Director: Peter Sasdy
Writers: Lewis Davidson, Edward Spencer Shew
Stars: Eric Porter, Angharad Rees, Jane Merrow
Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes
Link: https://amzn.to/30LKeje
Synopsis
A crowd spots Jack the Ripper and chases him through the London streets. He hurries home to his wife and child. She spots blood on his hands, so he stabs her to death while the baby daughter, Anna, watches. Credits roll, and many years pass.
We see Mr. Pritchard visiting Mrs. Golden, who scams people with fake seances. Pritchard’s son Michael is then off to his stag party; he gets married next week. Mrs. Golden is assisted by her granddaughter, who does the voices for the seances and turns tricks for the old lady in the off hours. The girl is the grown-up Anna.
Mr. Dysart hires her for those services, but she goes into some kind of coma when he gives her a shiny, sparkly, piece of jewelry. Someone grabs the fireplace poker and stabs the old woman. Mr. Pritchard hears the scream and rushes in, passing Dysart on the way out. Anna is still catatonic.
Dr. Pritchard testifies for the police the next day while Michael picks up his fiancé Laura at the station, who we quickly learn is blind. Pritchard takes responsibility for Anna, as he’s started to read up on the new idea of psychology. He’s read all the books by that man Dr. Freud, and he wants to see how it all works. She takes him home with her. Pritchard introduces Anna to Michael and Laura, who are all going to be staying there together for a while.
Pritchard meets with Dysart. Either Dysart or Anna killed Mrs. Golden, and Dysart accuses her; “she was possessed!” Pritchard doesn’t doubt that she did it, but he doesn’t believe she was possessed. He explains about schizophrenia. Pritchard wants to study her as a murderer. He wants Dysart to use his influence to learn all he can about where Anna came from.
Pritchard gives the maid a shiny necklace to put on Anna before sending her on a carriage to the restaurant. The maid pulls it out, and Anna gets that look in her eyes. Anna breaks a mirror and cuts the maid’s throat with it. Pritchard returns home and finds a mess to clean up, but he handles things.
Not long after, he starts psychoanalyzing Anna under hypnosis. She sneaks out at night and befriends a streetwalker. They go inside and Anna does her thing while Pritchard searches for her all over town. Pritchard tells Anna that it’s all a dream.
He takes her to a psychic reader at Dysart’s suggestion. She’s wearing a monocle that hangs from a chain and swings back and forth. The woman reads her and describes what happened in the pre-credit scene. She explains about the Ripper and the dead mother and baby Anna. “Oh my God– he’s the Ripper!” She won’t tell the identity of the man, but says the violence is now within Anna. Anna kills her with the monocle, right in front of Pritchard.
The treatments continue, and she eventually stabs Pritchard with a sword. He manages to pull the sword out by himself, so he doesn’t die. Anna goes out with Laura to St. Paul’s. He gets a carriage and picks up Michael, and they go searching for the two women.
Laura thinks she can hear someone talking to Anna as Anna hears the voice of her dead father. Is she really possessed and not simply insane? The voice tells Anna to kill Laura as Michael races up the hundreds of stairs to get there. Pritchard watches as Anna and Laura converge way up in the high church near the railing. Pritchard calls to Anna, and she jumps over the railing to her death.
Commentary
The set design, casting, and acting are all excellent. It’s a little slow paced, but it’s interesting throughout. It’s all based on psychological ideas of the late 1800s, which were pretty nonsensical and unrealistic.
I think it might have been better without the opening scene. Then we wouldn’t know who Anna was until much later on, and the mystery would have worked better. As it is, we know that she is the murderer, and we even understand why she does it.
It didn’t end well for Anna. The murderer always gets what’s coming to them in the end, but in this case, she was just a psychologically scarred victim herself, not a monster by choice. I can see why this isn’t one of the more popular Hammer films.
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