Product Description
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An infant girl watches in horror as her her, the
infamous Jack the Ripper , brutally murders her mother. Years
later, young Anna (Angharad Rees) is now under the care of a fake
psychic and has been forced into prostitution. At the end of a
séance one evening, a woman is mysteriously killed. Dr. John
Pritchard (Eric Porter) suspects Anna is the murderer but cannot
understand how she could do this unspeakable act. Using new
Freudian psychoanalysis techniques, Pritchard experiments on Anna
and discovers a shocking secret. The spirit of the Ripper is
alive and well, and may be possessing his own daughter! Can this
evil be stopped before it's too late?
Completely restored in high-definition and released uncut for
the first time on Blu-ray in the U.S., HANDS OF THE RIPPER is a
film widely recognized as one of the most gruesome Hammer horror
films ever made.
Bonus Features
* THE DEVIL'S BLOODY PLAYTHING: POSSESSED BY HANDS OF THE RIPPER
Featurette
* SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENCE: THE EVOLUTION OF HAMMER GORE Motion
Still Gallery
* U.S. Television Introduction
* Original Theatrical Trailer and TV Spots
* HANDS OF THE RIPPER - Motion Still Gallery
* Isolated Music & Effects Audio Track
.com
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Released in the waning years of Hammer Films' two-decade
reign as one of the top producers of horror films, Peter Sasdy's
Hands of the Ripper (1971) is the studio's last successful
attempt at bringing its trademark blend of lush Gothic atmosphere
and graphic violence to a suspenseful and mature thriller hinged
on the Jack the Ripper case. UK TV and stage vets Angharad Rees
(Poldark) and Eric Porter (Moriarty to Jeremy Brett's Sherlock
Holmes) are top-billed as, respectively, a young woman plagued by
murderous impulses and the Freudian psychiatrist determined to
root out the cause of her homicidal urges. The killings--spurred
by the stabbing of Rees's mother by her her, the notorious
Ripper himself--are quite gruesome, even by latter-day Hammer
standards, but the most lasting impression left by the picture is
the doom-laden relationship between Rees and Porter, which
perversely twists the traditional arc of Hammer's previous
efforts, with the forces of reason and science not only failing
to overcome superstition, but also falling victim to them. The
result is a distinctly downbeat but still rewarding Hammer effort
that benefits greatly from its professional cast, Sasdy's
muscular direction (Ripper was his third project for the studio
after the equally intriguing Taste the Blood of Dracula and
Countess Dracula), and some opulent sets at Pinewood Studios.
It's unfortunate that few viewers on either side of the Atlantic
got to see the film, which flitted through theaters in a
truncated edit on a double bill with Hammer's Twins of Evil.
Synapse's Blu-ray/DVD combo presentation compares favorably to
its home video presentations of the equally obscure Twins and
Vampire Circus, offering not only an uncut edition of the film
but also a wealth of new and archival extras. The Devil's Bloody
Plaything is a lengthy making-of featurette from Ballyhoo Motion
Pictures that covers a wide range of subjects within the orbit of
Ripper, from the state of Hammer at the dawn of the 1970s to the
work of producer Aida Young and Sasdy's corner-cutting measures
for providing maximum screen value (using M's office from the
James Bond franchise and still photos from St. Peter's Cathedral
as rear-projection backdrop for the finale) through interviews
with the director himself and costar Jane Merrow (The Lion in
Winter), as well as filmmaker Joe Dante and author Kim Newman.
Slaughter of Innocence is a slide show of production photos
focusing on the grisliest moments from Hammer horror. Said gore
set pieces forced Universal to substantially trim Ripper for
broadcast on American television during the mid-1970s; the new
scenes, featuring actor Severn Darden as a psychologist spouting
vast as of expositional psycho-babble, are presented in
audio-only format (the video master was apparently lost in the
2008 fire at Universal). An appropriately overwrought theatrical
trailer and TV spots round out this terrific set. --Paul Gaita