WIZARD magazine #114 - March 2001

HELL RAISER
by Christopher Lawrence
(Transcript by Langley)

What do you get when you mix JOHNNY DEPP, HEATHER GRAHAM and JACK THE RIPPER in a film adaption of Alan Moore's comic 'FROM HELL?' A bloody good show.

Johnny Depp scoops up his full-length wool jacket with a yawn, grabs the bowler hat resting beside him and strides over some rather large electrical cables, a technological portal that, once crossed, allows him to step out of Prague's National Museum and into 19th century London.

Now fully cloaked in the guise of Scotland yard's Inspector Frederick Abberline, Depp deftly weaves his way through the mingling morass of London's high society, sidestepping the waiters skittering about with trays of hors d'oeuvres and champagne flutes. Scanning the crowd with a keen eye, Abberline singles out one clique of tuxedoed men amid the sea of penguins and, full of purpose, heads directly for them.

"I'm Inspector Abberline," he says crisply, the serious tone in his voice instantly eliciting the men's attention. "I'm…I love you, man."

Depp smiles slyly at his flubbed line, and everyone within earshot breaks into laughter, a contagious cackling that quickly spreads, reverberating off the marble floors and columns of the ornate set. It's day 50 of the shoot of "From Hell," 20th Century Fox's upcoming big-screen adaptation of the comic series by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell (1994, Mad Love Publishing), and laughter's been pretty common.

Good thing, too. Because while levity might be an important component on any film set, it's probably even more vital on location of "From Hell," an R-rated movie awash in dark overtones that follows the search for a serial killer who systematically murders (and then dissects) prostitutes.

In other words, it's the story of Jack the Ripper---as envisioned by Alan Moore.

From Hell originally appeared in serialized form in the pages of the horror anthology Taboo. Later collected in more traditional comic form by Tundra Publishing, From Hell depicts Moore's intricately detailed, meticulously researched theory of the Jack the Ripper murders, brutal killings which had London on the grip of fear toward the end of the 19th century and have since become the stuff of legend.

One of the most notorious murderers in history, the Ripper slaughtered five female prostitutes within a single square mile in London's East End in the late summer and autumn of 1888. The concentration in both time and place, combined with the bizarre nature of the mutilations---body parts and organs were removed with surgical precision--- generated an intense fear which gripped Londoners and helped fuel the fascination the case retains up until the present day.

That, and the fact no one ever caught---or even positively identified---the Ripper.

"The fact it's unsolved is a big part of it," says director Allen Hughes, one half of the Hughes Brothers, the twin filmmakers responsible for "Menace II Society" and "Dead Presidents." "The obvious comparison is the JFK assassination. A lot of people, in their minds, know there was something fishy there. That's why there will always be a fascination with it."

And with fascination comes speculation. The unsolved nature of the Ripper case has spawned a number of theories about the murders over the years, including Moore's, which ties the ripper murders to an intricate conspiracy involving the Order of Freemasons, the royal family and---in some facets, at least---Scotland Yard itself.

"Basically, these women get killed off because one of their friends had an illegitimate child by the prince. That's what sparks the whole murder spree," Albert Hughes reveals. "It's a major conspiracy."

The process of bringing that conspiracy to the silver screen has been long and arduous--- and almost as difficult as investigating the murder. The odyssey began more than seven years ago, when Hollywood producer Don Murphy, a self-described "comic book geek" who's also developing movies based on Iron Man and Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, first read the Moore/Campbell Ripper story in Taboo.

"To be honest, I didn't get it at all," he laughs. "It was like reading four or five pages of a 500-page novel. I didn't know what was going on."

Afterwards, the first Tundra copy of From Hell came out, reprinting the first two Taboo chapters, along with Moore's appendices, in which he explains---almost page by page---how the story came about.

"It was the most brilliant thing I'd ever seen in my bloody life," Murphy said. "He wrote, 'This happened, this I made up, this is based on this, this is inspired by that.' I thought, 'Oh my God. This is the coolest thing I've ever seen---this is the JFK of Jack the Ripper.'"

Having seen but one issue of the comic, Murphy started to track down the rights. The film eventually wound up at Touchstone, a division of Disney entertainment. Once the script was in, a year-long search for directors began, a search that ended when the Hughes Brothers came into the picture.

"Disney gave us the 'From Hell' script with 'Con Air' and a couple of other movies. We didn't even read it, we just said, 'Not interested,'" Albert Hughes remembers. "Maybe six months later, we read it, and while we never imagined doing a Jack the Ripper movie, it was really right up our alley."

"We were just enthralled," Allen adds. "Then we got our hands on the comic book. That, mixed with the fact it's a thriller about a killer, it drew us to it."

Yet while the Hughes Brothers were finding their enthusiasm for the project, the folks at Disney were losing theirs. Touchstone gave Murphy the project back, and the film went over to New Line for a year, with the idea of involving Sean Connery. Political issues then erupted at the studio, Murphy says, which led to a separation from New Line and the search for another home.

Things eventually settled at Twentieth Century Fox, which ironically wanted the project from the beginning. Once there, the film went through some additional redevelopment.

"We started looking at the younger version of the movie," Murphy says. Thus, exit Connery from the role of Inspector Abberline, enter Depp, who's proven he can play diverse, demanding roles in films like "Sleepy Hollow" and "Donnie Brasco."

"Johnny brings a shocking amount of depth to the role. The way he plays things, you could take the words out and he could play it all out in his face," Allen says. "He's amazing. People know he can play dark stuff, but he brings a real edge to the role."

