Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 16, 2020 12:16:14 GMT -8
Jack Palance plays a strange, socially-awkward young man in Man in the Attic. He’s not actually boarding in the attic. He rented a normal room in the home of Aunt Bee (whose husband is a little hard up for money) and rented the attic as well for his experiments…whatever they are. I’d say Palance is suitably creepy, and Frances Bavier and Rhys Williams are good as the husband and wife of Mr. and Mrs. Harley who have rented out the room to him. Aunt Bee begins to have grave doubts about the man while the husband simply supposes she’s been into the sherry again. Constance Smith is awful as Lily Bonner, another resident (she may be a niece) and the designated T&A in this as she Can-can’s her way through the movie onstage as the lead of some music-hall group. Although Mr. and Mrs. Harley flesh out realistic characters, she is a McGuffin all the way and ruins whatever suspense and story this might-have-been. But…the movie does survive for about 4/5 of it. The collapse is at the end where Palance does a full creepy-guy thing. (I wish he had killed Miss Bonner, but that’s just me….sometimes McGuffins need to die to balance things out.) Gone is quasi-Hitchcockian suspense to be replaced by a rather corny and stupid ending. Was Palance Jack the Ripper? I would say from watching this, he was not. He was too sloppy to have committed all those murders and get away with it. But I think he certainly could have been Jack the Ripper 2.0 in the making. You watch and you decide. You can find this one on Amazon Prime Video.  |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 16, 2020 12:36:19 GMT -8
I might check that one out sometime. I don't know if I've seen the Palance version of DJ&MH.
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Brad Nelson
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עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 16, 2020 12:40:48 GMT -8
For what it's worthy, anyone who wants to join in on the hot controversy as to whether or not Jack Palance was Jack the Ripper can actually view the entire movie on YouTube. |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 16, 2020 12:45:36 GMT -8
At 6.8, that version of DJ&MH is rated fairly high.
My favorite part of the movie is at the start when you see these two Bobbies on patrol on the dark London streets. They hear a scream. And the delay before they actually do anything his hilarious. It's as if they are thinking, "Should I have a donut first or go and help the girl?" It happens at about the 5:15 mark.
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Post by timothylane on Apr 16, 2020 13:38:33 GMT -8
This is based on the book The Lodger, which I read way back when. It's been made at least twice into a movie, including a silent film that was one of Alfred Hitchcock's first. In his case, the title character was portrayed by a popular actor so the movie made it evident he wasn't the Ripper, but I think the original book, though ambiguous (after all, no one ever reliably identified Saucy Jack, and even his various sobriquets come from letters that were ostensibly but probably not really from the killer), implied otherwise.
I note that the imdb description mentions him coming in on the night of the third murder. As it happens, the night of the third murder (Elizabeth Stride) was also the night of the fourth murder (Catherine Eddowes). They were killed within an hour of each other. (Stride wasn't mutilated, presumably because Jack was interrupted in his pleasure, which may be why he then found another victim.) The ending seems to be based on the murder of Frances Coles -- when the police found her they heard someone (probably the murderer) running away from the freshly killed woman, but it also looked like she hadn't yet died so they tried to save her instead of pursuing him.
Of course, Coles was killed outside and isn't generally considered a Ripper victim. The final victim generally considered a Ripper victim, Mary Jane Kelly, was indeed murdered in her room but the killer had all the time he wanted and (by his standards) made good use of it. (Incidentally, the gory photo of her horribly mutilated body -- mercifully in black and white -- has the letters "JM" on the wall behind her. The James Maybrick theory may not be a very good theory overall, but that is an interesting possible link.)
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Post by timothylane on Apr 16, 2020 13:53:55 GMT -8
I believe this is the version that was brought up by one student in a class discussion in my senior English class, discussing Henry Jekyll's theory. (The discussion had nothing to do with the book per se, and in fact I don't recall that we ever had anything by Stevenson in any course.) I don't think I've ever seen a movie of it, though there's a scene from a play in a TV miniseries on Jack the Ripper. (Appropriate, in a way.) I have read the book twice (and I've read Treasure Island and seen a couple of versions, including the excellent one with Charlton Heston as Long John Silver), and participated in a panel discussing the book at the 1997 Windycon. (Elizabeth and I were Fan Guests of Honor, the con chairman being a FOSFAX contributor. As it happens, he came down with pancreatic cancer and never made it to the con, dying a couple of months later.)
