Jack The Ripper: a pitiless, surgically trained madman whose murderous rampage terrorized London in the late 19th century. But could he also have had mother issues? Ultra-prolific Spanish director Jesús Franco poses that question in Jack The Ripper, a 1976 dramatization which features the Ripper (Klaus Kinski) stalking the streets of London, thinking of the abusive-prostitute mother who terrorized his childhood, and speaking English dialogue which, in an eerie twist, rarely matches the movements of his lips. As the film opens, Kinski's reign of terror is already well under way, but that doesn't stop a hapless prostitute from turning down a customer who wants a "queer type of rut," and instead opting for an unaccompanied nighttime stroll. After taking pity on a blind beggar (Hans Gaugler), the finicky streetwalker meets an ugly end. Kinski disposes of the body–with the help of a put-upon assistant who asks, "Must I pitch this one in the Thames, too?"–at which point he thinks he's free and clear. What he doesn't suspect is that Gaugler's testimony and a tenacious Scotland Yard detective (Andreas Mannkopff) will conspire to put his life of crime in danger. A kind of proto-Daredevil with heightened senses to compensate for his blindness, Gaugler literally puts the detective onto the scent, describing the killer as smelling of a "rare blend of old books and fresh fragrance" with "a whiff of a rare medicinal plant from India." Nevertheless, more killings ensue as Kinski, bored with a night listening to a woman's ghostly laughter emerging from his fireplace, decides to visit a prostitute. This goes more or less as might be expected. As Kinski's murders grow more vicious, his hallucinations grow increasingly vivid, and his eyes bulge from their sockets with a greater intensity than usual. Eventually, Mannkopff's ballerina girlfriend Josephine Chaplin lures Kinski into a trap, at which point the Ripper is captured and brought to justice in a scene that illustrates the film's unwavering commitment to historical accuracy above all other concerns.
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