Product Details
Ripper: Letter From Hell

Ripper: Letter From Hell
Directed by John Eyres

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Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #28095 in DVD
  • Released on: 2002-01-15
  • Rating: R (Restricted)
  • Format: NTSC
  • Original language: English
  • Running time: 113 minutes

Editorial Reviews

Video Details
By the time she was 16, Molly had already lived to tell a bloodcurdling tale: she was the only survivor of a violent murderer who slaughtered all her friends. Disturbed by her horrific past, she focuses her energies on researching the minds of serial killers. Enrolled in a forensic science program led by famed author and man hunter Martin Kane, she joins a study group fixated on solving a local campus murder. When the students realize the killer’s modus operandi mirrors that of London’s legendary Jack the Ripper, Molly’s friends, once again, begin to fall victim around her.

On the DVD
ccWidescreen
5.1 Dolby Digital
Production commentary
Trailer
English & Spanish subtitles
Interactive menus
Scene access

Synopsis
A woman finds herself reliving a terrifying moment from her past -- only to discover her tormentor's past goes back much further in this horror story. Molly (A.J. Cook) is a college student who, after escaping uninjured from the clutches of a serial killer who claimed the lives of several of her friends, has devoted herself to the study of the murderous mind as a criminology major. While doing research for a class project, she makes the terrifying discovery that the madman who killed her friends is back on the loose -- and that his methods and actions bear a striking resemblance to that of Jack the Ripper, the bloodthirsty killer who terrorized London over a century ago. Ripper: Letter From Hell also features Bruce Payne, Emmanuelle Vaugier, and Jurgen Prochnow. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide


Customer Reviews

Failure every which way1
If you are looking for a movie about the real life Jack the Ripper, this ain't it (one or more of the reviews below are obviously thinking that this movie was the From Hell movie starring Johnny Depp, which it definitely isn't).

If you are looking for a movie based upon some facts of the Jack the Ripper case but going off in a new direction, this isn't a good bet either. It's a typical low budget teen slasher with just enough loose mentions of the Ripper case so they could throw a name on it to catch all the people looking for the other movie. It basically steals the plot of Scream 2, replacing the nonsensical links to the first Scream movie with nonsensical links to the Jack the Ripper case.

If you are looking for a scary horror movie, this ain't it either. The characters are all idiots. For supposed top students in serial killer studies (that all look like teen models, right) none of them act in a way at all realistic for someone in their position. It's like basing a slasher movie at a music camp but with characters who can't play any musical instruments, except worse than that, because these people aren't just dumb for supposed serial killer experts, they make boneheaded mistakes that cheerleader characters in other movies are too smart to make. So right off the bat you couldn't care less if the characters die, which makes it hard to feel any horror. But then the movie manages to miss most every opportunity for suspense and instead makes fuzzy references to things that never appear onscreen but might have been interesting if they had.

If you are looking for a good cheesy teen slasher popcorn movie... nope, not here either. The ending is horribly muddled, the pace is bad, the dialogue is ridiculous, and the romantic or sexy parts they usually use to pad the storyline for those films are entirely absent.

And it doesn't even work as a movie so bad you watch to laugh at its unintentional jokes, because it's just not entertaining. It's not a "Hah hah hah. How stupid" kind of thing, more of a "What? They can't be serious, how lame."

There were a couple scenes and one or two actresses that might have been good in another movie, if only the people writing and producing it had picked what kind of film they wanted to create and then put a little effort into it.

STELAR RIPPER4
The rating for this totally off by a thousand! This made jump quite a few times. This movie is not as scary as some other movies I have seen in the past. The other reviewers must have been half asleep when they watched this movie. Do not let the rating and the reviewers ratings discourage you. If you are a Jack the Ripper fan you will love this movie. The can be a little bit twisted,so you will have to pay close attention to the movie.

RIPPER OFF2
John Eyres can't be totally blamed for directing this flick. The script must have seemed innovative and challenging at the time. However, I'm sure once he got into it, he must have been as disappointed as I was. The movie opens with a young girl (AJ Cook from Final Destination II) being pursued by a mysterious serial killer who has evidently wiped out all her friends. Five years later, Molly is taking a class in serial killers (do they really offer such stuff?). Her professor, the disturbingly sinister Kane (played with exquisite boredom by Bruce Payne), tells his class to think outside the box. Ho hum...but of course what happens is that this little group of serial killer students are being wiped out one by one. Enter Jurgon Prochnow in perhaps the most ridiculously funny performance ever given by someone who got rave reviews in DAS BOOT, and the plot sickens. Prochnow is so horribly bad, and whoever did his hair, well they certainly aren't touching mine!
This is also an incredibly sadistic movie, the murders being totally over the top; most of the film is shot so darkly you can't tell what's going on, and there's little redeeming qualities, except for a few tense scenes. The ending is so cryptic, you don't know what the heck really went on.
Could have, should have been better, but barely a decent time waster.