Jack the Ripper fiction

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Jack the Ripper has been featured in a number of works of fiction, either as the central character or in a more peripheral role.

Contents

[edit] Novels and short stories

  • The Chris Elliot novel The Shroud of the Thwacker spoofs the Jack the Ripper case. This version takes place in 1882 New York City (six years prior to the Ripper murders). The serial killer, instead of ripping his victims, thwacks them over the head with a sack of apples.
  • Michael Slade's novel Ripper involves psychotic killers expanding on Jack the Ripper's ritual slayings.
  • Robert Asprin and Linda Evans's Time Scout series includes two books featuring the Ripper: Ripping Time (2000) and The House That Jack Built (2001). In them, time-traveling tourists attempt to determine the identity of Jack the Ripper by traveling to the 19th century, but the Ripper discovers the time gates and escapes into the future.

Other novels featuring the Ripper include Ritual in the Dark (1960) by Colin Henry Wilson, Anno Dracula (1992) by Kim Newman, White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987) by Iain Sinclair, Savage (1993) by Richard Laymon, The Tea Rose (2003) by Jennifer Donnelly,The Gods of Riverworld (1983) by Philip José Farmer, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem by Peter Ackroyd, A Night in the Lonesome October (1993) by Roger Zelazny, and Boris Akunin's Special Assignments (1999).

[edit] Films

The following films feature the Ripper as a subject:

  • In addition to Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger (1927), Marie Belloc Lowndes' book has been made into two other films: The Lodger (1944 film) with Laird Cregar as the "ripper" and Man in the Attic (1953) with Jack Palance playing the killer.
  • Jack the Ripper (1959), produced by Monty Berman and Robert S. Baker [1], is loosely based on Leonard Matters' theory that the Ripper was an avenging doctor.
  • A Study in Terror (1965) [2] and Murder by Decree (1978) [3], both featuring Sherlock Holmes attempting to find the murderer. Decree follows the masonic/royal conspiracy plotline popularised by Stephen Knight, positing a royal physician as the murderer. Coincidentally, in both movies, character actor Frank Finlay plays Inspector LeStrade.
  • Hands of the Ripper (1971), the Hammer films production [4], in which the Ripper's daughter grows up to become a murderer after she sees her father kill her mother.
  • Time After Time (1979), based on the novel of the same title (see above).
  • This Is Spinal Tap, (1984), features a vignette in which the band discusses the possibility of composing a rock opera about Jack the Ripper's life, called Saucy Jack.
  • Ripper, (2001), is based around the murders. A survivor of a massacre, Molly Keller (AJ Cook), studies serial killers under a famous expert, but her classmates start dying at the hands of a Jack the Ripper copycat. The film makes reference to the actual murders through the characters, who had the same initials as the original victims.
  • From Hell (2001) [5] (see also Comics, below);
  • Though technically not featuring Jack the Ripper as a subject, the 1988 film "Jack's Back" starred James Spader as a man whose identical twin brother was murdered by a man copy-catting the Jack the Ripper murders in Los Angeles to mark the Ripper's 100th anniversary.

[edit] Theatre

The Ripper features briefly at the end of Frank Wedekind's play Die Büchse der Pandora (1904), in which he murders Lulu, the central character. This play was later turned into the film Pandora's Box (1928, directed by G. W. Pabst) and the opera Lulu (by Alban Berg), both of which also end with this murder.

[edit] Comics

Jack the Ripper has so far appeared in three comic book stories featuring Lee Falk's The Phantom. In the stories, the 18th Phantom did his best to solve the mystery of the London murders. Jack the Ripper ends up drowning in the London sewers in one of the stories.

From Hell is a graphic novel about the Ripper case by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. Moore bases his version on the Stephen Knight/Masonic conspiracy plot, though uses this as a springboard for a mediation on the nature of good and evil in the modern world, rather than opting for a straight retelling. In 2001, the Hughes Brothers made the book into a film starring Johnny Depp and Heather Graham. The film version is rather broader, sticks to the Knight storyline, and thus resembles a remake of Murder by Decree, though with the Depp character exhibiting character aspects of both Sherlock Holmes (deductive powers, drug addiction) and Robert Lees (psychic ability, foresight).

DC Comics' "Elseworlds" series puts their well-known charactes in markedly different alternate universes and a number of these tales have involved Jack the Ripper. The very first of these tales, Gotham by Gaslight, features a Victorian-era version of the superhero Batman hunting the killer, who has come to Gotham City. Another Elseworld story, Wonder Woman: Amazonia has a different fictional version of Jack the Ripper, who eventually became king of England. A third story, JLA: The Island of Dr. Moreau, featured Jack the Ripper as an orangutan who was one of Moreau's early experiments. In the mainstream DC comics, it has been suggested that Vandal Savage was involved in the Ripper murders.

The CSI: Crime Scene Investigation graphic novel Serial is about a Jack the Ripper copy-cat killer in present-day Las Vegas during a "Ripper-Mania" Convention, leading to hundreds of Ripper case enthusiasts as suspects in the murders.

In Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, Red Jack was an omnipotent butterfly-collector who believed himself to be both Jack the Ripper and God. The names of Jack the Ripper's five victims were used to open a door to his sanctum.

