[.ca] Ripper: Letter From Hell

We've seen it all done before...and better at that!:
I live in Holland. Though that doesn't have many advantages, sometimes straight-to-video fodder like RIPPER comes out over here months before it does in the States and that then gives me the oppertunity to cast my verdict a little earlier before any of you American horrorgeeks can. Now, on to the movie... The subtitle monicker LETTER FROM HELL may have this appear to be a cash in on the Johnny Depp/ Heather Graham movie, but don't be fooled. It is more in the SCREAM/ I KNOW WHAT YOU DID... vein. And it isn't a very good movie. The word 'rip-off' clearly comes to mind. Let me explain a little about the plot and you'll know what I mean. A girl is attacked by a serial killer who butchers her friends and she only narrowly escapes. Cut to 'five years later' and the girl is on campus where her criminology professor is giving a course on...you guessed it: serial killers. Before you can say 'haven't I seen this all before?' the killings have started and the girl and her classmates are the soon-to-be victims of a smart (?) killer who imitates (gasp) Jack the Ripper. So, from then on not only do these kids have to fear for their lives, they also have to find out who the killer is, in a very dull whodunnit subplot by the way. Alas RIPPER should have been called RIPP-OFF but though there aren't many, I'd also like to name the good points of this movie. Bruce Payne (as the professor) is a good actor. I like him. He's become a real B-movie regular (HIGHLANDER: ENDGAME anyone?) and it's too bad the heavy from PASSENGER 57 has ended up like this. Next to him we also have Jurgen Prochnow hamming it up (but in an entertaining way) as a police detective on the trail of the killer, and English pin-up Kelly Brook as the bimbo/ slut student of the group. She really is gorgeous, but is killed off way too soon in the movie. Finally there's a little spark of energy in the finale and the revelation of the killer. I myself figured it out before that, but for you who don't; it shows that the writer of RIPPER isn't a complete knucklehead and hints at what this movie could have been...namely so much more. In the meantime, if you wanna watch a good horror/ murder mystery I recommend a few Italian giallo's like DEEP RED and DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING.

STELAR RIPPER:
The rating for this totally off by a thousand! This made jump quite a few times. This movie is not as scary as some other movies I have seen in the past. The other reviewers must have been half asleep when they watched this movie. Do not let the rating and the reviewers ratings discourage you. If you are a Jack the Ripper fan you will love this movie. The can be a little bit twisted,so you will have to pay close attention to the movie.

RIPPER OFF:
John Eyres can't be totally blamed for directing this flick. The script must have seemed innovative and challenging at the time. However, I'm sure once he got into it, he must have been as disappointed as I was. The movie opens with a young girl (AJ Cook from Final Destination II) being pursued by a mysterious serial killer who has evidently wiped out all her friends. Five years later, Molly is taking a class in serial killers (do they really offer such stuff?). Her professor, the disturbingly sinister Kane (played with exquisite boredom by Bruce Payne), tells his class to think outside the box. Ho hum...but of course what happens is that this little group of serial killer students are being wiped out one by one. Enter Jurgon Prochnow in perhaps the most ridiculously funny performance ever given by someone who got rave reviews in DAS BOOT, and the plot sickens. Prochnow is so horribly bad, and whoever did his hair, well they certainly aren't touching mine! This is also an incredibly sadistic movie, the murders being totally over the top; most of the film is shot so darkly you can't tell what's going on, and there's little redeeming qualities, except for a few tense scenes. The ending is so cryptic, you don't know what the heck really went on. Could have, should have been better, but barely a decent time waster.

From Hellywood:
Just when you think some film is finally getting things right, oh so many things go wrong. Finally someone knows that Mary Kelly never wore a hat, but then he forgets that she grew up in Wales, and shouldn't have a Cockney accent. Someone remembers that the coroner didn't say Jack was a doctor, only that he had anatomical knowledge (could have been a butcher or a midwife), but then forgets that Catherine Eddowes had just been released from jail, and that Polly Nicholls was in a very good mood when she started out on her fated night. ... The atmosphere is foggy London at night, and it is excellently convincing. Some viewers might find it hard on the eyes after awhile, but I loved it. The film designers managed to conjured a slightly less seedy, somewhat more ghostly Whitechapel in the 1880's than probably existed, but not so clean that I couldn't imagine the smell of garbage. This may be the only Jack-the-Ripper film to admit what a sorry place Whitechapel was even before Jack moved in. For that fact-- and NOT for its conclusion, it's worth seeing.

Failure every which way:
If you are looking for a movie about the real life Jack the Ripper, this ain't it (one or more of the reviews below are obviously thinking that this movie was the From Hell movie starring Johnny Depp, which it definitely isn't). If you are looking for a movie based upon some facts of the Jack the Ripper case but going off in a new direction, this isn't a good bet either. It's a typical low budget teen slasher with just enough loose mentions of the Ripper case so they could throw a name on it to catch all the people looking for the other movie. It basically steals the plot of Scream 2, replacing the nonsensical links to the first Scream movie with nonsensical links to the Jack the Ripper case. If you are looking for a scary horror movie, this ain't it either. The characters are all idiots. For supposed top students in serial killer studies (that all look like teen models, right) none of them act in a way at all realistic for someone in their position. It's like basing a slasher movie at a music camp but with characters who can't play any musical instruments, except worse than that, because these people aren't just dumb for supposed serial killer experts, they make boneheaded mistakes that cheerleader characters in other movies are too smart to make. So right off the bat you couldn't care less if the characters die, which makes it hard to feel any horror. But then the movie manages to miss most every opportunity for suspense and instead makes fuzzy references to things that never appear onscreen but might have been interesting if they had. If you are looking for a good cheesy teen slasher popcorn movie... nope, not here either. The ending is horribly muddled, the pace is bad, the dialogue is ridiculous, and the romantic or sexy parts they usually use to pad the storyline for those films are entirely absent. And it doesn't even work as a movie so bad you watch to laugh at its unintentional jokes, because it's just not entertaining. It's not a "Hah hah hah. How stupid" kind of thing, more of a "What? They can't be serious, how lame." There were a couple scenes and one or two actresses that might have been good in another movie, if only the people writing and producing it had picked what kind of film they wanted to create and then put a little effort into it.