The New York Ripper

"Psycho Ripper" redirects here. For the professional wrestler, see Psyco Ripper.

The New York Ripper
File:Newyorkripper.jpg Italian theatrical release poster by Enzo Sciotti
Directed by	Lucio Fulci
Screenplay by	Gianfranco Clerici Lucio Fulci Vincenzo Mannino Dardano Sacchetti
Story by	Gianfranco Clerici Lucio Fulci Vincenzo Mannino
Produced by	Fabrizio De Angelis
Starring	Jack Hedley Paolo Malco Almanta Suska Alexandra Delli Colli
Cinematography	Luigi Kuveiller
Edited by	Vincenzo Tomassi
Music by	Francesco De Masi
Production company	Fulvia Film
Release date	4 March 1982 (1982-03-04) (Italy)
Running time	93 minutes
Country	Italy
Box office	₤1.04 billion

The New York Ripper (Italian: Lo squartatore di New York) is a 1982 Italian giallo film directed by Lucio Fulci.

While most of Fulci's films have been released uncut in the United Kingdom, The New York Ripper remains censored to this day, even for its 2011 DVD and Blu-ray releases.

Plot

A decomposed human hand is found in New York City. The police identify it as belonging to Anne Lynne, a local model. Lieutenant Fred Williams (Jack Hedley), the burned-out police detective investigating the murder, interviews the young woman's nosy landlady, Mrs. Weissburger (Babette New). She tells him that during her daily spying and eavesdropping on her tenants, she overheard the girl last week over the phone arranging to meet a man who spoke with a strange, duck-like voice.

On a ferry, a young woman (Cinzia de Ponti) is eviscerated as she attempts to vandalize a car. The pathologist who conducts the autopsy (Giordano Falzoni) tells Williams that the style of the murder was similar to that of Anne Lynne and a similar case in Harlem the previous month. When Williams tells the press about a potential serial killer on the loose, the chief of police (Lucio Fulci) orders him not to make any further public announcements about the case to avoid starting a citywide panic. Williams hires Dr. Paul Davis (Paolo Malco) to advise on the case.

That night in New York's red-light district, Jane Lodge (Alexandra Delli Colli) attends a live sex show and records the simulated moans and groans of the two performers with a pocket tape recorder. Mickey Scellenda (Howard Ross), a scruffy, dangerous-looking man with two fingers missing from his right hand, sits nearby and observes what she is doing. After the show has ended, the female performer (Zora Kerova) is brutally killed by the maniac, stabbing her in the groin with a broken bottle. Later that night, while at the apartment of Kitty (Daniela Doria), a prostitute he patronizes, Williams receives a taunting phone call from the duck-voiced killer saying that he has killed again.

A young woman, Fay (Almanta Suska), is attacked by a handsome, razor-blade-wielding killer but survives. She is comforted in the hospital by her handsome boyfriend, Peter (Andrea Occhipinti). Fay tells Williams that she suspects her attacker was a scruffy, dangerous-looking man missing two fingers from his right hand. Jane continues to prowl New York for sexual experiences. After being molested in a pool hall, she picks up Scellenda; they go to a sleazy hotel room and engage in BDSM. As he has a post-coital nap, Jane overhears a radio DJ describing the killer, whom the press has now dubbed 'the New York Ripper,' as missing two fingers from his right hand. Jane slips from the room only to be killed by the New York Ripper.

Williams identifies Scellenda as the eight-fingered man — a Greek immigrant with a history of sexual assault and drug abuse. Although Dr. Davis doubts that Scellenda is intelligent enough to be the serial killer, his concerns seem obviated when Scellenda attempts to kill Fay in her home before being chased off by her boyfriend. A week later, Williams receives a call from the Ripper who wants to "dedicate a murder" to him. After being delayed by a false lead, Williams realizes the Ripper's target is Kitty. But he arrives too late to prevent her gruesome murder.

Scellenda's body is found a few days later; he has committed suicide. The pathologist tells Williams he was dead several days before Kitty's murder, proving he couldn't be the Ripper. Dr. Davis completes a profile of the killer: an intelligent young man who hates young, sexually active women and followed Scellenda to identify his victims. Realizing this describes Peter, Williams and Davis begin to follow him and Fay. They discover that Peter has Suzy, a terminally ill daughter from a previous relationship. Believing them to be the killers, Williams goes to their house to arrest them. There he discovers Peter attempting to kill Fay and kills him.

Davis explains to Fay that Peter resented her and other women for enjoying a life that his daughter never would. Suzy attempts to call Peter on the phone from her hospital room but receives no reply.

Cast

• Jack Hedley as Lt. Fred Williams
• Paolo Malco as Dr. Paul Davis
• Almanta Suska as Fay Majors (credited as Almanta Keller)
• Howard Ross as Mickey Scellenda (Mikis)
• Andrea Occhipinti as Peter Bunch (credited as Andrew Painter)
• Alexandra Delli Colli as Jane Lodge
• Cosimo Cinieri as Dr. Lodge (credited as Laurence Welles)
• Giordano Falzoni as Dr. Barry Jones, Coroner
• Daniela Doria as Kitty
• Cinzia de Ponti as Rosie - Ferry victim
• Zora Kerova as Eva - Sex show performer (credited as Zora Kerowa)
• Josh Cruze as Chico (credited as Johs Cruze)
• Antone Pagán as Morales (credited as Anthon Kagan)
• Chiara Ferrari as Susy Bunch
• Barbara Cupisti as Heather
• Babette New as Mrs. Weissburger

Production

The original script written by Gianfranco Clerici and Vincenzo Mannino was to feature a serial killer afflicted by rapid Progeria, making it very difficult for the police to catch him based upon his rapidly changing appearance. The film was to be directed by Ruggero Deodato and would later be remade by him in 1988 as the much more restrained Phantom of Death. For unknown reasons the New York Ripper project was given to Lucio Fulci and he and Dardano Sacchetti subsequently altered the original screenplay.

