In an earlier edition of the Halloween Challenge, I had watched and reviewed TALES OF FRANKENSTEIN, an intriguing Universal/Hammer collaboration starring Anton Diffring. I was under the impression this was a one-off program, but now I learn it was actually the Pilot episode to a proposed but unsold series and bore the official title THE FACE IN THE TOMBSTONE MIRROR! Anyway, before the project was definitively scrapped, a second (and actually superior!) effort was made: incidentally, as explained in the prologue, the themes were not to be restricted to the exploits of Baron Frankenstein but would revolve around characters who went against nature in some form or another. The criminal life of Jack The Ripper, therefore, was a logical progression – one that was often dealt with by cinema, including a contemporaneous effort curiously scripted by Hammer regular Jimmy Sangster! Here, the figure of the notorious serial killer only appears as a silhouette in the prophetic dreams of a clairvoyant (played by Niall MacGinnis, who had just scored as the villainous Karswell in Jacques Tourneur's superlative M.R. James adaptation NIGHT OF THE DEMON {1957})
only to be revealed at the end to have been committed to an insane asylum, while passing him off as deceased to the outside world(!), by his own wife. Bizarrely, the animal cruelty that is said to have preceded his meticulous disembowelling of prostitutes echoes a chain of such heinous acts that has been making complete fools of the local authorities for the past two years, the latest of which occurred on the very night I watched this!! Clifford Evans, another Hammer alumnus, is the Scotland Yard Inspector on the case who, disturbingly, comes across as no more perspicacious in averting a foretold transgression than the Malta Police Force! On a final note, I have just learned that this particular episode was indeed broadcast back in the day, as a one-off addition – not starring Boris Karloff and, for obvious reasons, not filmed in Hollywood – to his TV series THE VEIL
which means that that the horror icon would get to grips with The Ripper once more (though, again, not personally) in his subsequent more popular show i.e. THRILLER (1960-62), an entry which I also managed to track down and watch for the current Halloween Challenge!