It might be interesting to note that the purpose of Jekyll converting to Hyde was to allow him to indulge all the vices he couldn't do openly as Jekyll. Of course, Hyde was worse in other ways and eventually killed someone, but that was the intention.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 16, 2020 15:37:52 GMT -8
There is little to Fear from this 1946 crime drama. If you mixed Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, TV’s Columbo, and It’s a Wonderful Life, you’d have what IMDB’s summary calls an “Americanized retelling of Dostoevsky' Crime and Punishment.” I’ve never read that book, so I’ll take their word for it. Peter Cookson plays what seems a natural role for Farley Granger. He’s an Übermensch and has written a paper about how some special people should be above the law. Short on tuition, he kills his pawn broker for the cash. Superior beings must not be held to trifles such as law-and-order. Peter Cookson plays the lead character of Larry Crain well as a nervous, somewhat awkward student who finds that murder is a quick way to get what he wants. Police Captain Burke and his Detective Shaefer play a tag-team Columbo on Crain. They keep showing up. No, no. They’re not following him. They just happened to be in the same place, and always with a few small questions. Will Larry Crain crack? It seems as if he will. Buttressing him is the girl he met in a diner, Eileen Stevens, played excellently and with rare naturalness by Anne Gwynne. She’s not a cookie-cutter old-movie dame. Larry falls for her and she for him to a certain extent. But Larry is troubled by what he’s done and feels the police closing in. Eileen knows there is something bothering him but he resists all attempts at help. At 68 minutes, this really is a tight little drama, much better than it’s 5.7 rating at IMDB. It’s not Hitchcock, and can be a bit fluffy, but I found it thoroughly entertaining from start to finish. You can find this playing on Amazon Prime Video.  |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 16, 2020 15:41:27 GMT -8
Mr. Flu Manchu, they have that version of DJ&MH on Amazon Prime. I'm going to watch that next.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 16, 2020 15:44:19 GMT -8
I was thinking, Timothy. What are the chances that Jack the Ripper was a woman? She may have been a bull-dyke-ish woman with plenty of man-hating strength. Maybe she was ugly and resented beautiful women? The police likely wouldn’t have taken a second look at a woman if seen in or near a crime scene. Perhaps she was a nurse and had some skills and access to plenty of sharp instruments.
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Brad Nelson
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עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 16, 2020 15:46:41 GMT -8
They have a simpler method for that now . . . Vote Democrat!
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Post by timothylane on Apr 16, 2020 16:36:55 GMT -8
As a matter of fact, Donald Rumbelow in his rundown of suspects in The Complete Jack the Ripper included a "Jill the Ripper" scenario. I don't remember who came up with it, though I vaguely think Robert Bloch later used the idea. The idea was that she was a midwife who performed abortions (in essence, a female Gosnell), but I don't recall too much else. Most of the women don't seem to have been recently pregnant (some may even have been too old).
It's very unlikely that they were targeted as being too good-looking, unless it was Kelly (the youngest). They were fairly old and had a long history of poverty, alcoholism, and probably malnutrition. We aren't talking Happy Hookers here, though I'm sure something of the sort existed back then. Of course, a woman would be as capable as a man of hating prostitutes for religious reasons or others. (The Dr. Stanley theory, the basis of a movie on Jack the Ripper that I saw part of on TV back in the mid-60s, involved a doctor seeking revenge on the prostitute who gave his son a venereal disease. Mary Kelly was his target, and he would ask her whereabouts every time he came across a prostitute -- and then kill them to maintain secrecy. Interestingly, the penultimate victim -- Catherine Eddowes -- often called herself Kate Kelly after one of the men she took up with occasionally, and according to the inquest report gave her name as Mary Ann Kelly when she was run in for drunkenness. They released her after midnight, less than an hour before she met the Ripper.)
