The New York Ripper

The New York Ripper

Genre: Horror, Exploitation

Original title: Lo squartatore di New York

Director: Lucio Fulci

Year: 1982

A burned-out New York police detective teams up with a college psychoanalyst to track down a vicious serial killer randomly stalking and killing various young women around the city.

By the early 80's the Giallo as most people remember it wasn't really being made anymore, they had with time, grown new influences and morphed into other genres. The New York Ripper is one of those kind of films. Mixing the slasher with the Euro-crime thriller with a huge amount of exploitation with a handful of Gialli elements. 

Now first of all let me come out straight, I'm not the worlds biggest fan of Lucio Fulci. His films tend to not sit well with me & this, for the most part, this is no exception. You have some really sleazy scenes, mostly of a sexual manor including a women being toe-raped whilst in a bar! Looking back it comes as little surprise that this was one of the films put into the video nasty list by the BPI. Infact the UK censor ordered all prints to be escorted to the airport and deported from the country, so you could say this film was somewhat controversial!

Somewhere in here there's a pretty nasty & mean spirited serial killer film, but then the baffling choice to have the killer talk like Donald Duck (even during the kills!) really becomes irritating and completely removed me from the picture. Also there is too much time spent on police procedure instead of delivering the goods.

This is one of the big infamous films of Italian cinema & one which many people love, it doesn't get anywhere near that level for me. I find it nothing more than a slightly better than average sleazy romp then there's nothing wrong with that.

★★½