Prior to the release of the film, Fulci discussed the production, describing it as "much less horror than my previous films, no zombies, but a human killer working in the dark." Fulci described the film as a tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, billing it as "Hitchcock Revisited, a fantastic film with a plot, violence and sexuality." Dardano Sacchetti, who was one of Fulci's key creative collaborators at the time, stated that much of the film's sexual content came from Fulci, claiming that Fulci "nurtures a profound sadism towards women." The film was shot on location in New York with interiors filmed in Rome.

The lead heroine role had originally been offered to British actress Catriona MacColl who had starred in Fulci's, City of the Living Dead (1980), The Beyond (1981) and House by the Cemetery (1981), but she turned it down and the role went to Almanta Suska.

Zora Kerova, who played Eva in the film, spoke positively about working with Fulci and stated that it took a while for Fulci to warm up to her. When asked what she thought of the film, she stated she "didn't like The New York Ripper at all."

Release

The New York Ripper was released on 4 March 1982 in Italy. It grossed 1,039,731,282 Italian lira during its original theatrical run, and found similar commercial success abroad.

In the United Kingdom, the film was screened for the BBFC, with Carol Tpolski describing the film as "simply the most damaging film I have ever seen in my whole life" and "a relentless catalogue of the eponymous antihero/villain cutting women up." The film was banned in the United Kingdom, where it could not be sold or owned until 2002.

The film received a limited theatrical release in the United States in 1984 and was released on VHS in 1987, where it was slightly edited by Vidmark Entertainment.

The Film has been released by Blue Underground on Blu-ray / DVD initially in 2016. It received a 4K scan Blu-ray Release in 2019 and finally a Special Edition 4k Release in August 2020.

Critical reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 25% based on 8 reviews, with a weighted average rating of 3.10/10.

Eric Henderson of Slant Magazine called the film "sour and pointless," adding that it "utilizes all the necessary ingredients but fails to summon from them the magisterial dignity one expects from the finer NYC vomitoriums." On his website, Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings, Dave Sindelar criticized the film's clichéd plot, obvious identity of the killer and attempts at pathos, the latter of which he felt were "forced and ineffectual." In the end, Sindelar stated that the film's nastiness and gore were its primary appeal, while also noting that it "will certainly not be to everyone’s taste." Maitland McDonagh from TV Guide gave the film 1/4 stars, writing, "Fulci alternates sleazy sex scenes with graphic and deeply misogynistic murders, fills the plots with twists that make no sense, then wraps the whole thing up in a preposterous psychological flourish." Robert Firsching of AllMovie claimed that the film was Fulci "pandering to the lowest common denominator as never before in his career". He added that "Fulci showed with this blatant play for the sicko slasher crowd that the days of well-plotted, stylish Italian horror were gone, replaced with the most vicious sort of sexual violence and perversion", concluding that the film was a "shameful piece of work".

September 22, 2006, film director Andrew Repasky McElhinney hosted a free, public "last screening" at the Cinemagic 3, 3925 Walnut Street, West Philadelphia, just prior to the theater's demolition. McElhinney chose The New York Ripper to show and introduced the screening. In the program notes for the screening sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, McElhinney wrote that "Lucio Fulci’s The New York Ripper is an amoral ethnography of modern city life varnished in grime, sex for sale and violence for pleasure."

McElhinney continued his defense of the controversial movie, writing:

"A dangerous film, flitting (sometimes incoherently) between the hyper-real and the surreal, The New York Ripper reminds us that true horror movies should not be safe entertainments and – profoundly – that the boogieman is not some sicko who carves up women for fun but something far worse – something inside us all – something that kills unconsciously a thousand times each day via self-perceived moral authority, a casual callousness to our environment, and an indifference to unequivocal social justice for all. The New York Ripper is a horror film par excellence – one that goes “too far” and makes the spectator complacent if not complicit in the rot.  Featuring haunting location photography of a Big Apple that no longer exists, Fulci’s film is perhaps the ultimate examination of urban decay and individual isolationism exacerbated by modern metropolitan living".

In conclusion to his essay, McElhinney wrote: "The fact that Fulci can make us connect to such a grotesque of our modern world makes the movie nearly unwatchable to many because it drives the terror of his city of strangers savagely home.  Rarely has a motion picture so unflinchingly suggested that the monsters are not on screen but those in the darken rows of seats thirsting for the next thrill at the expense of their fellow man."

References

Sources

• Albiero, Paolo; Cacciatore, Giacomo (2004). Un Paperino sevizia la Grande Mela, ovvero: Lo squartatore di New York (1982), in Il terrorista dei generi. Tutto il cinema di Lucio Fulci. Un mondo a parte. ISBN 88-900629-6-7.
• Howarth, Troy (2015). Splintered Visions: Lucio Fulci and His Films. Midnight Marquee Press, Inc. ISBN 978-1936168538.
• Thrower, Stephen (1999). Beyond Terror, the films of Lucio Fulci. FAB Press.

External links

• The New York Ripper at AllMovie
• The New York Ripper at IMDb
• The New York Ripper at Rotten Tomatoes