There’s a special place in cinematic limbo for directors who think setting a camera down near a fog machine counts as atmosphere. In that desolate purgatory of soft-focus nonsense and half-lit alleys, Jess Franco’s Jack the Ripper (1976) floats like a sad balloon filled with cheap gin, theatrical mustaches, and missed opportunities. This isn’t a horror film. It’s not even a thriller. It’s a collection of shrug-inducing scenes in which Klaus Kinski glowers at women before cutting them open like he’s reading a particularly boring grocery list.
You would think that combining Jess Franco’s sleaze sensibilities with the most notorious serial killer in history would at least result in a debauched mess worth rubbernecking. Instead, Jack the Ripper is weirdly tame, weirdly bored, and weirdly bad. It’s like watching a true crime re-enactment directed by a man who only owns two locations, three actors, and a grudge against excitement.
Let’s start with the lead. Klaus Kinski plays Dr. Dennis Orloff, a thinly veiled stand-in for Jack the Ripper and possibly a relative of Franco’s other go-to creeper, Dr. Orlof. Kinski spends the film sneaking around London (which looks suspiciously like a small German village with a fog machine addiction), seducing prostitutes, and murdering them offscreen before looking vaguely pleased with himself. He plays Jack the Ripper like a tired funeral director who occasionally remembers he’s supposed to be evil.
Now, Klaus Kinski could sell madness better than anyone—his eyes were like two feral cats trapped in a skull—but here, Franco does nothing with him. No inner conflict. No descent into madness. Just Kinski sleepwalking through smoky rooms, cutting up mannequins (or what might as well be mannequins given the acting), and occasionally flashing a dead-eyed smile that says, “I’m here for the paycheck, and possibly to collect souls.”
The plot—oh, you poor fool, expecting a plot—is as barebones as a skeleton that’s been picked clean by pigeons. Dr. Orloff is a respected doctor by day and a killer by night. There’s a cop who suspects something is amiss (Herbert Fux, trying to hold the film together with his mustache and mounting exasperation), and a girlfriend or assistant or cousin (it’s unclear and unimportant) who spends most of the film asking questions in between bouts of nakedness. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
There’s no investigation worth mentioning. No tension. No unraveling of mystery. The police are useless, the victims are disposable, and the killer practically confesses by the halfway point—but don’t worry, there’s still another 40 minutes of filler, fog, and flutes before we get to the soggy conclusion.
Franco, in his usual style, tries to pad everything with endless scenes of walking, staring, and unearned nudity. If you like your murder scenes to be followed by five minutes of Klaus Kinski combing his hair and staring into the middle distance, then Jack the Ripper is your masterpiece. Everyone else will be wondering why the women in this movie are so magnetically drawn to a guy who looks like he sleeps in a crypt and drinks lukewarm broth.
And then there’s the tone. Is it horror? Is it erotic thriller? Is it a historical melodrama? Franco doesn’t seem to know or care. One moment we’re watching a poorly staged autopsy lit like a dentist office; the next, we’re in a brothel where women giggle and lounge around like they’re auditioning for Moulin Rouge: The Community Theater Edition. None of it fits together. It’s as if someone took five different films, edited them with gardening shears, and dubbed them using the cast of a failed radio play.
The gore—what little there is—is laughably tame. Most murders happen offscreen, followed by bloodless corpses draped artfully across haystacks or alleyways like discount mannequins at a Halloween store. Franco teases sadism but never commits. There’s a scene where a woman is stripped, tied up, and menaced by a scalpel, but it plays like softcore taxidermy. It’s supposed to be shocking, but it’s so slowly paced and badly lit it feels like watching an avant-garde film about butter knives.
And let’s not forget the music. Oh dear God, the music. Franco unleashes his usual cocktail of lounge jazz, melancholy harpsichord, and what sounds like a man strangling an accordion in slow motion. There’s no rhythm. No suspense. Just repetitive, aimless noise that plays over every scene like Franco’s trying to hypnotize you into not caring.
Visually, the film looks like it was shot through a dirty window using expired fog machine fluid. Every scene is either too dark to see or so overlit it looks like someone left a flashlight on in the basement. Franco’s obsession with zoom shots is back with a vengeance—zooming in on eyes, cleavage, doorknobs, and once, for no reason at all, a streetlamp. He uses the zoom lens like a toddler discovering a new crayon: joyfully, recklessly, and without supervision.
Acting? Barely. The women are mostly decorative. They deliver lines like they’re reading IKEA instructions off a bathroom mirror. Their purpose is to get naked, look shocked, and die quietly. The men aren’t much better—half of them look like they got lost on the way to an opera audition and were told, “Just scowl and look Victorian.”
And the ending? Oh, it fizzles. Franco wraps things up with a boat chase that looks like it was filmed at five miles per hour on a canal behind someone’s Airbnb. There’s no final confrontation, no dramatic unmasking—just a sad splash, a quick scream, and credits rolling like the film is embarrassed to still be going.
Final Verdict:
Jack the Ripper is Jess Franco’s idea of high-brow horror: a foggy, flaccid failure full of padding, posing, and paper-thin tension. Klaus Kinski does what he can, but he’s surrounded by cardboard characters, a director more interested in zoom shots than story, and a script that could’ve been written on a bar napkin during a blackout.
It wants to be classy Euro-horror with psychological depth. It ends up as the cinematic equivalent of stale absinthe and dry toast. Watch it only if you’re completing a Franco box set or doing penance for sins committed in another life. Otherwise, turn back before the fog eats your soul. Or worse—your time.
