The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers Read Online Free PDF Page B

indicated that Sickert could have been one of thousands of people who wrote a Ripper letter that might very well have been a hoax.
    Despite the crowing subtitle of Cornwell’s book, most serious Ripperologists scoff at her theory. One reviewer (Caleb Carr, author of the bestselling historical thriller The Alienist) went so far as to demand that Cornwell issue a public apology for slandering Sickert’s reputation.
    Le Cinéma de Jack
    It’s not surprising that Jack the Ripper — the most famous of all serial killers—has been a longtime favorite of filmmakers. Following is a list of his most memorable big-screen appearances:
    1. Pandora’s Box (1928). Classic silent film by G. W. Pabst, starring screen legend Louise Brooks as the femme fatale Lulu, who ends up as a streetwalker in London. And guess who her very first (and last) customer is?
    2. The Lodger (1944). Based on a 1913 novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes, this suspense thriller—about a family named Bunting who suspect that their new boarder is Jack the Ripper—had already been filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1926. But Hitchcock’s version is like Hamlet without the prince, since it turns out that the Buntings are wrong. The 1944 version, directed by German émigré John Brahm, is more faithful to the original—Saucy Jack really is living in the Bunting house and taking a lively (or deadly) interest in their young daughter, Daisy.
    3. Room to Let (1950). Adapted from a BBC radio play of the same title, this modest little thriller (in which Jack turns out to be a sinister physician named Dr. Fell) was an early production of the fledgling Hammer Film Company, beloved by horror buffs for the lurid fright films it began turning out in the late 1950s.
    4. Man in the Attic (1954). Still another version of The Lodger, this one starring the inimitable Jack Palance as the Ripper. Talk about typecasting.
    5. Jack the Ripper (1960). A low-budget British shocker with a memorable gimmick. Though the entire film is in black and white, the climactic sequence—in which Jack is crushed to death by a falling elevator—was shot in color so the audience could enjoy the vivid red of his gushing blood.
    6. A Study in Terror (1965). What a concept! Sherlock Holmes battles Jack the Ripper in this brisk, entertaining thriller, produced with the cooperation of Adrian Conan Doyle, son of Holmes’s creator.
    7. Hands of the Ripper (1971). Suffering from the traumatic aftereffects of watching Daddy stab Mommy, Jack the Ripper’s angelic daughter turns into a homicidal maniac whenever a guy kisses her. She ends up in treatment with an early disciple of Freud. A Hammer movie classic!
    8. Murder by Decree (1979). Another Holmes vs. Ripper movie, thisone with a stellar cast: Christopher Plummer, James Mason, Donald Sutherland, Genevieve Bujold, David Hemmings, John Gielgud, and Anthony Quayle.
    9. Time After Time (1979). Nifty little fantasy written and directed by Nicholas Meyer in which Jack the Ripper travels from Victorian England to modern-day America via H. G. Wells’s time machine.
    10. Jack the Ripper (1988). Originally a two-part TV movie, this is a solid, lavish telling of the Ripper case, starring Michael Caine as a Scotland Yard inspector hot on the trail of Saucy Jack. It sticks to the facts except for its conclusion, when the hero succeeds in unmasking the killer.
    11. From Hell (2001). Though it could have benefited from a bit more terror and suspense—not to mention the sort of grisly violence one hopes for in a Jack the Ripper movie—this handsome adaptation of Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s acclaimed graphic novel does an impressive job of conjuring up the sordid underbelly of Victorian London. Johnny Depp gives a typically compelling performance as the opium-using Scotland Yard sleuth who uncovers a high-level conspiracy in his pursuit of Saucy Jack.
    J EKYLL /H YDE
    Plenty of people lead double lives: suburban matrons with lovers on the side; happily married hubbies