4 Star

A Man’s Words Have Consequences.

Writer/director Steve Lawson (Bram Stoker’s Van Helsing, Ripper Untold) continues his career in the horror industry with this revisit to the tale of Whitechapel in the late nineteenth century, where ‘Jack-the-Ripper’ roamed the streets killing young women.

Jessica Wingate (Ayvianna Snow, Black Lake: Director’s Cut, The Good Wife) is a very distraught young woman, embroiled in a scandal that leads her to commit suicide. The reason for the scandal was London Morning Time’s reporter Sebastian Stubb (Chris Bell, Essex Boys: Law of Survival, I Am Hooligan) who rose to fame covering the Jack-the-Ripper stories, as he had discovered letters from the mystery killer describing his dastardly deeds. But now, a year has passed with no killings, how the mighty have fallen, reduced to trying to do stories on missing dogs.

Stubbs private life sees him living with his fiancé Iris (Rachel Warren, Rise of the Footsoldier: Origins, The Last Heist) who is a woman of the night and making more money than him, which is not good for the landlady (Danielle Sanderson, Boy Meets Girl), as Stubb’s is the one paying the rent, or not in this case.

Then one day, while teaching his illustrator Lenny (Rafe Bird, Our Town (TV Series), The Mummy: Resurrection) how to write the story of the robbery he had just witnessed and how to pitch it, he finds a letter addressed to himself, written in red ink, describing the murder of the young woman Mavis (Vicki Glover, Do Something, Jake, D-Day Assassins).

Heroes into villains.

Has the killer returned? Or is it a copycat killer? These are questions that Stubbs must find the answer to. So he heads to the murder scene described in the letter. He finds the murder scene, and it is exactly as described, he quickly takes a sketch for Lenny to embellish later. But as he scribbles away he is discovered next to the body by a constable (Marcus Langford, Essex Boys Retribution, Rise of the Footsoldier 3: The Pat Tate Story). This gets him arrested and as Chief Inspector Wingate (Carl Wharton, Exiled: The Chosen Ones, City Limits) interrogates him, we start to find out the murky past of Mr Stubbs, the lengths he has gone to in order to get his story and those who have fallen by the wayside because of his writings.

Ripper’s Revenge is a well written, twisty tale of murder and revenge, as Chris Bell steers the narrative very well in this who-done-it. A great way to spend eighty-five minutes. A story to get your teeth into.

Ripper’s Revenge is available on DVD