Hell Knows its Own

Rating: 9/10 (4 August 2007)

Dateline: 1888, the London, slum of Whitechapel. Harassed by thugs and pimps, streetwalkers Mary Kelly (Heather Graham) and her companions meet daily misery until their friend Ann (Poppy Rogers) whose marriage to a budding artist (Mark Dexter) has rescued her and her daughter from the mean streets is mysteriously kidnapped in broad daylight and prostitutes disappear in a series of gruesome murders.
To ferret out the fiend who delights in gore, Police officials summon Inspector Fred Abberline, (Johnny Depp) a brilliant though erratic detective lost in the haze of cocaine addiction hiding from his terrifying psychic ability on one hand and the recent loss of his wife on the other.
The film's focus on the infamous Jack the Ripper caper of Victorian times cuts an exciting murder mystery with just the right number of hints to keep the breathless pace compelling at every turn through the twisted back alleys of Whitechapel. Depp gives an other worldly performance entirely appropriate to the subject matter. Ian Holm, Katrin Cartlidge, Robbie Coltrane and Ian Richardson recreate change of century London in a dark though not totally depressing tone.
As Abberline becomes immersed in the case, he is aided by a retired physician (Ian Holm) whose hands are no longer steady enough to hold the knife. At the same time, the recently widowed Abberline is falling in love with Mary.
To lift the London fog, Abberline frames an interesting hypothesis. His nemesis Jack the Ripper might have been crazy, but still acted logically in his own perverted way to be sure but for purpose larger than killing social undesirables, a handful of expendable prostitutes.
But as Abberline breaks through the slippery cordon of roadblocks put in his way, Whitechappel becomes more perilous for Abberline, Mary, and the other girls.
Will Satan dance in delight or will Abberline turn back the minions of evil to Hell from whence they came?
The Gates of Hell The ripper has overshadowed his competitors for gruesome honor because of his methodical MO: delightfully dissecting his victims with the care worthy of a devoted physician. That the Ripper operated with impunity in the heart of the world's most crowded city of the era and that high police officials ordered destruction of evidence suggests the protection of an highly placed person, the Crown Prince perhaps?
Did a wealthy fraternity with influence in the higher levels of power in the police and the ministries of the baroque world empire shield the culprit?
Very well shot with stylish backdrops lending a Gothic, creepy touch, From Hell is based on a comprehensive novel by Alan Moore. Directors excelled in attention to period detail and costuming. They may not have been the first to see a royal cabal. But the murders ended when the Crown Prince disappeared from public view into a sanitarium.
WHO WERE THE FREEMASONS? Could Lucifer in concert with bedlam have devised a more fiendish plot?
The Freemasons have been the villains of many versions of the Ripper Saga. From Hell is extraordinarily candid in portraying supposed Masonic rituals. Yet their role in From Hell is ambivalent.
Was a rogue Knight Templar implicated in the Ripper caper? Did the brotherhood punish him for the atrocity itself or for failure in attaining the ultimate goal?
The Masons will never say. The Freemasons in the 18th and 19th centuries saw the flowering of their fraternity not only in reactionary Britain but in Republican France, Italy and the United States and even in the Austro-Hungarian Holy Roman Empire.
Masons included princes and presidents, police and military officials as well as common tradesmen.
Masons were noteworthy figures not only in politics, both democratic and reactionary as well as the arts, sciences and literature. They promoted public education, endowed hospitals and performed acts of charity and benevolence in a time when public and private charity was regarded as fostering excessive growth of a dependent class.
As a matter of policy, Masons neither take nor seek credit for their good works nor rebut their critics.