There’s a serial killer on the loose in the city of New York. What else is new?
It all starts simple enough like a classic detective crime story when a dog fetches a severed hand to his owner during a walk by the Hudson River. As we see a clear close-up of the dog having the hand in its mouth, the image freezes as the intro credits rolls over some cheesy jazz music, taken from the vinyl collection of Umberto Lenzi. Then we meet Lieutenant Fred Williams who’s on the case. He’s a chain-smoking apathetic soon-to-retire cold fish of a guy who fucks hookers and probably reeks strong odors of tobacco mixed with some cheap cologne a mile away. Not the most sympathetic individual, but nor are the rest of the people we meet here. Welcome to New York and enjoy the smell. But I’d never leave the city without at least tasting the pizza.
The kills escalate in more brutal ways when young women around Manhattan are getting butchered, the one in a more brutal way then the other. Already six minutes in we have one of the many red-herrings when a woman accidentally bumps into some dude’s car with her bicycle, where we also have some stiff n’ cheesy (dubbed) dialogue:
– Goddammit, why can’t you watch where you’re going??
– I’m sorry, I was thinking of Boston. (Eh, huh? Ok.)
– You women should stay home where you belong! You’re a menace to the public! And you got the brains of a chicken!!!
– And you’re an asshole. Ciao.
After they both go on board the Staten Island Ferry, our Boston lady takes a little revenge by writing “SHIT“ with her lipstick on his windshield while he’s probably in the toilet and jerking off. You go, girl! In pov view we see someone approaching the lady and catches her in the act. We assume that’s an off-duty police officer only until the person speaks gibberish in a Donald Duck voice before the girl gets stabbed to death. From here on it snowballs into a messy whodunnit sleaze-fest mystery where we jump from one character to the next, until we have so many shady faces to suspect as the killer that you’ll lose count.
One could argue that Lucio Fulci just saw Maniac (another New York based serial killer film from 1980) while he scoffed, took a sip of his red vine and said to himself while waving his hands enthusiastic like a true Italian: This is kids stuff. I can turn up the sleazyness all up to eleven, or maybe even higher! And with that said, this is not your typical Lucio Fulci dish that’s usually served with tons of maggots, slimy corpses spiced with cobweb-filled ghoulish scenery. This is a way more grounded detective/crime story that is quickly to be overstuffed with sleaze, nudity, softcore scenes, a bizarre toe-banging-rape scene, and a series of graphic kills that was more than enough keep the filmed banned in the UK until 2002. But even though the maggots are absent, The Big Apple is rotten to the core, where you could more or less say the citizens themself are the maggots, as misanthropic as it sounds. Because the film treats all the characters as worthless scum as if they have zero value to the society, and Lucio Fulci makes damn sure to kill them in such a way that it leaves as little as possible to the imagination.
Then we also have the grimy, urban and decaying environments of New York that mirrors the drained-out empty shells of the characters with their broken dreams and lonely beds. We also follow a mysterious upper-class lady who’s in the audience of a Live Sex Show where she hits a small tape recorder so her husband can jerk-off to the couples moaning sounds. That’s how creative we had to be decades before the internet. This woman is also a pathological nymphomaniac who fucks around with shady dudes in the city. There’s no empathy to find here. Only desperate and compulsively-driven desires to fill the next sexual/fetish cravings, whether it is a quick load with hookers, or chasing young ladies through graffiti-filled subway trains where I guess the stench of piss and shit is soaked in the air like a sponge. The New York Ripper is co-written by Gianfranco Clerici, who also shaped Ruggero Deodato’s House on the Edge of the Park (1980), so that alone should tell what kind of a dark alley this is. Even though the effects isn’t always as convincing as on paper, the nature of the killings are as grisly as it can get. Throats get sliced, nipples and eyeballs gets cut in half (Takashi Miike took notes) and a broken glass bottle gets shoved into someones vagina. All in pure classic giallo-style, of course.
The sexual aspects is here for a reason and not just added as just a meaningless shock value, even though the film goes so far in some certain scenes that you can’t avoid speculating if Lucio Fulci just wanted to make a straight-up porn film instead. The motives of the killer is as bizarre as the demented Donald Duck voice, but that’s giallo for you. Some shoddy dubbing and cheesy use of jazz music may cause some unintentional chuckles. But underneath those hiccups The New York Ripper is mean-spirited, nihilistic and misogynistic to the bone. Sick and morbid entertainment for sick and morbid people. Plain and simple. Fulci nods proudly in his grave. And if you’re easily offended when it comes to simulated violence against women, I’d rather put on a film like Blood Sucking Freaks (1976). I’m sorry, that was rude and unemphatic of me to say. The film has gotten several uncut releases during the last 10-15 years and got a 4K Ultra HD release from Blue Underground in 2020.
Director: Lucio Fulci
Writers: Gianfranco Clerici, Vincenzo Mannino, Lucio Fulci, Dardano Sacchetti
Country & year: USA/Italy, 1982
Actors: Jack Hedley, Almanta Suska, Howard Ross, Andrea Occhipinti, Alexandra Delli Colli, Paolo Malco, Cinzia de Ponti, Cosimo Cinieri, Daniela Doria
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084719/
