Director: The Hughes brothers
Entertainment grade: D
History grade: Fail
In 1888, a serial killer terrorised Whitechapel in the east end of London. Known in the press as Jack the Ripper, his real identity has never been proven.
Scandal
Annie Crook, a former prostitute, has shacked up with a former client, Albert. They're getting it on in a brothel on Cleveland Street, when a gang bursts in and kidnaps her. Turns out Albert is really Prince Albert Victor, the eldest son of the Prince of Wales, and second in line to the throne. The very vague truth behind this scene is that, in 1889, Lord Arthur Somerset was found in a gay brothel at 19 Cleveland Street. Lord Arthur allegedly got off because his solicitor told the police that, were he prosecuted, "a very distinguished person" with the initials PAV would also be implicated. Many, then and now, assumed this to be Prince Albert Victor. But this happened the year after the Ripper murders, and the brothel at 19 Cleveland Street did not have any women in it. The only connection between the Cleveland Street scandal and the Ripper murders was that Inspector Frederick Abberline (Johnny Depp) was assigned to both cases.
Conspiracy
From Hell quickly gets bogged down in a Masonic conspiracy, in which the Ripper murders are designed to cover up the secret marriage between Prince Albert Victor and Annie Crook, and the existence of their infant daughter – "who is, in fact, heir to the throne of England", Abberline exclaims. Actually, no she isn't. The film also suggests Annie Crook was a Catholic. Catholics, the royals that marry them and any kids they produce are automatically excluded from the succession. So, even if it were true that the prince married a Catholic prostitute, which it isn't, their baby would not "rip the empire to pieces", as Abberline suggests. Prince Albert Victor would leave the succession, and his younger brother would move up a step in his place. Meanwhile onward steams Britannia, ruling the waves, playing cricket, eating sandwiches, waging foolhardy wars, nicking bits of Africa and so forth. The far-fetched conspiracy in the film comes from a book published in 1976, based on testimony from a man calling himself Joseph Sickert. In 1978, he admitted he'd made the whole thing up.
Mysticism
The graphic novel from which From Hell is adapted is a fantasia on the Ripper story, and veers off into the realm of the paranormal. The film is a much more pedestrian affair, and its clumsy attempts to daub mystical touches over the gaps in its narrative almost make you feel sorry for it. For instance, Abberline charts the first three murders on a map. "This is the beginning of a five-pointed star," he intones. Well, really it's just a triangle. For all you know, it may be the beginning of the beak of a giant portrait of Big Bird mapped out over London. Mystery solved! Elmo is the Ripper! Anyway, the Whitechapel murders do not form a five-pointed star on a map. They form a splodge. The film is thinking of Nicholas Hawksmoor's London churches, the locations of which can be said to form a squished five-pointed star, if you conveniently forget the one in Greenwich.
People
Poor old Abberline might be confused by his opium habit (which in real life he didn't have), or by the flimsy romance he strikes up with future Ripper victim Mary Kelly (which he also didn't have). Maybe he's distracted by his obsession with protecting this small group of Ripper-targeted prostitutes (he wasn't), all of whom know each other (they didn't) and drink in the Ten Bells pub (only Mary Kelly was reliably said by witnesses to be there regularly). Spoiler: he should watch the opium, too, because in this film it kills him at age 45, and in real life Abberline lived till his 80s in a nice villa in Bournemouth.
Verdict
It's based on a proven hoax, but From Hell adds enough lies of its own to earn a fail grade.