In 1971 all but one stone of the London Bridge was moved to Lake Havasu, Arizona as part of their English village tourist attraction. Fourteen years later, the missing stone was located in the Thames River and brought over to be set in place. The night before the dedication, a tourist walking on the bridge trips, cuts her finger on the stone and before you know it, poof! Jack the Ripper appears to murder her.
Assigned to the case is Don, who just moved from the south side of Chicago to get away from crime and accidentally killing a child. Don draws immediate ire from Whitfield, head of the city council, who says the English village must stay open. They just dedicated the bridge, there is money to be made and no cop is going to tell him it’s closed. Don calmly explains people can’t be traipsing through a murder scene.
The city council decides there’s no need for an investigation since the murderer must be a transient who wanted the money from the tourists purse. But Don thinks there’s more to it than that since usually robbers don’t kill once they have the cash. When he talks to a reporter off the record, she betrays him and reveals his theory in the paper. Whitfield demands Don be fired, but the chief just mutters not to mess up again.
When the medical examiner informs Don there was a second blood type in the wound and it was old blood, Don suspects this may not be the killers first victim. As more people in town are killed, Don puts together the murders match up to the death dates of Jack the Ripper’s victims. He also discovers the shoe print and hand writing on letters match pictures of evidence in the Ripper case. He thinks Jack is back, which seems crazy but he’s right.
This is a tv movie so it’s fairly tame. It’s not the most interesting, but the premise is ridiculous which is a plus. The score is done by Lalo Schifrin, who is one of my favorites and has done a number of great soundtracks for films. Probably his most well known composition is the theme from Mission Impossible.
Watch for the scene with the band in which the song must be called Just a Modern Man since they say it eleven times in a row before ending the song. Also when the tourists wife goes missing, he approaches the Chief of Police and Head of City Council Whitfield during the dedication ceremony. The chief tells him they can go to the police station after the ceremony, and Whitfield tells him to get lost. You wonder why he wouldn’t go to the police station but he did. They sent him to the bridge. Why not take a report or try to help him rather than just send him off on his own to find the chief during the middle of a ceremony?
Ridiculous dialogue
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