1971's "7 Murders for Scotland Yard" (Jack el Destripador de Londres) appears to have been the first Paul Naschy vehicle in which the star moves away from the shadow of El Hombre Lobo, though it was shot on the same London locations as 5th entry "Dr. Jekyll and the Werewolf." This Spanish-Italian coproduction finds the beefy actor as downtrodden suspect in a series of baffling knifings that deliberately echo the brutality of 1887's Jack the Ripper, the culprit using incriminating notes and various body parts to taunt the admittedly hapless police. Naschy's Bruno is a former circus acrobat whose career ended after a fall, and our first on screen victim is his own wife, whose meager earnings as a prostitute allowed him to frequent Soho pubs for yet another beverage of choice. There are shades of Hitchcock with authorities fingering the wrong man, and the influence of Peter Lorre's 1931 "M" crops up when even the underworld frowns on such a dastardly killer making things more difficult for them. Alas, the whole thing simply plods along in perfunctory fashion, the killings staged identically with graphic closeups of the phallic blade conducting its penetrations with no nudity and very little blood shown, comparable more to German krimi than Italian Giallo, none of the female targets developed to any likable degree (only a small child escapes the mayhem). Like his 1973 film "The Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll," Naschy's surly protagonist may not be guilty but he's hardly innocent, leaving behind his share of corpses as he successfully evades the cops (the lack of suspects makes the killer's identity painfully easy). Director Jose Luis Madrid would collaborate with Naschy on two more obscure features, 1973's "The Crimes of Petiot" and 1977's "Comando Txikia: Muerte de un Presidente."
