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No, neither can I. The extremely derivative cover does not hold much promise and does not show much thought or effort on the part of the distributor. I can’t say I blame them though, so excuse me if I don’t put all that much thought and effort into this film either.
A stormy night on a small island starts the movie, a terrified young lady runs through a muddy wood with the rain beating down on her. She finds someone she knows half-dead and buried alive, then another woman is seen – dead, naked and hanging from a tree. The girl panics and makes a run for a boat at the end of a jetty. A gloved hand reaches up over the edge of the boat but she stabs the hand before its owner could pull his/herself up, and she escapes into the night, found the next day battered, dirty and in shock. Five years later and that young lady, Molly Keller (A.J. Cook), sits in a first week class on criminal psychology. The teacher is former FBI profiler Marshall Kane (Bruce Payne!), who while really smart isn’t above pulling stupid pranks in his class, pretending to slash a student’s throat. During the class Molly speaks as if she really doesn’t like Kane, and her annoying, pretentious attitude doesn’t make her any friends amongst the study group she has to join. The group consists of The Bitchy Girl (with a fake French accent, natch), Weird Jittery Stuttering Guy, Hot But Dumb Slut Girl, Irritating Jerk Guy, Pretty But Bland Girl, Annoying Blonde Girl, and Fairly Normal Guy But Has The Hots For The Weirdr Lead Character That Nobody Likes. I’d use their real names but you’d forget them as quickly as I did. Considering this is the first week of school, everybody seems very familiar with each other except for Molly, who just acts like an obnoxious bitch and antagonises everybody anyway. Molly is haunted by inner demons, you can tell this by the crappy middle of the road ‘mood-rock’ that always starts playing when they have scenes with her on her own. Someone is watching Molly though, a grizzled old Detective Kelso (Jurgen Prochnow!). While Molly is off being pretentious, the rest of the group go to a strange club, located in a mostly abandoned building. Its full of pretentious pseudo-goth types dressed in odd outfits and some in masks, dancing to really bad industrial rock. Of course the study group stick out like sore thumbs, most of them looking like typical bland late teens.
Hot But Dumb Slut Girl wanders off to the ladies and has sex with a complete stranger who’s wearing a cloak and hood, but after doing the deed hears Pretty But Bland Girl and The Bitchy Girl talking about what a dumb slut she is, and she runs out really upset and hops in the elevator to go home. However the elevator doesn’t take her down to the ground floor, it takes her up to the next floor instead, a floor that has remained unused for quite some time. The elevator won’t go back down so being a Dumb Slut Girl, she decides to wander around the dark, deserted floor swearing and saying “anybody here? hello?” instead. Guess what? While she’s up there, a mysterious gloved killer with a knife stalks her, slashes her a bunch of times, and swings her corpse through the window of the floor below. Reeling from the news, the group come to terms with the death of their friend the only way anybody could, by blaming each other. The Bitchy Girl comes up with a *cough* fantastic idea, the study group should try and profile the killer! Luckily Pretty But Bland Girl works at the morgue too, so they could all pick an area and combine their findings. Molly wants out until she is visited by Detective Kelso who takes her to the crime scene, telling her that ‘He’ is back. The crime scene has words written on the wall in the Slut Girl’s blood, Molly is thrown for six and is once again haunted by her past. Meanwhile, Annoying Blonde Girl is driving home after her mother freaked out about the murder, but she will never make it home either. She is hounded and attacked by a large black pick-up with blacked-out windows, which runs her off the road, and then rams her car, sending her through the windscreen and off a cliff, the last thing she sees before falling is a hooded figure looking down at her. Its decided that the killer is someone close to the group, and that they are all potential victims, so they must profile and find this killer before he strikes again.
If I just provided that above synopsis and asked you to tell me what film it was, we’d be here all bloody day. This film is extremely derivative of any number of other slasher movies that came in 80s, or in the wake of Scream in the 90’s, however few were as ponderous and pretentious as Ripper. As you might have guessed from the title, the film attempts to portray a killer that is to some degree copying the murders of Jack the Ripper, don’t be fooled though because its ham-fisted at best and the whole film is riddled with bad slasher movie logic. These damn idiots have studied criminal psychology for ONE WEEK and they’re already trying to profile someone? Their teacher is actually encouraging them to do so, even though it is their little study group that is being targeted, wouldn’t you just make a run for it rather than further antagonise the killer? Then there are stupid parts, like its revealed the girl who fell off the cliff is found in a hut not far from where she died. So the killer climbed down the cliff, brought her back up, dragged her to the hut and killed her? Come ON! Then Pretty But Bland Girl sneaks into the morgue at night to get some information on one of the corpses, and the room she enters is full of corpses just laid out on stretchers all over the place, damn that had to stink! As if the stupidity there wasn’t enough, the script is so ponderous, characters stand around looking moody and worried while spouting lengthy dull, pretentious monologues that serve no purpose other than to softly lull you to sleep. At nearly two hours long, this film just drags horribly, becoming over-complicated by trying to find ways to implicate the entire cast in the murders to try and keep you on your toes. It didn’t keep me on my toes, the characters all constantly pointing the finger at each other irritated the hell out of me, and it all ended up being a big confusing mess.
I felt so sorry for Jurgen Prochnow and Bruce Payne in this movie. Jurgen went from Das Boot to this? And how come he looks like Rutger Hauer’s dad in this movie? Bruce, though not as big an actor as Jurgen I actually feel more sorry for, because after seeing him overact maniacally in the likes of Highlander: Endgame he actually puts in a restrained and extremely watchable performance in this, saving the film from the sub-par young cast who aren’t fit to share a set with their two elder co-stars. Bruce Payne actually brings some depth to his performance, and is about the only character in the film who isn’t badly written, playing quite an important part in the plot that isn’t immediately apparent. The other aspect of the film which wasn’t too bad was the set-up for the last segment of the film. After a couple more very badly-acted deaths they actually managed to find a semi-convincing way of getting all the important characters in one place at the same time, totally isolated, perfectly setting up the film’s climax and creating the only tension the film manages to muster. Pity the climax (no spoilers, I promise) is the worst kind, the kind that throws everything that the film shown out of the window, totally confuses the hell out of you in an attempt to be ‘clever’ and ‘different’.
Its neither though, its crap, and makes the sitting through this long, badly acted, badly written, pretentious piece of drivel all the more infuriating. I felt betrayed by this movie, that I’d sat through this dreary plodding crap in the hopes it would get better, and right when it looks like it will, its all snatched away and you’re left with a kick in the teeth. Perhaps that’s why John Eyres was mentioned on the cover, to make us stay as far away from this movie as possible. Lets face it, I just plain hate this movie.
