Professional clairvoyant Walter Durst (Niall MacGinnis, remembered by us horror fans for his great role in the classic British chiller NIGHT OF THE DEMON, filmed a year earlier) dreams of Jack the Ripper's Whitechapel prostitute murders a few hours before they occur. His wife Judith (Dorothy Alison) encourages him to go to the police because they could use the publicity for their business. Because of a bunch of phony psychics that show up at around the same time, Scotland Yard detectives (led by Clifford Evans as Inspector McWilliams) don't initially believe him until he's able to give non-published details about one of the crimes. Feeling he could only know what he does because he's actually responsible, they promptly lock him up, but another murder occurs while he's behind bars. He's then freed and the detectives enlist his aid in trying to capture the killer. Though the whole Jack the Ripper story has been filmed dozens of times for both TV and the big screen, the addition of the clairvoyant aspect, as well as the performance from MacGinnis, provide some additional interest for this particular adaptation.
Unlike the other nine episodes, this was NOT filmed especially for "The Veil," though it does fit in well with the others since the series is made up of tales supposedly based on actual occurrences and containing some element of the supernatural. It was made in England by director David MacDonald (DEVIL GIRL FROM MARS, ALIAS JOHN PRESTON) and was picked up for distribution in the U.S. by Hal Roach Studios, who included it as the tenth and final episode of this unsold series. I'm not really sure of this short film's origins, which runs less than 20 minutes minus the book-marking Karloff footage. Perhaps it was made for British TV, or could have easily been an unfinished feature-length project at one point. Unlike the others, where Karloff played both host and an additional role in each episode, Boris only appears as host here, providing his usual intro ("Good evening. Tonight I'm going to tell you another strange and unusual story on the unexplainable, from behind The Veil."), as well as an intermission and a closing. However, the presence of MacGinnis compensates for Karloff's absence.
"Jack the Ripper" was combined with "Food on the Table" (with Russ Bender), "Summer Heat" (with Whit Bissell) and "Genesis" (with Morris Ankrum) to play late night TV as an anthology feature under the title JACK THE RIPPER.