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d. Lucio Fulci; pr. Fabrizio de Angelis; scr. Gianfranco Clerici, Lucio Fulci, Dardano Sacchetti, Vincenzo Mannino; ph. Luigi Kuveiller; m. Francesco De Masi; ed. Vincenzo Tomassi; cast. Jack Hedley, Almanta Suska, Howard Ross, Andrea Occhipinti, Alexandra Delli Colli (91 mins)

Director Lucio Fulci Americanized the Italian “giallo” thriller in the controversial serial killer flick The New York Ripper.

Serial killer films and giallos often featured elaborate scenes of women being stalked and murdered; but even in such company, The New York Ripper was considered a new low in crass sexual violence. Fulci had to publicly account for himself against charges of misogyny and pornography for his treatment of the female characters in this thriller about a killer graphically killing women with what police term “nice, efficient butchery” but are gleeful moments of sexual dementia for Fulci. To many this was callous sensationalism degrading women, not helped by Fulci’s defence: “the only time in which I do not like women is when they are not here… (t)he woman has the voice and the charm to appear more fragile. She is the more likely target for a predator.” In Italy around the same time, director Dario Argento had to face similar accusations over Tenebrae and in America, director Brian DePalma angered feminists with Dressed to Kill, making the early 1980s a problematic time for sexually explicit horror movies.

Banned in Australia and Britain for some time, The New York Ripper now finds its way onto DVD in a sterling, clean and clear new Shameless DVD release, though cut by 32 seconds in accordance with BBFC regulations that still consider the uncut version too much for the delicate British.

The missing footage may be enough to turn the devout collector away from this release. But Shameless DVD, to their credit, are upfront about it: on the back cover of each of their new collector’s edition yellow cover releases is a listing of how much (if any) footage has been removed by the British censor in what is an official release of the film in the most possible complete version allowable in the UK.

The New York Ripper is Lucio Fulci’s sleaziest, vilest and most misogynistic film. His horror films brought out the artistry in the man but there was still a cynical sensationalist buried in him that delighted in lurid thrillers like Contraband and The New York Ripper. Stylish hackwork! Pulp fiction perfection spaghetti nightmare style! The New York Ripper was the grubby underground of the Italian sexploitation film erupting into a world of peep show booths, sexual acts on stage and nude women sliced open for the sexual pleasure of the male viewer. Fulci, despite his defence wallows in the sexual humiliation, degradation and torture of women in The New York Ripper. This is Fulci’s ode to the pornhound, his main American film and his one grindhouse-worthy masterpiece. The New York Ripper belongs less to Fulci’s fantasy based zombie films The Beyond and House by the Cemetary than to the seedy New York world of 42nd Street and Times Square sex shops and porno theatres. There, this type of movie was seen by sexual deviates, thrill-seeking pornhounds and bong-crazed dope fiends. It was considered trash cinema, without artistic pretence and to be enjoyed for the forbidden world of explicit sex and gratuitous gore: on that level, this is Fulci’s most-accomplished film.

A police detective is on the trail of serial killer who ravishes women with homicidal abandon while tormenting them in the voice of a cartoon duck! Donald rather than Daffy, if that matters.

Apparently that’s not enough of a come-on to the adventurous dope fiend in need of a good high for Fulci so he stages a police search of a suspect’s house in which the detective uncovers a stack of pornographic magazine and dope paraphernalia (a pipe). This is the mentality that attracts Fulci: sex and drugs. And those of you who like sex and drugs, as I do, will be attracted to this Fulci film perhaps above all of his works.

Fulci’s usual point of view shots here allow his camera to take on the vision of a possibly drug-crazed sex killer fuelled by pornography: Fulci indulges in exactly the type of thrills considered taboo by reactionary conservatives, ultimately making this the most disreputable of his films. As such, it is essential viewing. Fulci frames the sex killings with a dual plot: foremost is the detective story and secondary is the sexual adventurousness of a woman drawn to bad men and easy sex and lingering in the background is a profiler eerily attuned to the serial killer’s mind. However, it’s the punishment Fulci enacts on women for their sexual curiosity, or indeed mere arousal value, that is the illicit aesthetic attraction to The New York Ripper. Fulci sees a clear tie in American society between its sex culture and its misogyny and it is this he explores. Although he does wallow in gratuitous sexual violence (and why shouldn’t he?), he still offers a theme: the cultural objectification of women through pornography and sex-culture and its consequences on male expectations of women and their sexuality.

The thesis is valid even though Fulci cannot hide his glee for what amounts to a pornographization of violence in some of the razor-slicing scenes (much of which have regrettably been cut from this version: after having caused an outrage when unearthed in a Dutch print found in the days of VHS letterbox dub collecting).

The gore is graphic and there is much nudity and toe-in-crotch explicitness. The sex murders are nasty, though not as much as they originally were: thanks to the BBFC. That said: The New York Ripper is a Fulci winner. As the Shameless DVD features trailers only, the pristine transfer quality here is the main attraction and it is vibrant to look at, bringing a polish to Fulci’s fluid points of view, close-ups and stylized violence. If you’ve never seen Lucio Fulci at his sleaziest, then it’s time to get highly motivated with The New York Ripper. But Fulci can be tender, and his toying with unexpected sentimentality towards the end demonstrates a master manipulator at the peak of his form: radical, challenging and even bittersweet.

For those interested in Fulci films, Shameless DVD have released for the first time fully uncut versions of The Black Cat and Manhattan Baby. Pity about the lack of special features though.