The New York Ripper aka Lo squartatore di New York (1982) A Controversial New York Noir Giallo

Directed by Lucio Fulci, Italy’s "Godfather of Gore."

All I've seen of his films is a San Francisco Transitional Noir One On Top The Other, and his Spaghetti Western The Four of the Apocalypse..., the films he's know for, listed on IMDb I've never heard of. The Spaghetti Western is one of the better lesser known ones with Thomas Milian one of bigger stars. Milian back then was on par in the mid 1960s with Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Franco Nero, Charles Bronson, Eli Wallach, Jack Palance, GianMaria Volonte, and Klaus Kinski.    

Written by Gianfranco Clerici, Vincenzo Mannino, Lucio Fulci, and Dardano Sacchetti, and based on a story by Gianfranco Clerici, Vincenzo Mannino, and Lucio Fulci

 Antone Pagán (uncredited) was responsible for the English language version. 

Cinematography was by Dario Argento's cinematographer for Profondo rosso Luigi Kuveiller. Music was by Francesco De Masi who had a piece of music recently in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, probably from a Spaghetti Western knowing Tarantino, but that one I never heard before. 

I've also never seen any of these actors before but some of them have a familiar look. They remind you of American supporting actors. They are all dubbed and the dubbing is flawless, to me, I couldn't tell. This is almost like a Sexploitation "Roughie," Noir from the late 1960s but with a way bigger budget  and very high production values. 

The film stars English actor Jack Hedley (Of Human Bondage, For Your Eyes Only and lots of TV) 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 (Name of The Rose) 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 (The Stoolie) as Mrs. Weissburger.

Fulvia Film productions shot the interiors at Incir De Paolis Studios, in Rome, Italy. The exterior locations were at Columbia University in the Bronx, around Manhattan, the old Cavalier Hotel on 34th, in Brooklyn and on the Staten Island Ferry. 

This film will not be for everyone's tastes be forewarned. A real gore fest. Think of the eyeball scene in Un chien andalou and the shower scene in Psycho (without the cutaways) in color.

I'm not a big fan of either modern Horror or Giallo. I avoid them. Probably because now, their main focal point and attraction are blood splatter and various jump scares, and creating the various moods that are the foundation of the sequences that lead up to them. It's what their fans devour, and crave. Again, I don't really know enough about either one, just a piker when it comes to Horror or Giallo, so I can't say anything in certainty. This is just a hunch I have. 

The Horror films I loved as a kid were the Classics, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolfman, The Invisible Man, Freaks, The Black Cat, The Phantom of the Opera, etc., graduating to House of Wax, Murders In The Rue Morgue, The House on Haunted Hill, What Ever Happened To Baby Jane, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, King Kong, Cat People, etc., etc, basically anything that made it to TV in the 1950s and 1960s. Beyond the 1960s though I was pretty much off the grid for a good 7-8 years. I never got into Horror after that.  

It was during this 1950-60 time stretch when we get the first jump scare in Cat People, the first "slasher" visuals in Psycho. There's your two major components of the Horror / Slasher and Giallo films to come. 

Again there's a sort of a yin and yang dynamic here as in everything,  you have to have the Visual Stylistics creating the various moods out of which the jump scare works. 

In The New York Ripper, it's Noir Visual Style phototropic-ly creates the same mood or atmosphere of alienation and of the world spinning out of control, as in all Films Noir from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari on, but here in modern Horror and Giallo, instead of using it to stimulate the "Noir Stained Story" it is used instead to build anticipation to the payoff jump scare. Movie magic applied differently. It's the same Noir Visual Style. 

Setting the tale in New York City of course also taps into cinematic memories of The Naked City, Side Street, Two Men In Manhattan, Blast of Silence, Aroused, Shaft, Taxi Driver, The French Connection, Dressed To Kill, and other New York Noir, etc., etc. This component may be lost on most Slasher-Horror and Giallo fans.  

Again I'm hardly an expert on Horror, but I'd venture to guess that it was only when the "color" component, particularly RED was added into the mix that the Italian's really away ran with it. Then here in the US add TEENAGERS and SEX and you have a runaway cash cow. 

