By Lee Pfeiffer
The cover art for the Blu-ray release of the 1981 Italian thriller The New York Ripper screams "The most controversial horror film ever made!" Although the hyperbole may be true, I'll confess that I had never even heard of the movie until viewing the screener copy from Blue Underground. Apparently, the film does have a long history of being censored and the original version is still banned in the UK. Research shows there have been numerous international versions of film, many of which have been compromised by edits ranging from minor to the exclusion of entire key sequences. Blue Underground's release is the complete 93 minute version of director Lucio Fulci's vision of the film.As you might imagine, the movie isn't for everyone. A strong stomach and penchant for kinky sex scenes might well be advised.
The film was shot on location in New York City (with interiors shot in Rome) in 1981. The Big Apple was in the midst of its decline during this period and movie makers exploited the public misery to the fullest extent. Big studio releases like Taxi Driver and Death Wish were seen as legitimate social commentaries, while other smaller budget movies just seemed to exploit the explosion in crime. Viewing The New York Ripper today, one has to force oneself to remember those bad old days in Gotham. With the city now having undergone an amazing renaissance that has resulted in the lowest crime statistics on record, it might be difficult for those who did not grow up in or near the city to recall how accurately films reflected this era. Fulci's film centers on a psychopath who menaces New York by murdering numerous women in the most horrendous manners. Bizarrely, he uses the voice of Donald Duck in taunting phone calls to the police. Nominally, the film would seem to be based on a modern version of London's Jack the Ripper, but more likely Fulci was inspired by the Son of Sam murders that gripped the city in the summer of 1977.
The script meanders quite a bit. Initially, the murderer is unseen,but is later revealed..although the final resolution of the film is so confusing, I'm not certain I quite understood who is doing what to whom and for what reason. Nevertheless, the film pushes the envelope in terms of sex and gore. What separates the film from other exploitation films is Fulci's ability to bring some decent production values to the story - and while the director is no Hitchcock, he does manage to wring some suspense out of certain key sequences. Virtually all the action involves women who are hunted like prey or whose penchant for kinky sex fantasies results in their gory demise. Fulci doesn't hold back when it comes to presenting both eroticism and murder. In the pre-AIDS era, one could simply walk into a Times Square grindhouse and - for a few dollars- watch people people have sex right on the stage. Fulci uses this device to present sequences with full frontal nudity that come close to pushing the barriers on soft-core scenes. In one sequence, Alexandra Delli Colli plays a rich married woman with a passion for bedding male strangers with a mutual desire for bondage and kinky sex. In one the film's most suspenseful and disturbing sequences, she realizes that the man sharing her bed is the infamous ripper - but she has already allowed him to tie her to the bed post.Â
The cast performs well enough, though the dubbing undermines their performances. (The film is presented in English, but one wishes an Italian language version with English sub-titles had been available). Jack Hedley, who James Bond fans will recognize as the ill-fated scientist Dr. Timothy Havelock from For Your Eyes Only, plays a New York detective doggedly tracking down the killer. Although British, Hedley is subjected to the same distracting dubbing as the other cast members. Fulci has a cameo role as a wisecracking police pathologist. The film boasts some excellent camerawork by Luigi Kuveiller and the use of actual locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn helps separate this from most exploitation films of the era.
Blue Underground provides an excellent print along with some interesting bonus features including a recent interview with Zora Kerova, a Czech actress who recalls how her appearance in the film as a Times Square sex performer caused her to be chastised by the Communist government in her native country. She also recalls her appearances working for other directors in Italian sexploitation films. Although she states that she was embarrassed and appalled at having to have sex on-screen, clips from her other films show she was fairly casual about appearing nude whenever the script called for it. There is also a wonderful short featurette comparing the film locations in 1981 and how they appear today. An original trailer is also included, though it is so gory and sexually explicit, one wonders where it was ever shown.
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