New York Ripper

This is, without a doubt, Lucio Fulci’s most violent and visceral film. It’s also it’s sleaziest and, in vulgar terms, most disturbing. From frame one, it’s damn sleazy as hell, and I bask in it’s disgusting allure, one of the greatest slasher movies of the early 80’s. Taking place in New York during it’s sleazier days, it deals with a killer with the voice of a duck who kills women that are, shall we say, sexually active. A sexy bicyclist, a sex performer, the perverted wife of a doctor, a prostitute. The murders get personal when one of the women survives the encounter, and now it’s a race against time, with the police on her side, to find out who is this duck-voiced butcher.

This is one of Fulci’s most memorable, particularly because of how violent it is. The gore here is unforgiving. I mean, I’ve heard rumors over the years that Fulci really hated women, and after seeing this film, I’m starting to believe it. The cast is littered with a ton of famous actresses from famous Italian horror films. Alexandra Delli Colli, who plays the perverted housewife, previously appeared in the sleazy cannibal/zombie hybrid Zombie Holocaust. In both films she gets totally naked, but in this one she looks fifty years older. Zora Kerova would also appear completely naked as the slutty Pat in Cannibal Ferox. Here she gets a broken bottle up her snatch. I don’t know what’s worse, this or the hooks through the nipples. Last but not least, there’s the beautiful Daniela Doria, who plays prostitute Kitty. She seemed to be Fulci’s favorite victim, receiving some of the most violent deaths in his films, such as a knife through the skull (and out the mouth) in The House By The Cemetery, and a woman who vomits her innards in City Of The Living Dead. Here she gets a razorblade through the nipple and to her eye. Poor woman always got it bad. Then again, it’s a dangerous thing to be a woman in a Lucio Fulci film, and this film is no exception. A classic.