Terror in Film
MURDER BY DECREE (1979; Dir.Bob Clark; starring Christopher Plummer, James Mason, David Hemmings, Susan Clark, Genevieve Bujold, John Gielgud, Anthony Quayle, Donald Sutherland, and Frank Finlay as Lestrade)
Fade in the skyline of night time London, 1888. Shift to the streets: tongues of fog drifting, gas lamps fluttering, Bobbies patrolling, a Hansom cab slowly trawling, clip-clop, clip-clop loud on the cobblestones. One woman rushes along a narrow alley and ducks quickly through a door. Another street, another woman not so quick, that door resisting her efforts as hands stretch out of the dark and grasp her throat, stopping a scream. Cut to: Daylight and Inspectors Lestrade and Foxborough survey a corpse which is shielded from our view, Foxborough composed and serious studying the body, Lestrade distressed and almost ill, looking away.
It’s probable that the Whitechapel murders of 1888 played on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s imagination, but to my knowledge Doyle did not directly engage Jack the Ripper in his fiction. Perhaps that is a result of Victorian decorum guiding him away from an unseemly subject or perhaps a result of not wishing his stories to reignite the fear and anxiety caused by murders so close in time to their publication; later artists have been less reticent.
Murder by Decree boasts an excellent cast and an intricate plot concerning the decadence of royalty, conspiracy by members of a (somewhat) secret society, radical insurrectionists using the Ripper murders for their own aims, and Holmes and Watson caught between factions.
Holmes and Watson, aware of the murders, both wonder why the authorities have not asked him to consult. Merchants local to Whitechapel enlist Holmes’ aid, ostensibly concerned for East End women while also complaining that the murders have chased away business, respectable Londoners avoiding the area. Other motives emerge later.
When Holmes arrives at the scene of the murder described above, he is welcomed by the inspectors until the head of Scotland Yard, Sir Charles Warren (Anthony Quayle) appears. Warren calls Holmes an interfering amateur and tries bullying him into ending his investigation, later even going so far as to threaten arrest. Warren was a real historical personage, not well-loved by the working class and poor Londoners for his handling of riots the year previous and eventually forced out of office by the ineffectuality of the Ripper investigation.
When Holmes uncovers a connection between the dead prostitutes and tracks down two who still survive, he learns the reasons behind the murders and the peculiar significance of the wounds inflicted on the dead women, and his findings threaten powerful men high in the government. The movie’s action is capped by the search for Mary Kelly (Marie Kelly in other sources) before the killer can find her and is well-handled but anyone knowing the history will recognize it as the Ripper’s last and most brutal murder which subsumes the terror of what might happen in the horror of what did; Clarke handles this discreetly, implying the viciousness of the attack through sound, dim outlines seen through dirty, fire-lit windows and a brief glimpse into the room in which Kelly meets the Ripper.
Murder by Decree was not the first film to pit Holmes against Jack the Ripper. Besides one silent film, there is
A Study in Terror (1966) directed by James Hill and starring John Neville and Donald Huston as Holmes and Watson (the cast also including Anthony Quayle and Frank Finlay’s first foray as Lestrade – typecasting, perhaps?). While not a Hammer Studios production, I recall it as having some of the same feel and atmosphere as the better Hammer movies, and John Neville as a measured and mellow Holmes compared to the energy of previous actors like Basil Rathbone and Peter Cushing. Though it has been several years since I last saw it, I remember enjoying
A Study in Terror and thinking it underappreciated. Tangentially, a novel based on the movie, written by Ellery Queen (or one of the writers Frederic Danay and Manifred B. Lee often hired to write their later novels) featured a document by Dr. John Watson (according to queen.spaceports.com, apparently written by Paul Fairman) wrapped within an Ellery Queen case.
A few years after directing
Murder by Decree its director, Bob Clark, became famous for producing and directing two movies,
Porky’s and
A Christmas Story.
Yes.
Porky’s, the success of which financed
A Christmas Story.
Anyway, Clarke had already made two well-regarded horror movies on the cheap,
Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972) and
Black Christmas (1975; proto-slasher movie that pre-dates and is said to influence John Carpenter’s
Halloween), so he came to the material with experience handling horror elements. The question was, could he handle Holmes and Watson? The casting of Christopher Plummer as Holmes and James Mason as Watson was a masterstroke. Plummer, like John Neville, gives a less stagy performance than most previous actors, his Holmes quick to observe and energized by his observations. Mason imbues Watson with the decency one would expect, but also a dignity few previous film Watsons muster and which he sustains even as comic relief. Plummer avoids the moments of condescension that appear in some Holmes movies, and both actors emphasize Holmes and Watson’s regard for and trust in each other, making this movie a harbinger of the BBC
Sherlock Holmes series (which ran approximately 1984-1994), and of more recent adaptations from
House to
Sherlock and
Elementary in which the complexities of the Holmes/Watson relationship assume an importance equal or nearly so to that of the adventures.
