A disgrace

Rating: 3/10 (21 February 2002)

This film is an absolute disgrace. It profanes the memory of the dead, violates every imaginable principle and is boring cinema to boot.
I recommend that people find pictures of the Ripper's real victims - and what he did to them - before they decide what they think about this movie. How would you all react to a movie about Jeffrey Dahmer with this sort of Hollywood-ised romanticism attached?
All I can point to in this movie is the six buxom prostitutes washing themselves in the crystal clear waters of a horse's trough, standing around exchanging pleasantries like characters from a L'Oreal advert. Perfect, lustrous, flowing hair, clean complexions, great teeth, a touch of makeup in the right places. Oh, OK, not 6 stone, starving, filthy and battered. My mistake.
The Americans' accents are abysmal. The quotations from Shakespeare are an embarrassment. The Freemason malarky is all more frat party than Victorian England. The ending is a travesty so obscene that it beggars belief.
The only consolation in the movie is bravura performances - with nothing to work with - from Holm, Richardson, Coltrane and MacNiece.
I echo the sentiments of a previous comment - I hope the ghosts of history catch up with the Hughes Brothers some day, I really do.