If you have not seen a dozen or more slasher films since Bava’s BAY OF BLOOD, and Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN begat the FRIDAY the 13TH, franchise and its countless semi-professional imitators which were revisited and spoofed in SCREAM and SCARY MOVIE then perhaps RIPPER; LETTER FROM HELL won't seem like the tired cliche ridden waste of time it is.

RIPPER is very slickly made and has some glossy production values to it. After a well-done opening scene however, the film quickly plunges into a mindless re-hash of half-dozen already tired slasher movie and Italian Giallo rip-offs.

I often try to find some angle or perspective that allows me to suggest a possible audience for a film particularly low budget genre films figuring that even though I don't like it much, there may be moments that will satisfy an audience. You would have to be very unfamiliar with the slasher genre to temporarily think there is something worthwhile here.

There is nothing, original, inspired, clever or very interesting about THE RIPPER beyond its opening scene. THE RIPPER also shows very little gore or nudity (darn it) and I think the 12 or 13 year olds who shouldn't be watching a violent R rated movie are the only ones who might have something slightly kind to say about this one.

The RIPPER does have a riveting opening scene that plays like a better than average climax from a mid 80’s slasher film. It’s well edited and a sense of suspense and excitement is generated. It’s a dark and stormy night, there are lightning flashes, and a damsel in distress flees through the woods in the pouring rain. You won’t quite know what is going on --you can’t quite see, and there are moments where everything is dark for a few seconds at a time. It puts you on edge but like anything approaching a good idea in this film it soon feels stretched out and derivative. The damsel in distress is screaming so much you start hoping a serial killer or creature pops up to shut her up.


The scene ends and after a few credits, we realize the damsel in distress is now a loner Goth-type woman (with blond hair) who is in a college class full of one dimensional characters taking a college course in profiling serial killers. All of these young adults seem capable of being guilty of something and of course that is the point. The filmmakers want us to think everyone in the movie might be guilty of some crime in the very near future. Then suddenly someone is attacked in the classroom and there’s blood and… oh but wait it’s one of those false scares you get in movies like this.

The film is all razzle-dazzle with constantly moving steadicam shots and a soundtrack mix of unimaginative generic house and heavy metal music sometimes edited to serve as stingers for false scares. Women characters are stalked and killed and they scream and scream again (but no one ever hears them in time to save them). They also make all the dumb decisions characters need to make in bad slasher films so we can then be treated to endless stalking killer point of view tracking shots. I was tired of these in 1982, and here we are 20 plus years later still being served the same cold left-overs. HEY THERE's MOLD ON THIS THING !!!!

There’s no internal logic to anything in this over-long 113-minute film. You don’t get to like any of the characters and so have no one to root for, and the killings while imaginatively derivative are not believable for a moment. Some of them are so elaborate they would require a team from cirque de soleil to pull off. The director is also very fond of breaking as much glass as possible throughout the film.

The neat factor of this passes quickly and if you sat through the 80s and 90s action films from Hong Kong and all the American imitators and knock-offs--you've seen absolutely all of it before.

Grisly sound effects try to make up for what you don’t or simply can’t see when things get very dark. A girl is eviscerated during a rave (dance party) for example. It’s too dark to see much, but so much blood drips onto a party-goer, you’ll wonder if her name is CARRIE. Somehow the body then flies through some glass hung upside down on an elaborate rope and pulley system (last used by the high wire act at Barnum and Bailey) so that everyone at the party can scream.

This is about the time Jurgen (Das Boot, In the Mouth of Madness) Prochnow is clumsily introduced as a detective who believes the psycho that almost killed our heroine in the first scene is still alive and dangerous and likely to stalk and kill some more. I was wondering at about this time why bad films like this happen to interesting character actors like Prochnow (did he lose a bet?).

All of this means that a modern Jack the Ripper is loose in the college town, staging elaborate murder tableaux’s hoping Andrew Lloyd Weber will hire him to do the choreography for ‘SLASHER’ - Broadways New Horror Rock- Opera Sensation.

Eventually after smart viewers catch on that most of the red-herrings couldn’t be involved in the murder and all of them didn’t do it, that the most obvious one probably is guilty and then wait a minute maybe no one we know did the murder. Huh?

Yes, that’s right, we have one of those confusing and downright awful twist endings which is even more of a reason to issue a BUYER-BEWARE warning on this DVD.
(No I didn’t spoil the ending—I couldn’t).

RIPPER is directed by John Eyres who directed the critically savaged OCTOPUS, which I believe I am very fortunate to have missed seeing. Obviously the title of this film was concocted to benefit from the film FROM HELL which was a period piece starring Johnny Depp as the tracker of Jack the Ripper. That movie didn't light a fire at the box-office and this one was barely released and then went to DVD.

The cast all look like they should be playing models on a new version of Beverly Hills 90210. Sometimes I wondered if some potential talent being wasted in this film. Most of the time I didn’t care.

DVD IMAGE AND AUDIO

The film has an almost too sharp and cold digital product look to it. There’s lots of darkness, shadows and rain in the film but black levels are high and everything is very clear. The filmmakers don’t want us to see very well in the dark and we don’t, but it’s not because of any video flaws. The film is presented in wide screen 1:85:1 ratio.

The audio is a razzle-dazzle affair of sound effects, music, stingers and more bouncing all over your home theater set up with such clarity you might need a couple of aspirin to help cure the headache. The dialogue is always easy to hear no matter how many other sounds are on the mix, but they rarely say much worth listening to.

EXTRAS

Director John Eyres delivers a feature length commentary and talks about some of the production difficulties he encountered. He used computer technology to help him in creating digital effects that blend miniatures and location shots into one seamless whole.

There’s also a puff piece featurette that has some quick interviews with cast members.

There are trailers for BULLY and THE CONVENT included as well.

BOTTOM LINE

After the opening 5 minutes of this film I was thinking – hey, this film might be pretty good!!! Then, ten minutes later I realized this was going to be a very long 113 minute horror film and I wondered if perhaps a hobby like basket-weaving or watching grass grow might be more fun than watching horror films like RIPPER: LETTER FROM HELL.




Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above