The Hughes Brothers, whose previous films were urban crime dramas, swapped one ghetto for an earlier one by bringing Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's graphic novel about Jack The Ripper to the screen.
Their vision of Whitechapel in 1888 is wonderfully gothic with blood red skies looming over a shadowy London and the the desperate lives of the women who became the victims.
FROM HELL follows Stephen Knight's theory that the women were murdered for knowing about the Duke of Clarence's secret marriage to a shop-girl and her subsequent baby; this was also used in the 1979 Sherlock Holmes film MURDER BY DECREE.
FROM HELL goes beyond this suggesting that the last victim Mary Kelly managed to escape her fate through a relationship with Inspector Abberline. I guess that's one way of getting a happy ending...
Johnny Depp rehearses his cockney accent ready for SWEENEY TODD six years later.
Shelf or charity shop? It doesn't hold up as well as I remembered but I will keep it for the fantastic production design by Martin Childs; a standing set was built outside Prague of the Whitechapel known to the victims which allowed for fluid cinematography within a believable world. Johnny Depp as the opium addict Inspector holds the attention, but while Heather Graham maintains a believeable Cockney accent she is fairly colourless. Much better are the sympathetic performances of the actresses playing the victims: Samantha Spiro, Annabelle Apsion, Kristin Cartlidge (sadly her last filn appearance), Lesley Sharp and Susan Lynch. Two late Sir Ians turn in their usual good performances: Holm as the deadly Sir William Gull and Richardson as the disdainful Sir Charles Warren.
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