Murder by DecreeRating:
Release Date: 21 January, 2003 Retail Price: $14.98 OUR Price: $13.48 You SAVE: $1.50! Cast: Complete Cast (22 total) |
Murder by Decree Reviews
The Best Jack the Ripper movie....
Although not based on anything written by Arthur Conan Doyle, Murder by Decree is both one of the best Sherlock Holmes movies and it is THE best Jack the Ripper movie ever made. The conspiracy theory that this movie puts forth should be familiar to anyone who is familiar with the Jack the Ripper story. It is basically the same plot as in From Hell. This is a much better movie than From Hell (although that graphic novel is one of the best of all time).
It is inevitable that someone would pit Holmes against Jack the Ripper sooner or later. Holmes made his literary debut around the same time as the Ripper, but Conan Doyle never put him on the case (because Sherlock would have to SOLVE the case and, of course, the Ripper's identity is still a mystery). In this version, fictional characters like Lestrade mingle with real-life characters like Sir Charles Warren - historically, a man whose incompetence hindered the capture of the Ripper. At this point in history, Holmes and Watson would have been comparatively young men at the start of their careers. Christopher Plummer (Holmes) and James Mason (Watson) are middle-aged and elderly, respectively. However, both actors are so fine that it is a pleasure to watch them act. James Mason - an underappreciated actor today - brings the dignity to Watson that Conan Doyle bequeathed him (this character is usually played as a dunce for comic relief). Christopher Plummer plays a humanist Holmes that would have been a tad unfamiliar to Conan Doyle - at one point, Holmes breaks down in tears, something the literary character would NEVER do. Even though Basil Rathbone will always own the part, Plummer plays him as a real person and not a caricature.
The movie was directed by Bob Clark, whose most famous film is A Christmas Story (I won't mention Porky's here). However, he also directed the greatest "the calls are coming from inside the house!" movie, Black Christmas. Here we see the same techniques as he employs the fish-eye lens to show the twisted POV of the killer. Unlike other directors, he holds this perspective even during the murder.
I've taken the Jack the Ripper tour and seen this area in real life - although now it is almost unrecognizable. This film does a good job of re-creating the look and feel of the gloomy East End of Victorian England all those years ago.
Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper
MURDER BY DECREE (1978): Whilst investigating a series of murders committed by 'Jack the Ripper' in Victorian London, Sherlock Holmes (Christopher Plummer) and Dr. Watson (James Mason) uncover a Masonic conspiracy which leads them to the very heart of the British Establishment.
During the summer of 1973, the BBC ran a six-part documentary series entitled "Jack the Ripper" (also known as "The Ripper File"), in which two popular fictional detectives (played by Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor) investigated the 'true' identity of Jack the Ripper, using all the evidence available to them at the time. Their conclusions formed the basis of Bob Clark's all-star period thriller MURDER BY DECREE, which condenses vast amounts of information into a single digestible screenplay. A British/Canadian co-production, the film's lavish recreation of Victorian London (extravagant opera houses, cobbled streets and miles of gloomy Whitechapel alleyways populated by hundreds of costumed extras) belies its modest $4m budget, and for once, the starry supporting cast - including Anthony Quayle, David Hemmings, John Gielgud and Donald Sutherland - seem perfectly suited to their individual roles. For the most part, Clark subordinates his deceptively simple visual style to a wealth of evidence which constitutes the heart and soul of John Hopkins' detailed screenplay. In particular, director and writer outline the political and class divisions which prevailed in England at the time of the Ripper murders, exacerbating a number of problems surrounding the police investigation and leading to all manner of conspiracy theories which persist to this day. However, the script contains a number of memorable character touches (the episode of the 'errant pea' is most prized by the movie's many fans) which prevents the narrative from becoming bogged down in a series of facts and figures. Plummer and Mason are ideally suited to the roles of Holmes and Watson, though Genevieve Bujold almost steals the film during a heartbreaking sequence in a lonely asylum where Holmes discovers the key to the unfolding mystery. You may not agree with the film's conclusions (the same evidence was re-evaluated by author Stephen Knight in his popular non-fiction account 'Jack the Ripper The Final Solution' [1976] and David Wickes' excellent TV movie JACK THE RIPPER [1988] starring Michael Caine), but MURDER BY DECREE is generally ackowledged as one of the best Ripper/Holmes movies ever made. Incidentally, the film was given a PG rating at a time when the MPAA was allowing some extraordinarily vivid material to go unchecked within this particular category, and while MURDER BY DECREE doesn't revel in violence, it conveys the grislier aspects of the Ripper's crimes with enough borderline potency to warrant a PG-13 these days.
Unusually for an Anchor Bay release, their disc is region 1 only, and the movie runs 123m 19s (not including the distributor logos which open the video print and weren't part of the original film). The image is letterboxed at 1.85:1 (anamorphically enhanced) for the first time on home video, and picture quality is solid. Sound format is 2.0 mono. Closed captions are included, though this reviewer wishes that 'open' captions - accessible to all via the menu - would become the norm for DVD rather than the exception. Extras include a wide-ranging audio commentary by director Clark, detailed biographies of the film's major personnel, a trailer, and several photo galleries which cover both the production and the advertising materials.
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