Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper has published a story in which it claims infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper has been identified through DNA testing. The analysis was performed on a shawl found by police on the body of Catherine Eddowes, the fourth of the Ripper’s canonical victims, killed on the same night as Elizabeth Stride in what is termed by Ripper scholars as “The Double Event.” The shawl had recently been bought at auction by an amateur sleuth and passed on to genetic experts, who took samples from the fabric and found matches to the DNA of descendants of Eddowes, and to the descendants of Aaron Kosminski, an original Ripper suspect who had been questioned and surveilled by police back in 1888.

The Mail has said the new evidence “puts to end the fevered speculation over the Ripper’s identity,” but we imagine independent corroboration will probably have to follow before that’s true. Kosminski was of Polish descent and had emigrated from the Russian Empire to London. Police reports from the time of the murder describe him as a serial masturbator, and indeed the Kosminski DNA sample from the shawl is thought to be semen, meaning that in the few minutes after the killing he both mutilated the corpse and ejaculated over it. Presumably more details will emerge in the coming days, but the announcement of Kosminski as the killer, if true, has to rank as one of crime history’s most significant, and may bring to a close one of its most baffling murder cases.

Update: That didn't take long. Various scientists and DNA experts say the genetic analysis done on the shawl was botched due to error of nomenclature. Instead of an extremely rare genetic match, DNA extracted from Eddowes' shawl actually matches that of most people of European descent. So forget everything we wrote above.

Seems about time for another Robert McGinnis cover, so here’s one you don’t see often—Tereska Torrès’s novel of multiple marital affairs The Dangerous Games. Despite the look of this, the French-born Torrès was considered by most critics to be among the ranks of serious, literary authors. In true Orwell or Hemingway fashion she honed her craft in conflict by working for the Volontaires Françaises during World War II and later traveling from Poland to Palestine. In 1950 she published Women’s Barracks, based loosely on her wartime experiences, and that book is considered by many to be the first lesbian pulp novel. The Dangerous Games initially appeared in 1958 in France as Le labyrinthe (subtitled …oh! ces jeux dangereux), and the above McGinnis-graced reprint followed in 1961.

This excellent vintage poster is for the Italian nunsploitation flick Interno di un covento, which was known in English as, alternately, Within a Cloister, Within the Convent, and Behind Convent Walls. So, what exactly goes on behind convent walls? Well, they have lots of sex. With each other and with whatever men happen to be around. And they exercise naked a lot. Well, almost naked. They never take off those cornettes, no matter what, but everything else is on display, including some really lovely bushes.

All of this depravity is the work of Polish director Walerian Borowczyk, working from a novel—a novel!—by the French writer Stendhal, aka Marie-Henri Beyle. But we’re giving Borowczyk most of the credit, er, blame here, because we don’t think Stendhal had a scene in his book where a nun devirginized herself with a Jesus-faced dildo. What’s the plot here? It isn’t important. The question is, what’s the point?

Well, we’re talking about a movie made in Italy, so the point seems to have been to annoy the very powerful Catholic Church. Mission wholly accomplished, we suspect. We gotta say though, we have never gotten this fascination with nuns. But if that’s your thing, then this is your movie. It premiered in Italy today in 1978. We have a nice collection of production photos below, and if you just can’t get enough nunnage, check out this amusing post.

Polish-born actress Ingrid Pitt as a child survived a Nazi concentration camp to star as an adult in a score of films, including several horror movies produced during the early 1970s by Hammer Studios. Some of those titles are The House that Dripped Blood, The Wicker Man, Countess Dracula and The Vampire Lovers, and her portrayals made her a favorite among fans of macabre cinema. Pitt died this morning in a London hospital aged 73. 

Above, Poland-born Israel-raised actress Gila Golan, aka Zusia Sobetzcki, aka Miriam Goldberg, seen here in a promo still from the James Coburn spy flick Our Man Flint, 1966. None of her three names are her birth name. If she ever had one, it was lost to the winds of war. In 1940 during the Nazi occupation of Poland she was found, abandoned in infancy, in a Krakow train station. Raised in a monastery and sent after World War II to be educated in Israel, she won the 1960 title of Miss Israel, and came in second at Miss World, which led to her breaking into American cinema and relocating to the U.S. You can see more Golan here (don't mind the gore).

Above is a worldwide assortment of the creepiest posters we could find in honor of Halloween. Interestingly, Halloween is getting more popular internationally all the time. Where we live it was virtually ignored as recently as ten years ago, but nowadays it’s not a rarity to see both kids and adults dressed in costumes for the occasion. Trick-or-treating hasn’t quite taken hold, just because the layout of the communities don’t really allow for it, but adopting new personas or playing characters is something everyone seems to love, no matter where they live. Everyone likes a good scare, too, and these films do the job nicely. They are Halloween, Halloween again, Rosemary’s Baby, Zombie Holocaust, The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Squirm, Return of the Living Dead 2, The Shuttered Room, Evil Dead 2, Hellraiser, Suspiria, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Vampire Women, The Omen, The Thing, The Shining, Backwoods, Fright Night, and Seuseung-ui eunhye. Happy trick-or-treating. 

Various movie posters from Russia, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, and the former West Germany, circa ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.