Murdoch, a police detective working in Toronto, Ontario in the 1890s. The television series is based on the Detective Murdoch series of novels by Maureen Jennings. The fifth season was...
, the opening episode of the second season involves late 19th-century detectives investigating a series of murders which they describe as being very similar to the ones that occurred in Whitechapel. In the 2009 ITV1
ITV1
ITV1 is a generic brand that is used by twelve franchises of the British ITV Network in the English regions, Wales, southern Scotland , the Isle of Man and the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey. The ITV1 brand was introduced by Carlton and Granada in 2001, alongside the regional identities of their...
miniseries Whitechapel
Whitechapel (TV series)
Whitechapel is a three-part British television drama series produced by Carnival Films, which first broadcast in the UK on 2 February 2009 and which dealt with the murders of Jack the Ripper....
, a copycat killer commits murders on the same date, time and fashion as the Jack the Ripper murders, and the police struggle to catch up.
The animated series, "Magic Master", has a villain named Jacquelyn who uses Jack the ripper as her personal ghost.
A 2011 episode of Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
entitled A Good Man Goes to War
A Good Man Goes to War
"A Good Man Goes to War" is the seventh episode of the sixth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, and was first broadcast on BBC One on 4 June 2011...
reveals that Jack was defeated - and, in fact, eaten - by a female Silurian
Silurian (Doctor Who)
The Silurians are a fictional race of reptile-like humanoids in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The species first appeared in Doctor Who in the 1970 serial Doctor Who and the Silurians...
warrior named Madame Vastra living undercover in 1888 England.
Video games
Jack the Ripper's appearance in computer games began in a text adventure game (Jack the Ripper) released in 1987. This was followed by his appearance in the Sega platform gamePlatform game
A platform game is a video game characterized by requiring the player to jump to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles . It must be possible to control these jumps and to fall from platforms or miss jumps...
Master of Darkness
Master of Darkness
Master of Darkness , is a video game released for the Sega Game Gear and the Sega Master System. It was developed by SIMS.-Overview:...
(1992), where he is revealed to be an animated wax doll upon defeat. Also in 1992, Jack the Ripper featured in the dungeon crawl
Dungeon crawl
A dungeon crawl is a type of scenario in fantasy role-playing games in which heroes navigate a labyrinthine environment, battling various monsters, and looting any treasure they may find...
style RPG Waxworks
Waxworks (1992 video game)
Waxworks is a Horrorsoft first-person dungeon crawl style RPG. It was originally an Amiga game but was also released for DOS. It is infamous for its still-startling depictions of gore and its difficult gameplay...
. Jack is one of the historically-based characters in the World Heroes
World Heroes
is a series of fighting games created by ADK originally created for the Neo Geo MVS arcade cabinets with the assistance of SNK, though some of the games in the series were also ported to the Neo Geo AES and Neo-Geo CD platforms, as well as some non-SNK platforms such as the Super NES and the Sega...
fighting game
Fighting game
Fighting game is a video game genre where the player controls an on-screen character and engages in close combat with an opponent. These characters tend to be of equal power and fight matches consisting of several rounds, which take place in an arena. Players must master techniques such as...
series, making his debut in World Heroes 2: Jet in 1994. Ripper (1996) deals with a copycat serial killer in a futuristic New York City in the year 2040, and in Jack the Ripper (2003) the player takes on the role of a reporter sent to cover similar murders in New York in 1901, 13 years after the Ripper's murders, it turns out to be the work of the Ripper. Duke Nukem: Zero Hour
Duke Nukem: Zero Hour
Duke Nukem: Zero Hour is a third-person shooter video game in the Duke Nukem series, developed by Eurocom for the Nintendo 64. The game uses a relatively large 32 megabyte cartridge and could also utilize the Expansion Pak to allow for better graphics but slowing down the frame rate...
(1999) is a "light-hearted gunplay romp set in Victorian London" that features Jack the Ripper. He is one of the principal villains in the action-horror Shadow Man
Shadow Man (video game)
Shadow Man is a video game developed by Acclaim Studios Teesside and published by Acclaim Entertainment. It was designed by Guy Miller and Simon Phipps and is loosely based on the Shadowman comic book series published by Valiant Comics. The game was released in 1999 for the Nintendo 64,...
(1999), and Jack also appears in the gothic horror platform game MediEvil 2 (2000), but as a tall green monster with giant claws, long sharp teeth and a top hat, rather than as a human. A character named Jack the Ripper appeared as a third character in the Virtual Boy
Virtual Boy
The was a video game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was the first video game console that was supposed to be capable of displaying "true 3D graphics" out of the box. Whereas most video games use monocular cues to achieve the illusion of three dimensions on a two-dimensional...
game Jack Bros.
Jack Bros.
Jack Bros., known in Japan as , is the only video game developed and published by Atlus for the Virtual Boy console in 1995; its pre-production name was Devil Busters, which was soon changed....
Mystery in London: On the Trail of Jack the Ripper
Mystery in London
Mystery in London: On the Trail of Jack the Ripper is an adventure-puzzle casual game developed by Big Fish Studios, and distributed by Big Fish Games...
(2007) fuses the Ripper story with Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, while Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper (2009) fuses with the fictional world of Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
.
In Splatterhouse (2010 video game), Dr. Henry West became the mysterious Jack the Ripper after a series of murders he committed, as he claimed to be "bored" while in London.
External links and sources
- Ripper fiction book reviews from Casebook: Jack the RipperCasebook: Jack the RipperCasebook: Jack the Ripper is a website devoted to the historical mystery of the Jack the Ripper murders of Whitechapel and the surrounding areas of London in 1888 and possibly other years. The site was started in January 1996 and features suspect, victim and witness overviews as well as more than...