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 16, 2020 16:56:12 GMT -8
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. HydeThis is two hours long so I’ll split this up into four acts. Act I: The production values are made-for-TV mediocre, including a faded-out video tape. But the storytelling values are superb so far. I remember having to wade through the 1941 production that stars Spenser Tracey to get to the meat of it. Many movies get bogged down by having too many preliminaries. This 1968 production gets right down to it without a lot of padding: It opens with Dr. Henry Jekyll making a presentation/plea to a theater of fellow colleagues. But they don’t like hearing that they may be part animal. They’re very offended and so unruly that, as Jekyll notes to himself under his breath, they prove his point. This is a very good scene that lays out the basics without a lot of fluff. So it’s Jekyll’s intention not to go on a joyride of Personality Cocaine via his formula. Instead, he wants to suppress or dissolve man’s baser instincts. But his formula doesn’t have the desired effect. Instead, it unleashes Hyde. And it’s a nice build-up as we follow Dr. Jekyll trying to reconstruct just what he did the previous night. And it sure looks as if he had a lot of fun. Instead of foregoing the formula which was an obvious bust — unless you were specifically looking for a formula for wine, women, and song — Jekyll synthesizes a new batch. It’s party time! He’s quickly addicted to the excitement…even if the morning after he can’t remember what happened. The second (or perhaps third) time he takes the formula, we get our first glimpse of Mr. Hyde. And it’s a very nice bit of prosthetic makeup. It’s Jack Palance somewhere underneath there but they’ve changed the features enough so that you could certainly see the one and not recognize the other. And that’s about where I left it.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 17, 2020 6:54:06 GMT -8
Acts III - IV: Let’s skip right to the end conclusion: Once again Mr. Flu Manchu has shown his good taste. This is indeed the best DJ&MH that I’ve seen. I’ve not likely seen any of the others all the way through, just bits and pieces. And most turn it into a b-film monster movie — which is why I tended to get bored by the other productions.
I had planned to review this in four acts but got hooked by it last night and watched the rest of it straight through. This one was not boring.
I will say, at some point it just runs out of story. It runs out of a point to be made. About all they (presumably Stevenson) can do is escalate the behavior of Hyde and has little other moral point to make. At the moment that Jekyll gets out of the cab and follows Gwyn to her place for a quick drink, the narrative is lost and denuded.
In fact, I think the Star Trek episode, The Enemy Within, makes far better moral points about human nature. In that episode, the “bad” Kirk wasn’t so much something to fight but another part of his character that was needed. In pure form, it was horrible. But without it, the “good” Kirk was weak and indecisive.
But at best, all we get from DJ&MH is a form a Refer Madness. And I did find the story of his addiction that takes control of him to be compelling. His story is just as applicable as it is to pot or any other hard drug used today. The drugs turn you into a different person. They begin to control you.
One of the best moments of the film is when Jekyll — after having taken his formula a few times — announces to his friends at a dinner party that this beastly side of man is perhaps the best part of him, for it’s a world of the survival of the fittest. His guests are aghast at this 180 degree change in perspective. But Jekyll, living in the midst of an upward curve and not having hit rock bottom, is loving his newfound vitality.
I thought Billie Whitelaw as Gwyn Thomas was very good. And I think they got all out of that relationship that they could. The part about Gwyn trying to seduce the shy Dr. Jekyll was less compelling and I didn’t see how that fit into the rest of the story.
Denholm Elliott is god as Devlin although it seems as if there are sections missing, as if there are continuity errors. Devlin seems to suddenly know more about the existence of Hyde than has been witnessed on screen. Certainly Elliott plays his part expertly where he does feature in the movie.
This isn’t a weak movie held together by a supreme performance by Jack Palance. But I do think his supreme performance smooths over some of the inherent inadequacies of the story. Unlike every other DJ&MH movie I’ve seen (even if only in parts), both in his Jekyll and Hyde aspects, Palance evokes a real character.
Although the Hyde aspect of himself was less capable of moral choices and nuanced thought, he still didn’t turn the character into an immediate abject thoughtless monster. Hyde was just a party animal who took his rowdiness to its natural conclusion — destruction and death. Increasingly, nothing would be allowed to stand in the way of what he wanted. Every impulse was king. (He'd make a good Democrat/atheist voter.)
I particularly loved the maniacal laugh that Palance did for the Hyde character. One reviewer who relishes this version says he also like the Barrymore one. Perhaps that’s worth a look as well. It was also an interesting (and potentially a good moral theme) when Jekyll goes back to the straight and narrow, renounces the drug, and becomes a model compassionate doctor. But Hyde won’t be put off so easily. Once the monster is unleashed, no moral choice for good matters or has sufficient power. And thus I found the moral underpinning of much of this Stevenson story to be a bit weak.
One reviewer made an interesting point:
I haven’t read the book. But I certainly think director Charles Jarrott and the writer of the screenplay Ian McLellan Hunter were right in their adaptation, particularly in not wasting a lot of time in the preliminaries.
And when all is said and done, Mr. Hyde is left in the same state as the “bad” Captain Kirk. Evil, having run amok and burned all its bridges, is left with little but fear and desperation. Luckily, in the Star Trek episode, it wasn’t solved by Kirk catching a bullet (or a phaser) from Spock.
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