In the Marvel Graphic Novel, Cloak and Dagger: Predator and Prey, Jack the Ripper left England and went to America where he continued to murder. Afterward he would bury his victims in the foundation of the Holy Ghost Church, which was under construction (this same church was used as a refuge by Cloak and Dagger years later). While burying a victim one night, part of the building collapsed on him and killed him. Years later later he was resureccted by the demon living within Cloak's darkness to do the demon's bidding, but refused to help the demon by getting life light from people to feed him and decided to feed on this light himself. He was eventually defeated by Cloak and Dagger and forced to return to the demon. Jack the Ripper has had other appearences in Marvel Comics.

One of the Trident Corporation's operatives in Spriggan was codenamed Jack the Ripper due to his speed from his Armored Machine Suit and expertise in handling his concealable blades hidden in his prosthetic arms.

[edit] Music

  • Chicago-based pop-rock band Spitalfield took its name from Spitalfields, one of the sections of London's East End where the killer was active.
  • The song Blood Red Sandman, a single by Lordi, has the opening lines "They called me The Leather Apron/They called me Smiling Jack", both of which are alternative names for Jack the Ripper.
  • British Goth Rock band Scary Bitches created the song "I'm the Woman that Killed Jack the Ripper", which is about a female vampire that (obviously) killed Jack the Ripper.

[edit] Television

  • In the Star Trek episode "Wolf in the Fold" (1967), written by Robert Bloch, a highly aggressive alien entity is responsible for the Ripper murders and ones on other planets.
  • The Babylon 5 episode "Comes the Inquisitor" (1995), features a character named Sebastian who is meant to be Jack the Ripper, taken by Vorlons in the year 1888 and rehabilitated to become an inquisitor so that he can test (through torture) the motives of people who are called to lead an important cause.
  • An episode of The Outer Limits titled "Ripper" (1997), starred Cary Elwes as Doctor Jack York, who discovered an alien entity possessing people and killing them; he was frequently nearby during the deaths and became a suspect in the case.
  • In the Get Smart episode "House of Max" (1970), written by Chris Hayward, Max shoots Jack the Ripper in self-defense, while visiting London. The police inspector reveals that "Jack the Ripper is not a man!" ("Jacqueline the ripper?" asks a puzzled Max), and that he is a wax dummy, somehow brought to life.
  • In the first episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974), titled "The Ripper", reporter Carl Kolchak pursues a killer whose victims match the patterns of the original Ripper murders. The killer's superhuman strength and invulnerability to weapons lead Kolchak to surmise that the killer is indeed the original Jack the Ripper.
  • In the fourth season, sixth episode of Fantasy Island, one of Mr. Roarke's guests is Lorraine Peters (Lynda Day George), a criminologist who believes she's identified Jack the Ripper as a medical doctor. Roarke opens a time portal that Peters uses to check her theory; however, the doctor, Albert Z. Fell (Victor Buono), sees her peeking at his personal papers, and follows her back through the portal. Fell nearly murders one of the Polynesian women of the island before Tattoo warns everyone to stay in plain view; Fell manages to grab Peters and take her back to 1888, where Roarke intervenes, and Fell dies moments later while fleeing. Peters decides to let the Jack the Ripper mystery remain unsolved, she and Mr. Roarke keeping her discoveries to herself. As Peters departs the island, Roarke shares with her a microfilmed newspaper article about the death of Fell as he rushed on a "mercy call".
  • The 1988 TV film Jack the Ripper re-told the story of the murders with Michael Caine as Inspector Abberline. [6]
  • In an episode of Goodnight Sweetheart, via entering the opposite end of the time portal to normal Garry Sparrow travels back to Victorian London where he encounters Jack the Ripper. Jack is revealed to be a time traveller himself who hides out in the 1940s after murders, following Garry however he is able to travel to the 1990s where he meets his end under the wheels of a double decker bus.
  • In an episode of Voyagers!, American news reporter Nellie Bly nearly becomes a victim of 'Jack the Ripper', except that the Ripper is a rogue voyager who's on the run from justice.
  • The 1997 TV movie The Ripper featured Patrick Bergin as (fictional) Inspector Jim Hansen and Samuel West as Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence. [7]

[edit] Video games

Jack appears in the PlayStation video-game Medievil II as a tall green monster with giant claws protruding from his hands, long sharp teeth and a top hat. He first appears in the level "Whitechapel", where policemen roam the streets to track him down.

Jack the Ripper is featured prominently in the plot of the Nintendo 64/PlayStation game Shadowman. The game begins with Jack revealing in his journal the he is also known as Spring Heeled Jack, and he appears as a principal villain who has the ability to jump extremely high and crawl along ceilings in order to ambush the player.

Jack is found in the Nintendo 64 video game "Duke Nukem: Zero Hour" when Duke travels to victorian England. When confronted Duke spins one of his famous catchphrases and says "Who better than to rip 'em a new one?".

Jack is one of the historically-based characters in the World Heroes series.

Jack is also in a PC game called Jack the Ripper that is published by The Adventure Company

Jack the Ripper is the first boss in the Sega Master System game Master of Darkness, though he is revealed to be an animated wax doll upon defeat.

Jack the Ripper is also the name of a text adventure game for the Commodore 64, released in 1987 by CRL Group PLC.

Jack the Ripper is featured in the dungeon crawl style RPG game Elvira III: Waxworks.

[edit] Trivia

  • In the film Dr. Strangelove, the villain is the deranged USAF general "Jack D. Ripper", who orders his wing of B-52s to carry out an unprovoked and unordered (by Presidential authority) thermonuclear attack in the Soviet Union.

[edit] External links and sources

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