It's an edge befitting Abberline's prominence in the movie. Though the inspector's a major character in the comic book, he is the primary character in the film---one of the alterations necessary to bring From Hell to the silver screen.

"The script is very much in the spirit of [the] From Hell [comic] and if you watch it, you'll realize it is From Hell," Murphy says. "A lot of the weirdness, the details have been preserved, but there'll be tons of things that aren't from From Hell at all."

Things like the point-of-view from which the story's told---and the love story between Abberline, an opium addict in the film, and one of the prostitutes, Mary Kelly. There is an implied love story between the two in the book, but the comic Abberline is a married man, as the inspector was in real life. The filmmakers easily rectified the situation---by killing his wife.

"Wife gone, not married, available," Murphy says of Depp's character. "so the love story gets pumped up."

What the filmmakers needed then was the perfect Mary Kelly. After testing "almost every actress in town," Heather Graham ("Boogie Nights," "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me") landed the chance to fill Mary Kelly's corset.

"Heather has this bombshell thing about her---her eyes are just incredible and she licks the accent," Albert Hughes says. "I think she and Johnny together in this movie will really work."

And has Alan Moore, who's essentially taken a hands-off approach to the film, expressed any concerns about the changes made to his storyline?

Nope, Murphy recounts. "Alan's been fantastic," the producer says. "He says, 'Do whatever you want, I don't care. The book is the book, the movie will be the movie.'"

The movie will, however, look a lot like the book.

The Hughes Brothers admit lifting some of Campbell's scenes ("A lot of the shots are right from the comic," Albert says), and the artist's style helped influence Academy Award-winning set designer Martin Childs' approach to the movie.

"I looked a lot at the comic," says Childs. "When it came to research, and there was a question of doubt as to which bit to believe, I either used my imagination or I used the comic."

Childs pulled out all the stops in recreating Whitechapel, the section of London bearing the dubious honor of playing host to the Ripper murders.

Rising out of a barren lot near a small village about 20 minutes outside of Prague, the Victorian London set is essentially an intricately-manufactured time warp, a finely- crafted architectural throwback designed to help the Hughes Brothers create the most accurate depiction of the Ripper murders ever captured on film.

"The setting is extremely important in a film like this, very integral to the story," says Childs, who took home an Oscar in 1999 for recreating a chunk of London for "Shakespeare in Love." "It wasn't just a question of having the right architectural style, it was a question of atmosphere, the idea of the walls closing in on you. I was going for a bit of claustrophobia, a bit of no escape for the victims."

"I wanted a Whitechapel that looked like it had been standing there for a very long time," Childs says of the film's bleak, gloomy look. "I wanted to create a place where these murders were likely to happen."

And while it's the moviegoers who will ultimately decide the effectiveness of Childs' efforts, he's gotten an early stamp of approval from a man who's made a career out of investigating Jack the Ripper.

Ripper expert Stewart Evans explores the Whitechapel set with the enthusiasm of a child at Christmas. A pack of dogs howls in the distance, their cries creating an eerie soundtrack for the walk-through, a fact that---judging from the smile on his face---isn't lost on Evans.

"Yes," he pronounces, looking at an otherwise unremarkable patch of upturned ground behind a row of gray tenement-style apartments. "This is where they found the body."

The body in question belonged to Annie Chapman, the London prostitute who was the second of the Ripper's victims.

"This is great, absolutely fantastic," says Evans, who, after snapping a few photos, heads off to explore the rest of the set. "This was just a bit of rough ground. They've transformed it brilliantly."

Childs and company built bars, churches and businesses (like the Hughes Bros.' Creamery), wheeled in merchants' wagons, erected street lamps and imported 300-year old cobblestones---national treasures imported from a local brewery---all in an effort to bring Victorian London to life.

"We tried to make it as close to accurate as possible," Childs says proudly. "Each murder site in itself is pretty much a faithful reproduction of the Whitechapel area."

And the murders depicted in the film will be as faithful to the truth as the constructed settings.

"From Hell" looks at the Ripper mystery from a street perspective, from the level of the prostitutes victimized by the murderer, and in order to effectively capture the terror that seized Whitechapel, the directors believe it's crucial for the murders to be as close to reality as possible.

"All the bodies and mutilations are accurate to what Jack the Ripper did," Albert says, remembering the countless hours he and his brother spent studying the Ripper's rampage.

"I'm proud of the way it turned out…the way Whitechapel looked and the actual crime scenes," Allen says. "The bodies---right down to the way their fingers were laying, their ankles were turned---all that was very accurate."

On cue, Depp returns to the "hot" set, once again touting his bowler hat as he makes his way through the crowd. Stopping two of the English gentlemen in the midst of a conversation, Depp announces, "I'm Inspector Abberline, assigned to Whitechapel."

The men look at him blankly, staring back in controlled silence until a spark alights behind their eyes. "Oh my Lord," one responds. "You're the Ripper case, am I right? Jolly good. You've come to the right place---we've got butchers a plenty here."

And thus Abberline plunges headlong into the bloody world of Jack the Ripper, becoming---like so many who succeeded the real inspector---fixated on the most perplexing serial killer ever to stalk the shadows.

"It's a great milieu," Murphy says. "You've got gaslight, you've got dark streets, you've got five murders. It was never solved. [And] it never will be."
END OF ARTICLE

Return to interview page Return to Depp home page