Lo squartatore di New York
Tags: dark, grindhouse film, cruelty, murder, cult, horror, violence, suspenseful, sadist

Plot synopsis:
An old man is walking his dog in New York City when the dog retrieves a decomposed human hand. It is identified by the police as belonging to Ann-Lynne, a local prostitute. Lieutenant Fred Williams (Jack Hedley), the burned-out police detective investigating the murder, interviews the young woman's nosy and obnoxious landlady, Mrs. Weissburger (Babette New), who tells him that during her daily spying and eavesdropping on her tenants, she overheard the girl last week over the phone arranging to meet a man who spoke with a strange, duck-like voice.
Meanwhile, a young woman (Cinzia de Ponti) rides her bicycle down Manhattan to the Staten Island Ferry at Battery Park. After an altercation with a boorish motorist driving a red Volkswagen, whose car she accidentally scratched riding her bicycle, she rides onto the boat with the man yelling misogynist slurs at her. When the ferry is underway, the young woman sneaks into the car-bay and begins vandalizing the man's car, but she is interrupted by an unseen figure. Introducing herself as Rosie, she tries to engage the man in a conversation. But the figure adopts a grotesque 'Donald Duck' voice and brutally murders her with a switchblade, slashing open her right breast and stabbing in the lower abdomen and disemboweling her, then leaving her body to be discovered when the ferry docks at Staten Island. At the morgue, Lt. Williams talks to Barry Jones the pathologist (Giordano Falzoni), who believes he recognizes the "style" of the killing and links it to Ann-Lynne, as well as a similar case in Harlem the previous month.
Having informed the press that a serial killer is at large, Williams is visited at the station by New York's chief of police (Lucio Fulci). Williams' skeptical superior tells him not to make any further public announcements about the case to avoid starting a city-wide panic. Soon after the police chief leaves, Williams is notified that a man "sounding like a duck" phoned while he was out at the press conference wanting to speak with him. Williams travels to Columbia University where he meets with a brilliant young psychotherapy professor named Dr. Paul Davis (Paolo Malco) for help in creating a profile of the killer.
That night in New York's red-light district, Jane Lodge (Alexandra Delli Colli), an attractive, well-dressed woman in a chic raincoat and derby hat, attends a live sex show and records the simulated moans and groans of the two performers with a pocket tape recorder. A scruffy, dangerous looking man (Howard Ross), with two fingers missing from his right hand and sitting in the same row with her, observes what she is doing. After the show has ended, the female performer (Zora Kerova) retires backstage to her dressing room only to find it totally dark. Hearing a noise, she opens a closet door and is brutally attacked by the maniac, who disembowels her by shoving a broken and jagged liquor bottle from her crotch to her abdomen. Later that night, at the home of Kitty (Daniela Doria), a prostitute regularly visited by Williams, he receives a taunting phone call from the duck-voiced killer saying that he has killed again.
The next day, Jane shows her latest tape recording to her husband Dr. Lodge (Laurence Welles), who has agreed to support their open-marriage. Jane goes to a bar in a rough neighborhood where she's approached by two Hispanic bar punks who proceed to fondle and sexually humiliate her right at the bar. After being taken advantage of, the emotionally troubled Jane runs out and drives away.
That night, Fay Majors (Almanta Keller), a casually dressed young woman is riding alone on a late-night subway train when she gets menaced by the same ominous man from the live sex theater. Fleeing from the perceived threat, she runs off the train, through the deserted subway station, and onto the street where she gets attacked in a dark alley by the quacking maniac, who brutally stabs her in the leg and slashes her hands and arms as she tries to defend herself. Limping away, Fay stumbles through a doorway into a seedy apartment building where she closes and locks the door behind her so the killer will not follow. Fay passes out from the loss of blood, and then realty and illusion blur: Fay is sitting alone in a dark movie theater watching cartoons when she attacked and killed by a different, handsome young man who slashes her neck with a straight razor. Fay wakes up in the hospital the morning after when the same man visits her in her room. The man is revealed to be her physicist boyfriend Peter Bunch (Andrew Painter), who is relieved that she has survived the attack. Lt. Williams and Dr. Davis visit Fay where she tells them about her attacker who was missing two fingers from his right hand. Williams and Davis both conclude that this is the killer since all forensic evidence points to the killer being left-handed.