Also remember, Italian films have another component that most have forgotten. Italian Director Sergio Leone created his Westerns using his knowledge of silent films and puppet shows. The silents used facial expressions to visually convey emotions, hence his style of using widescreen closeups to convey emotions. Almost all Italian films back in the 1960s were shot MOS, without sound. The puppet master supplied the voices to the characters and this dovetails with the ability to use international casts and use dubbing for all the actors for whatever release language was needed. 

Our main cast of characters has English actor Jack Hedley, dubbed flawlessly by Jersey born voice actor Edward Mannix, playing as a result Lt. Fred Williams a very believable NYPD police lieutenant. 

Jack Hedley as Lt. Fred Williams

Paolo Malco as Physiatrist Dr. Paul Davis, looks a lot like Richard Chamberlain and was dubbed again flawlessly by Frank von Kuegelgen.  

Paolo Malco as Dr. Paul Davis

Howard Ross aka Renato Rossini as nut job Mickey Scellenda with a lot of screen time but not many lines.

Howard Ross as Mickey Scellenda

Almanta Suska as Fay Majors, dubbed by Isabella Pasanisi. 

Almanta Suska as Fay Majors

Andrea Occhipinti as Peter Bunch dubbed by Roberto Chevalier

Andrea Occhipinti as Peter Bunch

Alexandra Delli Colli as Jane Lodge dubbed by Germana Dominici.

Alexandra Delli Colli as Jane Lodge

The story begins on the waterfront in Brooklyn. DUMBO. A man is exercising his dog playing fetch under the Manhattan Bridge. A fun game turns serious when a decomposing human hand is uncovered by the golden retriever and carried back to his master. 

The dead woman is identified and the case is assigned to Lt. Fred Williams. The dead woman's landlady,  (Babette New) playing Mrs. Weissburger, is brought in for routine questioning. 

Babette New as Mrs. Weissburger

She's your typical NYC over made up, old lady / yenta / snooping busybody that is a standard NYC character. From her Williams gets a clue that he doesn't realize is one when Mrs. Weissburger tells him she overheard a call the woman had with a guy that talked like a duck. A duck? Hey its NYC, and full of whackos.

Victim 2 is a young bicyclist who is on her way to Staten Island on the ferry. On the way on to the ferry she bumps into a red Volkswagen. The driver is pissed off and yells at her for scratching his car. 

The red VW and the baby blue ferry terminal 

The Staten Island Ferry

Later when the ferry leaves the slip the woman sneaks down the line of cars opens the door and slides into the unlocked VW. 

She gets out her lipstick, and while writing with red lipstick on the window is butchered with a knife by an unseen assailant who quacks like a duck.  Her screams are drowned out by the ferry's horn blasts.

From the autopsy slab examination, Dr. Barry Lodge (voiced flawlessly by Cesare Barbetti), the coroner tells Williams that she wasn't sexually assaulted, it was done by a left handed assailant, and that he has also found traces of the attackers blood. Dr. Lodge also tells Williams about another victim that he autopsied from a month ago that was butchered in a similar fashion.

Cosimo Cinieri as Dr. Barry Lodge 

A month ago same M.O.

This narrows it down to a lefthanded murderer and one million residents. The chief of police reprimands Williams for mentioning to the press that they may be dealing with a serial killer. 

Lucio Fulci (director) as the Chief of Police

Williams heads up to Columbia University and meets with Dr. Paul Davis. He needs a psychological profile of the killer as a place start. Davis agrees to help construct the makeup of the psycho they are dealing with. He also tells Williams that the killer will strike again.

We cut to Times Square.  A 42nd Street live sex show. Here we meet eight fingered Mickey Scellenda, he's some kind of hustler, and Jane Lodge an oversexed married woman.

Jane likes to masturbate in the front row at live sex shows and records the show sounds made on tape. She also likes dangerous liaisons. Jane's husband is another weirdo who is the recipient of the cassettes.

We watch the show, watch Jane and, watch Mickey watching her. They are both gone when the first couple comes off the stage. 

We cut to the female performer from the live sex show and follow her back stage to the dressing room. The light is out. 

When she looks at the drop light she sees that the light the bulb is missing. She steps on a piece of broken glass. She hops on one leg over to a seat and pulls out a shard of bulb.

She moves over to a couch and lights a lighter and she looks at her self in the mirror.

