Ripper goes West

Press, 8 December 1987, Page 24

Ripper goes West

For those among us who are really feeling the sad loss of television’s “Sunday Horrors,” C. 8.5.Fox offers a pick-me-up, the video “Terror at London Bridge.” It even has a made-for-television look about it, with that star of the small screen, David “Knightrider” Hasselhoff, in the leading role. The 92-minute tape tells of a series of murders that take place in the Arizona town of Lake Havasu, the final resting place of the rebuilt London Bridge. A fragment of cloth from the killer’s clothing, and some old blood on his knife turn out to be 100 years old, eventually convincing Hasselhoff’s Detective Gregory that Jack the Ripper is back. Hasselhoff, who has the task of tracking down this killer in an unlikely environment in Arizona, has a few ghosts of his own to conquer. But this Ripper-gone-West is a rather pallid and sanitised version of the real monster who roamed Whitechapel in 1888. There has now been so much speculation about the Whitechapel murders, so much embroidery, so many films, isn’t it time that someone made the scariest Ripper film of them all: the one that simply recreates the real hunt for the real Ripper. What could be more terrifying than the truth? The video also stars Stefanie Kramer, Randolph Mantooth and Adrienne Barbeau, and was filmed by a director with the somehow appropriate name of E. W. Swackhamer. It carries a rating for mature audiences.