Man in the Attic

Aunt Bee from Mayberry gets suspicious after she rents out the attic of her Victorian mansion to (the always creepy) Jack Palance in this snoozefest of a Jack the Ripper movie. Like almost every Ripper flick before and since, this one painfully plays out the "is he or isn't he the killer" bit for as long as possible, when OF COURSE he's the fucking Ripper. Very stiff and stagey presentation totally lacking in both thrills and suspense.

Plays out like a Mystery even though the story is better suited to be a horror/thriller. Is he The Ripper or isn't he? Well, in the poster he's got a knife to that broad's throat, so unless this is a Cronenberg movie about knifeplay fetishists, I'm guessing he's the Ripper.

What's really unfortunate is that the movie only lives up to what it aspires to, which is a below average non horrorific telling of a story that claims no known killer and doesn't even present their theory as to who it is with a bit of mystery. It's pretty obvious who the killer is when after one of the bloodless kill scenes, the killer's silhoutte is clearly seen doing one-armed push-ups.

Hugo Fregonese has style to spare, and Jack Palance swings for the fences. There's some amazingly layered shots during the police man-hunt.

While it will not win any awards for historical accuracy, the camerawork and score were above par and it does hold the attention, which is more than I can say for most films of the period. Palance is pretty good and gives it his all (it's no Tango & Cash though) as is Aunt Bea. All in all, not bad.

Aunt Bea meets Jack the Ripper. The touches of humor throughout add to the proceedings. The ending was a bit of a cheat on history...but no matter.

Passably entertaining but definitely on the dumb side.

Since the movie takes the bold approach of making it pretty plain from the beginning that the titular Man is indeed the Ripper, I assumed that there would be some twist around the end. There isn't. The bad guy is the bad guy. And the songs were dumb.