GamerTab That was an excellent one.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Khun Kru Mark Despite being made in 1953, it has the look and feel of a movie made in 1933! In addition, this movie set in London was clearly made on the back-lot of a studio in America. As if to hammer home the London 'look and feel' of the movie, even the suspenseful background music is a slow drawn out melody of Big Ben sounding off.What really makes it unwatchable (to English viewers) is the comic treasury of terrible British accents. No voice coaching here... just bizarre guesswork by the actors.Also (in my opinion) the giant Jack Palance is horribly miscast as a shy and socially awkward suspect in this Jack The Ripper yarn. He doesn't wield any kind of affinity with the role of the suspect and spends most of the time standing about the scenery looking lost or telling whoever will listen that he's a misunderstood, lonely outcast.Incredibly, this movie, about one of the world's most notorious killers, has been padded out with a few flamboyant song and dance routines! Wildly inappropriate and definitely NOT what you'd find anywhere in London in the late 1800s! It just looks and sounds silly.Other versions of this film are a lot more credible than this offering which seems to have been thrown together simply because Palance was bored and on contract and the studios were not being used for anything else.

mark.waltz Almost 130 years after the notorious series of brutal murders in the Whitechapel district of London, the identity of who the culprit was is still being pondered. There have been theories as to who it was, and a fictional culprit became the source of a Marie Belloc Lowndes novel and five movies spawned from it. Of course, the most famous are the 1927 Hitchcock film and a 20th Century Fox 1944 remake with Laird Cregar and Merle Oberon of which this is pretty much an almost identical remake of. The only difference really between the two is in the casting of the title character. Laird Cregar was a portly character actor who pretty much took over where Z-grade British horror star Tod Slaughter had left off, although his films were definitely higher budgeted and certainly better detailed. Here, the role of Slade has been seemingly youthened (and definitely thinned) with the casting of Jack Palance, fresh from his Oscar nominated villain turns in "Sudden Fear" and "Shane".While Palance may seem younger and definitely thinner, the creepiness of Slade is still prevalent with his deep set eyes, somewhat gaunt facial features, and that cloak that screams "Jekyll and Hyde". The lovely Constance Smith takes on the role which Merle Oberon had played in 1944, a personable music hall star who has a compassionate nature and an unexplained attraction towards the mysterious lodger. The music hall numbers are practically identical to the previous version, and in the final one (where Palance attends), the terror really erupts through his eyes as he notices the lust of the male audience staring at Ms. Smith.As this is pretty much a re-tread of what film audiences had just seen only nine years before, there really aren't many chills, just the tension leading up to the exposure of Palance as a psycho. In fact, I'm not really sure that the writers intended to say that Palance was the actual Jack the Ripper. He could have just become obsessed with Smith, been sympathetic to what he psychotically felt the ripper's mission was, and just took it in his own hands to try to "save" Smith from herself. Frances Bavier ("The Andy Griffith Show's" Aunt Bea) and Rhys Williams offer decent characterizations as Smith's aunt and uncle, but Byron Palmer seems ineffectual as the inspector determined to expose Palance.While the London atmosphere is definitely appropriately murky, the story is much better fictionalized as the 1979 Sherlock Holmes mystery "Murder By Decree" which gives a more logical explanation as to who the killer was and why Scotland Yard was never able to solve it (or at least reveal the truth). This should be viewed strictly as a moody thriller that doesn't really try to claim its telling the real story, but either as a possibility or the story of a wronged man who may have been crazy but only had circumstantial evidence which lead to him being believed to be the notorious serial killer of ages gone by.

Andy McGregor Yes, this movie takes huge historical liberties, as you'd expect from a 50's Hollywood treatment of Jack The Ripper. Actually, I felt the period setting pretty well done and the costumes were all very convincing. It was just the actual facts that were thrown to the four winds and replaced by a script written more like a Charles Dickens novel.Enter the shady and mysterious lodger, Jack Palance whose unpredictable moods and surliness bring immediate attention to his nosey landlady, who is still happy to take his rent money rather than to ask him to leave. Palance capably handles his part and is suitably weird and creepy, especially when courting the landlady's pretty niece. Unfortunately, she's also being wooed by a police inspector who is on the The Ripper case. So the seeds of doubt are sown and rivalries become interwoven with biased motivations. This propels everything to an ultimately unhappy though inevitable conclusion.I found this very watchable and entertaining, if perhaps a bit of it's time. It had a good production quality and good performances all round, although Palance himself really gives the movie the level of depth required to be engaging.

rixrex Not a very unique nor special film in any way, and very typical early 1950s Hollywood fare with a back-lot version of London, and plenty of French can-can style dancing for titillation.Not boring either, and Jack Palance is fine as the mysterious lodger who may or may not be Jack the Ripper. But he's done better, and is not a good enough reason to pick up this film. In fact, the only particularly good reason to pick it up is if you wish to collect all varieties of Jack the Ripper films available, or if you want the double-feature Midnight Movie release of it because it also has the superior thriller, A Blueprint for Murder.