Somewhere in night-time New York, the owner of his mutilated right hand picks up Jane and takes her to a sleazy hotel room for bondage sex. He ties up the semi-nude woman to the bed. The S&M game she has willingly begun turns nasty when he begins to beat her. Then the man turns up the radio loud while it plays Berto Pisano's "Tic nervoso" and makes a muttered phone-call, describing the bound woman to someone on the other line as "she's right up your perverted alley. " A little later, while the man sleeps, Jane overhears a radio DJ describing the killer, whom the press has now dubbed, 'the New York Ripper' and missing two fingers from his right hand. Jane carefully and quietly unties herself from the bed and flees into the hotel hallway, only to be killed by the real New York Ripper who stabs her to death just as she tries to make for the exit at the end of the hall.
Williams arrives at the scene of the crime where the police find Jane's tape recordings of the sex shows and of her 'master. ' Learning from witnesses, Williams discovers that the identity of the man is Mickey Scellenda, a Greek immigrant with a history of sexual assault and drug abuse. Williams and the police step up the search for Scellenda after raiding his apartment, finding photographs of most of the Ripper victims and huge stashes of pornography and drug paraphernalia. Williams also pays a visit to Dr. Lodge to inform him of his wife's murder. Dr. Lodge tearfully defends his open marriage which gets him a sneering response from the moralistic Williams.
Meanwhile, Dr. Davis begins to express doubt to the killer's identity for Mickey Scellenda is only a petty criminal with a low intelligence quotient, not the high intelligence that Davis has established in profiling the New York Ripper. Davis then buys a gay porn magazine at a local newsstand (revealing his repressed homosexuality), and pays a visit to Peter and Fay at their house to ask them more questions about Fay's experience. Something about their story arouses his professional suspicious. That evening, after Peter goes out, Fay is attacked in their house by Scellenda who breaks in trying to kill her. But she is saved when Peter returns, and the man flees.
A few days later, Williams gets another taunting phone call from the New York Ripper, who wants to "dedicate a murder" to him. Williams and the police put a trace on the line and race to the location, only to find that the killer has set up a two-way radio to a remote phone booth, while he is presently in the home of Kitty, the young prostitute favored by Williams, brutally torturing her by slowly applying a razorblade to her bare chest and her face. Williams races to Kitty's apartment, but is too late as the killer has fled, leaving behind Kitty's horribly maimed corpse to be discovered.
Some time later, the dead body of Mickey Scellenda is found having committed suicide from self-suffocation. When Dr. Barry Jones informs Williams that Scellenda was dead for the last eight days, four days before Kitty's murder, Williams finally realizes that they have been tailing the wrong man. Williams relays this to Professor Davis, who is both delighted and disappointed with the news. Davis explains that with Scellenda eliminated as a suspect, his original idea to the killer's identity is confirmed; a misogynist psychopath who used Scellenda to throw the police off his trail.
Fay is shown visiting a hospital where Peter has a child from a previous marriage, a little girl named Suzy, who is dying from a rare bone disorder that has led to the amputation of her left arm and right leg. Visiting the hospital, Williams and Davis observe little Suzy in her hospital bed and decide to race over to Peter and Fay's place to arrest both of them. At Peter and Fay's house, one of them gets a phone call from a duck-voiced person, while the other one overhears. When Peter goes into the kitchen for dinner, Fay has disappeared. Going upstairs to Suzy's bedroom, Fay jumps out of the darkness at Peter while stabbing him with a kitchen knife. Suddenly, Peter rises, quacking like a duck, and struggles with Fay in which they both tumble down the stairs. Just as Peter grabs the knife away from Fay and about to stab her, Williams runs in and literally blasts Peter's face off with one shot from his gun. In the ambulance, Davis explains to Fay her deranged boyfriend's motivation for killing. His hatred of sexually active women stemmed from bitterness at the cruel blow fate had dealt his young daughter, who will never enjoy the freedoms of his despised victims. After leaving the scene, the phone in the now-deserted house rings again. In her hospital bed, little Suzy is calling out for her father, pleading to him to answer her call, as her voice is drowned out beneath the indifferent traffic of the city.

Review: Simply put, The New York Ripper is the story of a mad killer with a penchant for slashing young woman and harassing the police with his duck-like voice.
Second, Gialli often ask the viewer to suspend reality to accept various plot points, but the final scenes in The New York Ripper cross the line into ridiculousness and really hurt the overall film.
