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John Kildare: [Reading a bloody writing in Latin on a wall at the scene of a heinous crime] "He who observes spills no less blood than he who inflicts the blow." Lactantius
George Flood: Impressive, sir.
John Kildare: The truth has a habit of sticking in the mind.
George Flood: Truth?
John Kildare: Those who fail to prevent injustice are as guilty as the perpetrator. It's a message... to us.
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George Flood: What are you looking for?
John Kildare: I'm just looking. Trying to understand.
George Flood: The Golem's a madman. What else is there to be understood?
John Kildare: Even madness has its own logic. Here, there's none.
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[repeated line]
Dan Leno: Here we are again!
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Dan Leno: If you want your name etched in stone, you're gonna have to take up the chisel yourself.
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[First lines]
Dan Leno: Let us begin, my friends, at the end.
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Dan Leno: A woman accused of poisoning her husband. But not just any woman. Little Lizzie, darling of the music halls. But the city was enthralled with the fearsome Limehouse Golem. Who was he? Who would be his next victim? The Golem had last struck the day before her arrest. And his was the name on every Londoner's lip.
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George Flood: At least up there we can keep the hoi polloi out. Down here it's a lost cause.
John Kildare: They can't all be reporters.
George Flood: Oh, no. Locals looking for entertainment. Cheaper than a ticket to a shocker.
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George Flood: Sometimes I suspect if I was despatched to hell, I'd barely notice the difference, bar the weather.
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Police constable: [about Inspector Kildare] He'd have risen well above Roberts by now if those rumours hadn't done for him. You know, that he wasn't the marrying kind...
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John Kildare: The Yard is setting me up as a scapegoat. They'll not risk Roberts, will they. I'm expendable. They get to preserve the reputation of their golden boy and the public... get blood.
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John Kildare: "He who spectates." He doesn't mean us, he means the public. The public want blood. The Golem provides it.
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Lizzie Cree: My husband was adept at presenting a false face to the world, sir.
Mr. Greatorex: And that is soemthing you would understand, is it not, Mrs. Cree? Playing a role.
[general laughter in the court]
Lizzie Cree: I used to be a music hall performer, if that is what you mean.
Mr. Greatorex: And what of the role you play today before this court? That of a respectable, educated lady.
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John Cree: [Voice over, Inspector Kildare is reading the handwritten diary in the book] It was a fine, bright evening and I could feel a murder coming on. Since it was to be my first show I decided, by way of inspiration, to pay a visit to the site of the immortal Ratcliffe Highway murders. More than half a century ago, on this sacred spot, an entire family was despatched into eternity by a man named John Williams. A man Thomas De Quincey describes as an artist of exquisite skill. And yet now the site of his greatest work was defiled by a seller of second-had clothes.
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John Kildare: [is reading in Cree's diary]
John Cree: [voice over] I took out her eyes in case my image had been imprinted upon them. And washed the blood from my hands with the gin in her chamber pot. My first performance... was complete.
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Lizzie Cree: I suppose you are here to chastise me for my candour in court?
John Kildare: On the contrary, I applaud you for it. It's all too easy to imagine that those who have enjoyed success have never known suffering.
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Lizzie Cree: The line between comedy and tragedy is a fine one.
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Lizzie Cree: My gender becomes inured to injustice. We expect it until we can greet it merely with a shrug.
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Dan Leno: [inspecting Lizzie's hands] What in God's name have they had you doing down in those marshes?
Lizzie Cree: Digging graves. Five years it was before I found out you're supposed to use a shovel.
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Inspector Roberts: The streets of London run red with blood and you concern yourself with paperwork. You'd have made a fine politician, Kildare, were you not the topic of such... speculation.
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Sister Mary: [translating what the little Irish girl has said in Irish when she's brought to talk to the inspector] The child says she's not for sale. Her mam's got a fella taking her on her next birthday.
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Sister Mary: Families starve in the streets. Women are used up and thrown away. And you... You persecute one who fights for the people. You're not fit to clean the boots of a man like Karl Marx.
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Karl Marx: So... London declares that the Jew was murdered by a Jewish monster, hmm? And so absolves itself of all responsibility. Make no mistake, gentlemen. It is not Solomon Weil who was mutilated and murdered here, it is the Jew.
George Flood: None of the Golem's other victims were Hebrews, sir.
Karl Marx: [whispers] But do you not see? This murderer strikes at the very symbols of the city. The Jew, the whore. They are the sacrificial tributes in this labyrinth of London, and so, of course, must be ritually butchered.
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Lizzie Cree: I wanted to be in his play. He wanted the gratification of plucking a poor and needy girl from misery and saving her. We used one another equally. Perhaps that's the best that can be said of any coupling.
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George Flood: Golem suspect who is alive. That would be bad news.
John Kildare: For his next victim, certainly.
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John Kildare: Why would anybody be surprised? The world is full of men like you, Mr Gissing.
George Gissing: I beg your pardon?
John Kildare: Men who feign generosity when what they really seek is congratulation. Men who play God by saving lives. Is it really so different, I wonder, from playing God by taking them?
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Uncle: Cucumber sandwich?
Lizzie Cree: No, thanks.
Uncle: Oh, I forgot. You're not entirely partial to cucumber, are you?
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Lizzie Cree: 500 pounds and the camera. It would seem I gave an excellent beating.
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Dan Leno: If you want your name etched in stone, you're going to have to take up the chisel yourself.
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Lizzie Cree: I have a proposition for you, dear. I am in need of a lady's maid.
Aveline Ortega: Me? You must be playing.
Lizzie Cree: I can offer you twice the weekly wage you're earning here. All I require is some help bearing the load of my... My wifely duties.
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Lizzie Cree: You shall have your moment and I mine. In the temple of fame our names will be written side by side in stone for all time.
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[Last lines]
Dan Leno: We have to get back out there. You're Lizzie's mother now... I'll be Lizzie.
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John Kildare: Wasting my time could cost lives.
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Lizzie Cree: [being dragged to the gallows] I am NOT just a POISONER... I'm SO MUCH MORE!
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Hangman: Any last words?
[last lines]
Lizzie Cree: [as a noose goes round her neck] HERE WE GO AGAIN!
[the trap door opens beneath her]
The Limehouse Golem Quotes
Extended Reading
Director: Juan Carlos Medina
Language: English,Irish Gaelic,Chinese,Hebrew,Yiddish Release date: September 8, 2017