Lo Squartatore di New York (The New York Ripper)

Critics Consensus

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17%

TOMATOMETER

Total Count: 6

54%

Audience Score

User Ratings: 4,714
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Movie Info

Jack Hedley of The Anniversary stars as a hardbitten police lieutenant tracking a sadistic sex-killer in this gruesome thriller from splatter-maven Lucio Fulci. The misogynistic script (by Fulci and prolific collaborators Gianfranco Clerici and Vincenzo Mannino) posits a femme-hating psycho (who talks like Donald Duck) slashing beautiful women with a switchblade and a straight-razor because his daughter is in the hospital and will never grow up to be beautiful. Fulci was apparently trying to work in a statement about American competitiveness by making his heroine (Antonella Interlenghi) an aspiring Olympic athlete, and having a killer who is concerned that his daughter will never be "the best," but the point gets lost amidst the buckets of blood and gratuitously kinky sex scenes. Pandering to the lowest common denominator as never before in his career, 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. Despite all of that, there is one fairly masterful sequence in which the suspect's S&M sex partner learns his identity from a radio broadcast and must untie herself and escape while he sleeps. This scene is tense and nerve-wracking, a high-point of genuine fear amidst a nauseating collage of metal blades slicing female flesh. A shameful piece of work that makes Mario Landi's Giallo a Venezia look positively liberated, it co-stars Renato Rossini, Andrea Occhipinti, and Paolo Malco, with cult figures Alessandra Delli Colli, Daniela Doria, and Barbara Cupisti on the chopping block. Cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller, editor Vincenzo Tomassi, and composer Francesco De Masi have all done better work.

Cast

Paolo Maloo
Jack Hedley
as Lt. Fred Williams
Howard Ross
as Mickey Scellenda
Almanta Keller
Antonella Interlenghi
as Fay Majors
Andrea Occhipinti
as Peter Bunch
Alexandra Delli Colli
as Jane Forrester Lodge
Andrew Painter
Paolo Malco
as Dr. Paul Davis
Fred Williamson
Cinzia de Ponti
as Rosie
Cosimo Cinieri
as Dr. Lodge
Daniela Doria
as Kitty
Babette New
Zora Kerova
Paul E. Guskin
Antone Pagan
Josh Cruze
Marsha MacBride
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Critic Reviews for Lo Squartatore di New York (The New York Ripper)

All Critics (6) | Fresh (1) | Rotten (5)

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Audience Reviews for Lo Squartatore di New York (The New York Ripper)

  • Oct 25, 2014
    Fulci tries the slasher genre with abysmal results. This is just a very wrong movie, with very little humor, gore, character development and just drags on forever without going anywhere. Influenced by Argento, he tried to give us a nice thriller without relying too much on his atmosphere and gore. It just doesn't work. Add plenty of misogyny and this is a total flop.
    Francisco G Super Reviewer
  • Jul 06, 2011
    The New York Ripper is one of Lucio Fulci's last great films. What I love about this film is that it's a drastic departure from Fulci's previous Gates Of Hell Trilogy which started with The Beyond followed by The House By The Cemetery and concluded with City Of The Living Dead. The New York Ripper is a mix between detective fiction and slasher film. Lucio Fulci's The New York Ripper is an underrated film from the godfather of gore. But it's understandable as to why it is viewed as garbage. The film is not for the faint of heart, as it's sexually violent, obscene in some parts. But there are a few well constructed scenes of tension and horror. Though Fulci's glory days were behind him at this point of his career. He managed to direct an intense slasher film that makes Friday The 13th look like a Disney film. Fulci's use of gore is relentless and he delivers it in spades. The film was marketed with the tagline: "The most controversial movie ever made". Well, it's definitely one of the most disturbing of the slasher films out there. Fulci fans will love it, common viewers will despise it, and dismiss it. The New York Ripper is an intense slasher film that is in the same category as William Lustig's Maniac! If you love slasher films of the 1980's, and don't mind hardcore violence or mind it, but want to see a terrific slasher film thats been long forgotten, then The New York Ripper is one film that takes no prisoners. One of the most violent films of Lucio Fulci's career, and if you're familiar with Fulci, then that says something about this film.
    Alex r Super Reviewer
  • Mar 23, 2011
    This movie does a very good job at keeping the killer's identity a mystery up until the very end, and the gore is really realistic for the most part, but I didn't like how sad the ending was. Overall, it's a pretty good horror mystery, but it could have been a lot better.
    Aj V Super Reviewer
  • Oct 08, 2010
    Without doubt, the goriest, most misogynistic, most depressing giallo I have ever had the displeasure of seeing, and probably the most idiotic too. No one would ever accuse the giallo - a genre whose ingenuity begins and ends with the object of keeping a killer's identity under wraps for as long as possible - of possessing a surfeit of logic and plausibility. Even so, Fulci takes the biscuit here; no wonder he has a criminal psychologist on hand to explain away the extraordinary behaviour of his characters. Take for instance the poor unfortunate gigolo, falsely accused of being a homicidal maniac, who decides to throw the police off his scent by acting just like a homicidal maniac! Good thinking, Batman. There are one or two good ideas here and there - in particular, a momentarily disorientating scene where we become fearful for the safety of a character whose apparent murder we have just witnessed seconds before - but Fulci isn't a talented enough director to make anything of them. Never the biggest fans of sexualised violence, I think I'm right in saying the British Board of Film Classification have yet to pass the uncut version of this movie. Ordinarily I would be grumbling about censorship right about now, but in this case the British public should really be thanking the BBFC for making a bad movie shorter.
    Stephen M Super Reviewer
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