The film's plot is simple: a psychopath who talks like a duck is killing beautiful young women in New York City in vicious ways.
At the same time, the one woman to survive the killer's attack, track star Fay Majors (Almanta Keller), finds that her life remains in peril.THE NEW YORK RIPPER is unapologetically sleazy.
MANIAC is a character study horror film, while THE NEW YORK RIPPER is a mystery thriller, much like Brian DePalma's DRESSED TO KILL(1980).Lastly, I must say that the recently released, uncut, widescreen version of THE NEW YORK RIPPER is a major improvement over the old video version.
Obviously not Lucio Fulci´s best ("The Beyond" still holds the top, followed up by "Zombi 2"!), but nevertheless "The New York Ripper" is another gorefest that delights the fans and despairs the censors (Actually this flick is banned in many countries like Australia, the U.K., Germany or Norway...)!
Endowed with some nudity (Maybe the sleaziest flick Fulci ever directed...) and elements from Giallo this gem has got some really unforgettable moments: I like the scene when Alexandra Delli Colli (She plays a woman which is permanently on the search for sexual adventures...) gets stimulated by two Latino-boys in a billiard bar and the take where wonderful Zora Kerova ("Cannibal Ferox") was maltreaten by bottle is pretty gut-wrenching!
Upon going to all the effort to import this film to my native shores (Australia)I must certainly say that everything i was expecting and more was recieved from this film...(Not that this is positive upon wanting to see the film purely for it's notoriety)What i was hoping (But not keeping my fingers crossed) was to see  a violent,and well made "Giallo" with all the trademark trimmings that give them the artistique upper hand over most American horror films,What i was met with in terms of "more" was an incredibly unsettling film from the depiction of the extreme gore and purely downright cruel actions shown in this film.I can understand now why this film had so much trouble passing Australian Censors (Which believe it or not,are rather lenient).For a horror fan dedicated to seeing all the nasties around,this certainly topped the list and the NASTIEST film in terms of Physical grue,It oversteps the line from entertainment value just to extreme exploitation...I had to watch a feel good film straight after before going to sleep that night,to flush the images this film provided,and for me,that is making a bold statement.Normally i would expand a little further,but i really wish not to think about this film any further.Proceed with extreme caution,You have been warned..
Lucio Fulci has filmed vicious scenes of violence before but New York Ripper takes the cake in violent imagery.
The bleak nature of New York Ripper(1982) makes Lucio Fulci's gothic films look happy go lucky.
Dr. Davis comes out in the film as a narcissist who's too please with his intellect.What turned off even some of the Lucio Fulci admirers was the realistic look of New York Ripper's violent scenes.
Lucio Fulci's "The New York Ripper"(1982)is a very sleazy and nasty thriller filled with sadistic sexual violence and gore.A sicko killer is on the loose in New York City.He enjoys slicing up young and beautiful women,preferably naked ones.He also talks like a duck and likes to taunt police.Lieutant Williams(Jack Hedley)tries to find him.Like all good gialli "The New York Ripper" is an uniquely crafted mystery with plenty of red herrings.The film is extremely brutal-women are graphically gutted,Zora Kerova("Cannibal Ferox")has a broken bottle rammed into her vagina,another woman has her erect nipple,then eye slowly slashed by a razor blade.It also features more sex and sleaze than any other Fulci film I can recall for example one scene takes place in a 42nd Street strip club,where a man and woman engage in live sex on stage in front of an audience.All in all "The New York Ripper" is a cult classic and a must-see for fans of Italian giallos.So if you liked this one I'd recommend "Giallo a Venezia","The Killer Is Still Among Us","Born for Hell","House on the Edge of the Park","Maniac","Terror Express" and other nasty movies from the golden times of exploitation!.
The emphasis on gore and sleaze creates an image of New York as a Hell on Earth that makes TAXI DRIVER look positively staid, and Fulci uses the story to make some harsh comments on American life.
If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, it may be a homicidal manic that has it in for beautiful women.Fulci certainly raised the Giallo bar with this film, which is, to say the least, realistic and intense.There is a lot of blood as the ripper plies his misogynistic game to assuage his guilt.One gets a good look at 1980s Times Square and all it's sleaze.
It's not actually a good film, the killer sounds like donald duck, but as far as 'Extreme cinema' goes this is up there with 'Cannibal Holocaust'.