She hears a sound that came from behind a curtain, she goes to investigate and she is assaulted in a jump scare that involves the psycho again quacking like a duck while shoving the broken end of a bottle up her private parts, and twisting, She is left bleeding out on the floor. 

Later that night Lt. Williams is at his favorite hooker Kitty's apartment. He and Kitty are already done with sex and asleep when the phone rings. Kitty answers and its the psycho who talks like a duck. 

He quacks that he wants to speak to Lieutenant Williams. He taunts the detective about his latest murder. 

When the duck hangs up, Williams questions Kitty, wondering how the nut job traced him there. Williams & Davis continue to chase clues and possible motives. 

We next follow Jane on another of her escapades. She visits a Latino bar under an el and gets aroused by the men playing pool. 

Two of them sit down by Jane. The one opposite her slips off his shoe an uses his bare foot to spread Jane's willing legs and masturbate her. 

Jane is again obviously getting excited. The two men chide her into saying out loud that she likes it. 

I like it.

When she does the one man next to Jane pushes the table away exposing what was going on. The game is over, and Jane runs out of the bar into her Porsche and drives away.

We cut to the Hoyt Street Subway station. An M train pulls into the station and we see Fay Majors sitting on the bench seat wearing a Catholic School girls type of outfit, a plaid skirt, a maroon sweater, and a white scarf. 

Onto the train steps Mickey. Fay takes a sidelong glance at him. He notices. While the train is moving between stations. 

Mickey gets up and stands right in front of Fay. She freaks out and jumps up to change cars but the door is locked. The train pulls into a station and she runs out onto the platform and up the stair, thinking that Mickey is the serial killer.

Fay runs up out of the station thinking she is pursued by Mickey. She she's outside running down a street and eventually, in another jump scare, she does get attacked on the street with a knife slash to the thigh. 

Here we get a dream sequence /hallucination

She is able to run away into a deserted theater where she sits watching a show. Two hands come up from under the seat in another jump scare. She gets up and runs up the aisle towards the lobby. There she gets knifed again and her throat cut by her boyfriend Peter Bunch. 

We next see her next in a hospital bed waking up and feeling over her body. Was it all a dream? Outside in the hall, we see Williams and Davis conversing as they walk. We watch Peter Bunch walk past them and up to the door of Fay's room. Of course there's another jump scare when Peter opens Fay's door. 

From Fay Williams and Davis, now add to the assailants description a man that has only 3 fingers on his right hand. This info is added to various news reports.

We cut to more of Jane's sexual exploits. Jane has picked up hustler Mickey. They drive over to the hot sheet Cavalier Hotel. Before Mickey gets out of Jane's Porsche she slips him $150. Up in the room a radio is playing.  Jane is laying on the bed in her lingerie, while Mickey ties her hands to the brass headboard. When he's done he takes off his shirt and then begins to move his hands up Jane's legs. You can see her getting excited as his fingers slip up to her panties.

Suddenly Mickey stops, and he gets up and makes a phone call telling whoever he's speaking to that he has a perfect slut like the one he's looking for.

When we cut back to Jane, she is now nude on the bed. She has visible welts around her tits as if she was hit by a strap. Sleeping beside her in apparent post coital bliss is Mickey. The radio is still one and the soul music disk jockey makes a public service announcement about the serial killer now being described as only having three fingers on his right hand. When Jane hears that she panics and uses her teeth to untie her hands while Mickey sleeps beside her. She manages to get loose and out but it goes Noirsville when she meets whoever Mickey made a phone call to. 

Noirsville

Part of the formula for the few Gialli I've seen seems to be. to keep displaying numerous McGuffin type false clues that create detours to keep you in suspense and guessing about what's going on. People who like mysteries with clues are going to hate this kind of film because the only purpose of the detours is to falsely reassure the viewer and provide the suspenseful atmosphere for the next jump scare. 

I was reading one review where the reviewer obviously never watched the whole thing since he mentioned that the maniac was shown to be Mickey Scellenda from the get go. 

You can say one thing about these Italian films they are all beautifully filmed, the cinematography is excellent. 

Definitely a gorefest and not for everyone. I probably never watch it again its not my bag. 7/10.

A review from a real Giallo fan A Fistful Of Film