Carl may be up against the original Jack the Ripper, a black-caped, bullet-resistant, super-human killer of women.Carl may be up against the original Jack the Ripper, a black-caped, bullet-resistant, super-human killer of women.Carl may be up against the original Jack the Ripper, a black-caped, bullet-resistant, super-human killer of women.
- Masseuse
- (as Marya Small)
- Policeman
- (as Donald Mantooth)
- Mail Boy
- (as Robert Bryan Berger)
- Cop in Alley
- (uncredited)
- Detective
- (uncredited)
- Debbie Fielder
- (uncredited)
- Detective
- (uncredited)
- Bus Driver
- (uncredited)
- Driver's Wife
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThough actress Ruth McDevitt is credited only as "Elderly Woman", her character is actually given a name in dialogue - Miss Eggenweiller (no spelling shown) Ruth McDevitt would later join the regular cast as "Miss Emily Cowles", the columnist to whom "Miss Eggenweiller" had written in this episode.
- GoofsKolchak, while being a reporter, even though employed by a 3rd rate news service, constantly uses a small format 110 camera to capture out of focus images of vampires, werewolves and the like. Such a camera would not produce usable photos, especially those taken at night.
- Quotes
[first lines]
Carl Kolchak: [Voiceover intro] If by chance you happened to be in the Windy City between May 25 and May 29 of this year, you would have had good reason to be terrified. During this time Chicago was stalked by a horror so frightening, so fascinating, that it ranks with the great unsolved mysteries of all time. It's been the fictional subject of films, plays, even an opera. Now, here, are the true facts.
In the premiere episode "The Ripper," that malevolent, supernatural force is none other than Jack the Ripper, Victorian London's legendary serial killer who preyed upon prostitutes in the fall of 1888 and was never caught. But is the spate of murders targeting sex workers in Milwaukee and Chicago, where Kolchak works for the Independent News Service, yet another copycat killer decades after the original--or could it really be the original Jack?
Series creator Jeff Rice wrote the initially unpublished novel that spawned two highly successful television movies, 1972's "The Night Stalker" and 1973's "The Night Strangler," both starring Darren McGavin and Simon Oakland as Kolchak's perpetually exasperated editor Tony Vincenzo, each of whom migrated to the series that featured a "monster of the week" that Kolchak inevitably stumbled upon but was unable to convince anyone, particularly Vincenzo, about what he had discovered.
With its modest budget and the special effects of its time, "The Night Stalker," much like Britain's "Doctor Who," also suffered from wobbly-walls-and-men-in-rubber-suits syndrome. In "The Ripper," even with a presumptive human as the monster, so much of the action is shot at nighttime locations or in dark interiors that you can't see what is happening.
Thus, like "Doctor Who," the series had to rely on snappy scripts, droll humor, and the raffish charm of its leading man, unkempt but distinctive, unconventional but intrepid, dogged but fallible as Kolchak couldn't resist delving into the world of malevolent, supernatural forces even when, as punishment for antagonizing Chicago's Finest, particularly police Captain Warren (Ken Lynch), Vincenzo tasks him with addressing the correspondence piling up for vacationing advice columnist Miss Emily.
That leaves Vincenzo's other reporter, dapper, priggish business writer Ron Updyke, to investigate the killing of a local masseuse--and, boy, is "Uptight" (as Carl dubs him) out of his league, particularly as how Kolchak has already seen the presumed killer, impervious to bullets, leap from a four-story building, throw police officers around like they were rag dolls, and even walk away unscathed after being hit by a car.
Rudolph Borchert's gritty script, taking in strip clubs and massage parlors alongside sojourns in the decidedly-shoestring INS newsroom, also weaves in comic relief in the form of gluttonous tabloid reporter Jane Plumm (Beatrice Colen), certain that she's sniffed out the killer, and, in a brilliant, hilarious moment, Kolchak's own feet of clay as he (nearly) comes face to face with the Ripper, an all-too-human hero whose every sly, shrewd, shabby move is worth watching.
So, too, is "The Ripper" worth watching despite its flaws, because McGavin is fully invested in the eerie, offbeat, supernatural malevolence that lurks beneath our benign natural world. You should be too.
- darryl-tahirali
- Mar 31, 2022
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Filming locations
- 407 S. Dearborn St Chicago IL 60605, USA(INS office exterior in Chicago where elevated train passes by)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime52 minutes
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1