The Cater Street Hangman (1998)

Perfect cast and a good story

Excellent but underrated film

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

I think it was a fantastic movie all the actors and actresses were really great and it was a gorgeous film and it showed just how people were treated who were in a lower class and how the rich treated them as well.

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.

The Cater Street Hangman is a brilliant movie with exceptional lead actors - McCarthy and Hawes. Eoin McCarthy and Keely Hawes shine as Inspector Pitt and Charlotte. The movie is brought to life by the exciting book it is based on by Anne Perry and by the fact that it is a period piece. This is a must see for murder/mystery fans. The movie keeps you guessing until the end. It would be great to see more of Anne Perry's novels in this series come to life. Until that happens, Cater Street will do to satisfy anyone's appetite. Enjoy!