Tatterdemalion

In the fog-slicked back alleys of 1888 Whitechapel, an unprecedented evil abides. Scotland Yard, Parliament and even the Crown are jittery: Since the Trafalgar Sq occupation and brutal crackdown the year before, confidence in the police has never been lower or the threat of revolution higher as the first City Council elections approach: Opportunism breeds like rats for anarchists and newspapermen recklessly exploiting the murders for their own political and financial ends. Desperate for a solution, Queen Victoria grants harried Chief Inspector Fred Abberline her permission to use legendary showman Buffalo Bill and his friends Annie Oakley, Sitting Bull and others to bring Jack the Ripper to ground, all of whom having their own motives for doing so. Vividly narrated by Cody's young official cinematographer Scott Carson, Tatterdemalion is the tale of how Buffalo Bill's posse, aided by Sigmund Freud, Arthur Conan-Doyle and his real-life Baker Street Irregulars pursued history's most elusive serial killer. By the harrowing conclusion, no one in this ad hoc investigatory team will ever see innocence the same way as these legends use 19th century frontier justice and modern science on, in Carson's words, an emerging 20th century evil, "rendering redundant the necessity of embellishment or dramatization."