Jack the Ripper in fiction
Jack the Ripper, an unidentified serial killer active in and around Whitechapel in 1888, has been featured in works of fiction ranging from gothic novels published at the time of the murders to modern motion pictures, televised dramas and video games.
The literature of the late Victorian era, including Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes stories and Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, has provided inspiration for story-makers who have fused these fictional worlds with the Ripper.
[4] A "reputedly unsavoury" anthology of short stories in Swedish, Uppskäraren ("The Ripper") by Adolf Paul, was published in 1892, but it was suppressed by Russian authorities.
[6] In the 1930s the story was translated into Spanish in for Sherlock Holmes Memorias intimas del rey de los detectives No.
In 1926, Leonard Matters proposed in a magazine article that the Ripper was an eminent doctor, whose son had died from syphilis caught from a prostitute.
[34] The 1944 version dispensed with the ambivalence of the novel and instead casts the lodger, "Slade" played by Laird Cregar, as the villain "Jack the Ripper".
[38] Valentine Dyall plays the lodger, "Dr. Fell", who has escaped from a lunatic asylum where he has been incarcerated for 16 years since committing the Whitechapel murders.
[43] The story's basis was an 1895 newspaper report that Robert James Lees had used psychic powers to track the Ripper to the home of a London physician.
[45] It borrowed icons from previously successful horror films, such as Dracula (1958) and The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), by giving the Ripper a costume of a top hat and cape.
[46] The plot is a standard "whodunit" with the usual false leads and a denouement in which the least likely character, in this case "Sir David Rogers" played by Ewen Solon, is revealed as the culprit.
[47] As in Matters' book, The Mystery of Jack the Ripper, Solon's character murders prostitutes to avenge the death of his son.
However, Matters used the ploy of the son dying from venereal disease, while the film has him committing suicide on learning his lover is a prostitute.
Her uninhibited lifestyle leads her to walk the streets of London until she meets her end in an encounter with Jack the Ripper, played by Gustav Diessl.
A Study in Terror, and its companion novel written by Ellery Queen,[53] feature the often insane family of the Duke of Shires, with a motive provided by one of his son's becoming enamoured of a prostitute.
The film again sticks to the Knight storyline, though Depp's character exhibits aspects of both Sherlock Holmes (deductive powers, drug addiction) and Robert Lees (psychic ability, foresight).
[65] Edge of Sanity (1989) is lent "post-Psycho gravitas" by the casting of Anthony Perkins as "Dr Jekyll" and his alter-ego "Jack Hyde", but was still condemned by critics "as a tasteless exercise".
The pursuer was originally slated to be Robert Louis Stevenson in a link to the author of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but he was written out in favour of Wells.
[73] By the 1960s, the Ripper was established in American television as a "universal force of evil", who could be adapted to suit any villainous niche.
[79] Ripper Street is a 2012 British television dramatic series set just subsequent to the murders, with the first episode seeing series protagonist Edmund Reid resolving to move on from obsession over the victims after a new case; at the end of the first season, protagonist Homer Jackson is temporarily framed as the Ripper, but is able to clear his name.
He was abducted by the alien race known as the Vorlons in the year 1888 and made into their inquisitor so that he can test (through torture) beings who are called to lead an important cause.
The program featured Z Cars detectives Barlow and Watt, played by Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor respectively, investigating the murders from an historical perspective.
[82] An episode of The Outer Limits titled "Ripper" (1997) was set in 1888 and starred Cary Elwes as Dr. Jack York, who kills women whom he believes are possessed by an alien entity.
The DC's Legends of Tomorrow episode titled "The Great British Fake Off" Jack the Ripper was seemingly brought back to life alongside fellow criminals Bonnie and Clyde.
It is based on Stephen Knight's conspiracy theory, which accused royalty and freemasons of complicity in the crimes and was popularised by his book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution.
[88] Issue #100 of Marvel Comics Master of Kung Fu (1981) featured a story titled "Red of Fang and Claw, All Love Lost".
[92] In Phantom Blood, the first part of the 1987 manga JoJo's Bizarre Adventure by Hirohiko Araki, the Ripper appears briefly as a minor villain after main antagonist Dio Brando turns him into a zombie and orders him to attack the protagonist.
In Black Clover, Jack the Ripper is portrayed as a minor protagonist and the captain of the Magic Knight Squad known as the Green Praying Mantises.
[95] Gothic metalcore sextet Motionless in White released a song entitled "London in Terror" as a single from their debut album Creatures.
[97] Songs inspired by the Ripper were recorded by artists as varied as Morrissey, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Legendary Pink Dots, Thee Headcoats, The Buff Medways and Bob Dylan.
[99] The Brazilian thrash metal band Torture Squad also recorded a song based on Jack the Ripper's legend.