"The New York Ripper" is one of the best Fulci films ever.**SPOILERS**Discovering a gruesome murder, Lt. Fred Williams, (Jack Hedley) is shocked to find as graphic killing done when assigned to the case.
Possibly the nastiest and most vicious of all of Lucio Fulci's movies, this sadistic giallo not only features some truly unsettling scenes of explicit gore, but also manages to tell a rather involving and immoral tale that perfectly captures the sleazy vibe of New York in the early 80s.Jack Hedley plays Lt. Fred Williams, a policeman heading the search for the psycho responsible for a spate of bloody murders.
Teaming up with a genius psychoanalyst, he attempts to form a profile of the killer that will help him solve the case before too many more mutilated bodies are discovered.Totally nauseating, unashamedly misogynistic, and completely unmissable if you're fond of graphic on screen bloodletting, this film is perfect viewing for anyone who found the likes of House by the Cemetery, City of the Living Dead and Zombie 2 a little too tame.Complete with umpteen raunchy sex scenes (including bondage and a 42nd Street live sex-show), razor blade eyeball mutilation and nipple slashing, a broken bottle attack, and numerous stabbings and slicings with a nasty stiletto blade, The New York Ripper should satisfy even the most hardened of gore-hound's blood-lust, whilst also offering them a rather nifty mystery to solve.Admittedly, the pace is occasionally a little slow, but with all of the gratuitous gore and nudity, and a crazy villain who talks like a duck, it's easy to forgive the odd lull in the action..
Way more violent than most slasher flicks, and also full of rather explicit sex and nudity, this stunning horror thriller was definitely not made for the weak at heart.Lt. Frank Williams (Jack Hedley) investigates the bloody deeds of a serial killer of women, who slashes his victims in exceptionally gruesome ways.
Knowing that he won't make much progress by himself, he asks Dr Paul Davis (Paolo Malco), a psychiatrist and chess enthusiast, for his help with the investigation.Arguably Fulci's most brutal movie, "The New York Ripper" is a stunning and disturbing horror experience.
I also loved that the killer talks like Donald Duck, that makes the whole movie a lot creepier.All things considered, "The New York Ripper" is a tantalizing slasher flick, shocking and nasty as it gets.
This is arguably Fulci's most violent and disturbing flick, and although it is not his best film, "Lo Squartatore Di New York" is a stunning horror thriller and a good and original movie.
In fact, New York Ripper may be Fulci's goriest work ever but since it ranks so low on the totem pole with the fans, you never see articles prasing it's effects like you would with Zombie or City of the Living Dead.
It is nearly impossible to bring up 'Lucio Fulci' and 'giallo' without also bringing up Dario Argento; and while some will claim that Argento is the go-to-guy for stylish thrillers splashed with deliberate, often ostentatious uses of Technicolor, I am of the opinion that Fulci had the better stories (and sense of realism)."The New York Ripper" strikes the same hostile notes of urban squalor that William Friedkin mined in his much-vilified 1980 effort, "Cruising"; only instead of a serial killer stalking patrons of the leather scene, Fulci has his slasher mutilating beautiful women in creatively gruesome ways (it is saying something that the film is still effective 25 years later).
Along the way, we're treated to the specter of 42nd Street, live sex shows, kinky situations (including a suspenseful sequence where a woman bound to a bed escapes the alleged killer sleeping next to her), and an onslaught of brutality; Fulci has never been bashful when it comes to gore, and one can imagine his own demons being exorcised with each violent act portrayed in this film.
Depending on your personal taste, "The New York Ripper" may be the kind of film that requires a shower after watching...and I mean that in the best possible way.
Plot is weak and acting is even weaker...but it doesn't matter that much because this is Lucio Fulci's movie =) They prob'ly tried to put some kind of humor to this mad and macabre flick by using "donald duck voice" as the killer's voice.
In The New York Ripper Fulci brings all of the sex and violence to the table that made his zombie films so famous.
Effective giallo from the master Fulci where he certainly had the most cruel and nasty gore scenes ever,the picture badly reach around fifteen minutes already have three bodies on the morgue,the duck appears soon and many clues are placed in many directions to bewilder the audience's nose,the movie shown us a portrait of a dirty New York in early 80',many scenes in dowtown with sin's streets with a lot the theatres and nightclubs living for sex miss on sighting...true a time machine!!Resume:First watch: 2018 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.
Another Fulci exploitation classic, The New York Ripper is possibly the most depraved film the Italian horror maestro ever made.
