Jack carves the flesh, Caine chews the scenery

bwaynef

Good.  Very good.  Stylish and atmospheric with an impressive cast, including Armand Assante, Jane Seymour, and Lewis Collins.  I regret to say that Michael Caine is less impressive.  The murders are presented with more restraint than Mr. Caine's performance.  As praised as he often is, and often deserves to be, it sometimes seems as though Caine should wear a slice of pineapple on his head with some macaroni salad on the side.

Even though Caine hams it up here and there, this "Jack the Ripper," first aired on CBS in the fall of 1988 to mark the 100th anniversary of the killer's reign, is stylish, exciting, and even dares to speculate on the identity of the real killer.  Interestingly, while Michael Caine was hunting down Jack the Ripper on TV, he was playing Sherlock Holmes in a theatrical feature, "Without a Clue."  Holmes and the Ripper haunted the same Victorian era in foggy old London, although the great detective was, to some people's surprise, a fictional creation.  That didn't stop Columbia Pictures from sending him out to battle ol' bloody Jack in a 1966 film, "A Study in Terror."

score /10

bwaynef 9 April 1999

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0258560/