The New York Ripper

Alternate titles : Lo Squartatore di New York, L'Eventruer De New York, Psycho Ripper, The Ripper.

Tagline : "New York City, it's a nice place to live. But you wouldn't want to die there."

A maniac on the loose, terrorising the streets of New York city, is hardly an original concept. However, this particularly gruesome yarn is by Italian gore maestro Lucio Fulci, and so is a far cry from your typical stalk and slash thriller.

The movie opens with the discovery of the decomposed body of a young call girl, whose been carved up and dumped on the banks of the Hudson river. The police investigate, but shortly afterwards another young girl is found brutally murdered on the Stanton Island ferry.

As more badly mutilated bodies pile up, the killer begins phoning the detective in charge, Lt Williams (Jack Hedley), to taunt him, which he finds rather odd as the killer seems to quack like a duck whenever he talks. With no other clues to go on, he enlists the help of psychologist Paul Davis (Paolo Malco), hoping he can shed some light on the case. But he does little to help, apart from spout a lot of confusing psycho-babble.

A breakthrough appears to come when one potential victim, Fay Major's (Almanta Keller), identifies the killer as having 2 finger's missing on his right hand. But despite a massive manhunt, they fail to net him. Who goes on to carve up several more young female victims in graphic detail, which includes a stripper (Zora Kerova) getting a broken bottle jammed into her crotch, a young swinger named Jane (Alexandra Deli Colli) being disembowelled with a knife and the Lt William's girlfriend being sliced up with a razor in slow-mo. Including long lingering shots of the killer dragging the blade across her eyeball and breasts.

Described by Fangoria magazine as "Fulci's sickest ever film" (and that's saying something), this isn't your typical Fulci pic. In many ways it was just low budget detective thriller, which kinda reminded me of the Michael Caine film "Dressed to Kill". However, the graphic excesses in this far surpass those in that, or any other stalk & slash thriller to have come out before or since. Just try not to laugh at the end when he explains the reason why the killer quacks like a duck (and no it wasn't Walt Disney).

Overall Marks : 5/10.

Terrifying Trivia

• Catherine McColl, who appeared in Fulci's "The Beyond", "House by the Cemetery" and "City of the Living Dead", was offered the lead female role, but declined.
• The film has earned the nickname "Quack the Ripper", among fans, due to the killers way of talking.
• The film was submitted to the BBFC for a UK cinema release in 1984. However they were obviously not very impressed, as not only did they reject the film outright, but they refused to let the distributor have it back and had all the footage sent back to its original distributor in Italy.
• LThe stripper, who is killed by hjaving a broken bottle rammed into her crotch, was played by Zora Kerova. Who met a similarly gory demise in "Cannibal Ferox", when she was strung up by hooks impaled through her breasts. She was also one of the victims of The Beast in the film "Antrhopophagous".
• Vipco managed to get the film passed in 2001, but this version suffered 22s of cuts which removed the scene where the ripper drags his razor blade over the breast of a victim he's tied naked to the bed. Pretty much all European and US DVDs are uncut.
• Jack Headley's lines were dubbed by a different English speaking actor.
• The print used for the Anchor Bay and Blue Underground DVDs moves a scene showing Paolo Malco's character walking off down a street to the final scene in the film, which looks out of place as he was sat in a police car with Detective Williams in the previous scene. Originally this appeared much earlier, about 44mins in, right after he Jack Hedley's character finishes interviewing Fay at the hospital. These were apparently corrected for the Blu-Ray release.
• The Italian Shock DVD missed out a scene of Dr Davis (Paolo Malco) having a conversation with his secretary.
• The Scandinavian DVD had the "misplaced" scene of Dr Davis (Paolo Malco) walking off re-inserted into the correct part of the movie and included the conversation between Dr Davis and his secretary. BUT misses out a scene near the end of the film between Det Williams (Hedley) and Davis (Malco) discussing the case.
• The current UK DVD from Shameless is cut by 19s, similar to the Vipco release, but re-edits the scene where the girl is tortured with a razor.

Other Recomendations

A-Z REVIEWS | REVIEWS INDEX | HOME