Who doesn’t love a Jack the Ripper story?
THE LODGER follows a seasoned detective on the trail of a ruthless
killer intent on slaughtering prostitutes along West Hollywood’s Sunset
Strip. It appears that the murderer’s grisly methods are identical to
that of London’s infamous 19th century psychopath Jack the Ripper – a
relentless serial killer who was never caught by police. To make
matters worse, the detective soon notices the parallels between the
crimes committed by the West Hollywood stalker and those of a serial
murderer incarcerated years ago. Could the wrong man be behind bars?
Alfred “He’ll always be Satipo to me” Molina stars as the detective who’s trying to hunt down the killer, as does Shane West and Rachael Leigh Cook. Simon Baker (Land of the Dead) plays the part of the troubled lodger. You can check the trailer out at Apple’s page here.
If the plot (and title) of the film sounds familiar, you might be thinking of Hitchcock’s The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog. One of his first films, it’s based on the same book by Marie Belloc Lowndes that this one is- although if my memory serves correctly there wasn’t the subplot about the detective. There were a couple of remakes of that film already, in 1932 and 1944.
Jack the Ripper still confounds detectives, more than a century after his killings. If you want to read up on it I highly suggest John Douglas’ The Cases That Haunt Us, which not only examines the evidence in that case and tries to draw a conclusion on who the culprit was, but also tackles some more recent killings like the Zodiac killer and who did in JonBenét Ramsey. Fascinating stuff.
In any case, we’ll see if this film can manage to run with its source material, and we’ll be able to check it out in theaters. The movie will be opening in a limited release in NYC and LA on January 23rd, and dvd shortly afterwards in February.