What could have devolved into a bloody horror movie treads carefully between depicting a friendship, real-life horror and speculating about power and corruption, using Holmes and Watson as the pick and shovel for unearthing it all. The film also acknowledges the Whitechapel murders as a point of engagement in England’s class struggles, yet I think it reasonable to say that Holmes’ meetings with the radical element and in particular his final confrontation with those in power who wish to suppress the full story, stamp this as a post-Watergate film.
As mentioned in the entry on
The Lodger, Jack the Ripper is the one monster we inherited from the 19th century based on a historical figure. While inspiring some serious researchers he has also drawn many who spin theories that frequently serve no purpose except aggrandizing themselves. It’s hard to say which group the following fits in: In the 1970s the theory of government conspiracy and Free Mason involvement behind the murders became popular. The theory gained currency though the evidence was circumstantial at best, but that’s no reason for creators of fiction like Clarke and his script writer, John Hopkins not to tap into it. The end credits state that the movie is based on (then) recent theories, its main source
The Ripper File by John Lloyd and Elwin Jones. According to the appendices of
From Hell, a graphic novel by Alan Moore, the Lloyd and Jones was one of a deluge of books that appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s, probably anticipating the hundred year anniversary of the murders (in “Appendix II . The Dance of the Gulls” Moore skeptically and often gleefully recounts the macabre history of “Ripperology”).
I haven’t read
The Ripper File, but shortly after publication and largely because of respectful reviews in several national periodicals, I did read former police sergeant Donald Rumbelow’s
The Complete Jack the Ripper (which Moore cites as a source in his endnotes). For most of its length,
The Complete Jack the Ripper is a matter-of-fact and well-researched recounting of the murders, placing them in the context of the society and the times, and includes information not widely available previously because Rumbelow had access to Scotland Yard’s case files. What stays with me, in spite of Rumbelow’s non-sensational approach, is the chapter in which he recapitulates the murder of Mary (Marie) Kelly; this remains one of a handful of readings to leave me shaken for some time after closing the covers, and has made me wary of fiction downplaying the viciousness of the murders: It is easy to romanticize the Ripper when ignoring or glossing over the details of his crimes.
That said, the focus of
Murder By Decree is on the Holmes and Watson relationship, their investigation, and the skein of possible motives behind the murders. For me that somewhat mitigates shying away from the ferocity of the crimes; in this fictional world the viciousness of the Ripper unveils an equivalent disregard for life in the callousness of those seeking to suppress the story or to use the murders for their own ends. Further, Plummer’s portrayal conveys much of the horror of the events, humanizing the thinking-machine through showing a gradual evolution of Holmes’ good-humor and excitement in the puzzle into near incredulousness and open anger as he perceives the extent of what he has uncovered, and indignation and sorrow over the final events. These elements lend the movie a seriousness most Holmes and Watson movies lack.
I commend
Murder by Decree to anyone who enjoys Holmes and Watson, and to those interested in a fictional use of the Ripper murders that does not dwell long on the gory details. For readers with stronger stomachs, I recommend Rubelow’s history; and, too, Alan Moore’s
From Hell (not the diluted movie version) for its use of speculations similar to those in
Murder by Decree but in a more expansive story that includes endnotes citing sources and detailing what is fact, what is extrapolated from fact and what is fictional fancy. But I warn you, for all that this is comic book art, the murders are viewed with unflinching directness and the section portraying Mary Kelly’s murder does not skimp on detail and is all the more disturbing for explicating the murderer’s (speculative) reasoning behind the assault.
Of interest featuring Jack the Ripper:
A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny
[An enjoyable, charming fantasy in spite of my resistance to its portrayal of Jack. I noticed a new edition of this in a local bookstore just this morning.]
Of broader interest:
Thomas Burke: “The Hands of Mr. Ottermole” (from
The Best of Thomas Burke;
The Golden Gong and Other Stories)
Ray Russell: “Sagittarius” (from
Haunted Castles
Harlan Ellison: “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” (from
Deathbird Stories)
Vincent Bugliosi:
Helter Skelter [non-fiction]
Robert Bloch:
Psycho &
American Gothic
Wednesday:
Shadow of a Doubt
