The Cater Street Hangman (1998)

Very Cool!!!

Really Surprised!

Let's be realistic.

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

I enjoy Anne Perry's novels, both Thomas Pitt and also William Monk (which would have also made good material for a movie). But I had in mind someone more like Alan Rickman in his younger days. Is there no one able to speak as he does, coming up in the ranks of actors? The character of Charlotte would have been better with someone a little stronger in ability to make Charlotte the determined character she was. I am sure everyone pictures their own ideals when reading a book, but changing the story a bit doesn't bother me as much as making the characters not fit the story. Thomas Pitt was described as having a beautiful voice and brown, not blonde, hair. Anyway. I do so wish they would try a movie using William Monk and his friend, a nurse from the Crimea. (By the way, AP's books have also become audio books, the best ones read by David McCallum, another gentleman with a talented and wonderful voice). I do believe they may have tried making this one because it is the first of the Inspector Pitt series. The stories get better as time progresses. Making one like Pentecost Alley, or Ashworth Hall would be much more entertaining. To have pitted the future of other dramatizations on this one book, was not a good idea as can be seen.

For Anne Perry fans such as myself, this will be a huge disappointment. Although the acting is up to the usual high standards of British TV, the plot was changed so often and so radically and so unnecessarily, that people who read the book may not even recognize it as the same story. The characters' personalities were exaggerated to the point of caricature, doing things they would never have done in the original story. For example, Charlotte, a seventeen-year-old Victorian girl kept under the close eye of her strict parents, would likely not have been running around the neighborhood alone at night with a serial killer loose. Or Pitt, under instructions to search the entire city of London to find the killer, would probably have had something better to do than following Charlotte around, hanging out under her window, and even following her to church! In the end, all the changes only confused the plot. This was a huge waste of great talent. I was hoping to see more of Anne Perry's work on film, but if this is howit's going to be, I'll skip it.

The characters were far from stereotypical...with the exception of Charlotte's father and mother. Of course, this was the intention...Mr & Mrs Ellison represented the mores of the day while Charlotte and Pitt were representative of a new day. While the movie stayed fairly close to the book, I have to admit to being disappointed that the motive was sanitized. The fact that the motives in Perry's books are sometimes rather seamy make them stand out from other mysteries dealing with the Victorian era. Possibly that has something to do with Anne Perry's own history. If the book had ended the way the movie did, I probably wouldn't have bothered reading any of her others.

This is a well acted TV mystery movie. I have not read the book on which it is based, but it is a story about young women being strangled in London in the 19th century, and the circumstances surrounding the investigation of two of the murders. Several characters emerge from these investigations to jolly the story along.However, I found the characters to be stereotypical and shallow. The movie's view of the 19th century is lightweight, and all the characters - dastardly males, entrenched class snobs, decent humble servants, rebellious daughters, caring professional policemen, etc. - are cardboard cut-outs. I found the story to be crushingly predictable and boring.If you like easy dramas, you will enjoy this.