Hannah Hamad Abstract

The Movie Producer, the Feminists and the Serial Killer: UK Feminist Activism, Misogynist 70s Film Culture and the (non) Filming of the Yorkshire Ripper Murders

This paper offers a feminist history and contextualisation of the non-production of films about the Yorkshire Ripper murders. Specifically, it explores socio-cultural conditions underpinning two failed attempts by Hollywood film producers of the time to harness the topicality and resonance of the Ripper killings by adapting the events of the case into a feature film. The first was made by MGM in 1980, who attempted to put a film entitled The Yorkshire Ripper into production at a time when the as yet unidentified serial killer Peter Sutcliffe was still active and at large, having murdered thirteen women in the north of England over the previous five and a half years. The second instance came the following year, in 1981. This was the year in which Sutcliffe was apprehended, charged, convicted and imprisoned for these murders, along with a further seven attempted murders. This new film, reportedly entitled Hail Mary, was said to have been the property of United Artists. However, as this paper elucidates, despite its production and casting (Robert De Niro was widely reported to have been cast as Sutcliffe) having being widely covered in the world’s media and the American film industry’s trade press, and, despite interventional action against its production having being taken in the form of an organised boycott against the film by women’s groups, Hail Mary transpired to be nothing more than a hoax, perpetrated by an attention seeking opportunist, and not a genuine film production at all.