It's difficult to watch at times but the film is well acted and nicely directed with a funky music score, there is scenes of realistic brutality and gore such as the infamous nipple razor torture sequence which will make people cringe with fear more then the one in "Ichi The Killer".
The movie offers a sleazy atmosphere to it with it's sex and violence use as it's perhaps maybe too offensive for some people but it's worth a look for fans of nasty slasher and gore flicks but not for the faint of heart.Also recommended: "The Untold Story", "Ichi The Killer", "City of the Living Dead", "Demons", "Re-Animator", "Hostel 1 & 2", "Se7en", "Inside", "Tenebre", "Maniac (1980)", "Saw Series", "Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky", "Manhunter", "Silence of the Lambs", "Hannibal", "Captivity", "The Hills Have Eyes (1977 and 2006)", "The Last House on The Left (1972 and 2009)", "Frontier(s)", "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer", "Pieces", "The Toxic Avenger", "House By The Cemetery", "Untracable", "Suspiria", "Torso", "Final Destination Series", "Men Behind The Sun", "Cannibal Ferox", "Perfect Blue", "Bloodsucking Freaks", "The Driller Killer", "Cannibal Holocaust", "From Hell", "A Nightmare on Elm Street", "Friday The 13th series plus 2009 version", "Freddy Vs. Jason", "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers", "Blood Diner", "Opera", "Mother of Tears", "Inferno", "Nightmare (1981 a.k.a. BloodSplash and Nightmare in a Damaged Brain)", "Wrong Turn 1 & 2", "Phenomena", "House of 1000 Corpses", "The Devil's Rejects", "Halloween (1978 and Rob Zombie 2007)", "Borderland", "Midnight Meat Train", "Hellraiser 1 & 2", "The Toolbox Murders (1978 and 2004)", "Candyman", "American Psycho", "Deep Red", and "The Beyond"..
(There are Spoilers) Stomach cunning slasher movie with one of the most shocking and graphic murder scenes ever put on film about a serial killer on the loose in the Big Apple taunting the police with duck calls and daring them to catch him.With his first victim found,in pieces, under the Manhattan Bridge by someone walking his dog the killer runs up a score of four victims with his only mistake being Fay Majors, Almanta Suska, who got away from him in a deserted Brooklyn subway station.
"New York Ripper" is Fulci's most extreme, nasty and voyeuristic movie.
A woman hits the door of a car with her bike and apologizes by saying, "I'm sorry, I was thinking of Boston." A man reveals why he's so smart by admitting: "I eat oodles of carrots." And the killer went mad because, in the professional words of a doctor, "it was the duck that snapped in his brain." This film alternates between revelling in sleaze and the upper limits of graphic violence, and playing out some of the funniest dialogue scenes this side of "Troll 2." My favorite was the anti-American speech one character stops the film to give about how "if you're not the best in America, you're nothing!" In reality only about 10 minutes were shot in NY, the rest in reliable old Cinecitta.
And like my fellow commentators I have absolutely no idea why Fulci thought a killer who uses a Donald Duck voice would be scary, but it isn't, and in fact is one of the funniest things I've ever seen, no doubt robbing the Zucker Bros of a good idea for a future horror spoof.
(Carrie 2 paid homage to it in one scene BTW.) Once upon a time in a very good film Fulci warned us not to torture ducklings, presumably because they'd end up as adult killer-ducks in hilariously awful movies like this..
I don't even go for murder mysteries usually but I really loved the way Lucio directed something so raw and gripping that was nothing like his more supernatural zombie movies, but was just a simple and straightforward no-holds barred murder romp set in early eighties great old scarier New York about a very jaded, crusty old detective and a cocky young psychoanalyst working to discover the identity of a psychotic butcherer of beautiful women who has begun terrorising the city, and there are a few obvious red herrings thrown in along the way until the bizarre truth is finally revealed!
Also there's the duck thing which I could definitely see putting some people right off the movie, but the way I see it if nothing else it certainly grabs you, it's so disarmingly bizarre that it somehow makes the violence more disturbing, so to me the toon-voiced killer worked.
It has a surprisingly well developed plot, decent acting, very attractive women, trashy New York locations, gratuitous sex, nudity, deeply disturbing gore, and a very unsettling killer who happens to sound like Donald Duck.
The most infamous film of Lucio Fulci (at least in the UK that is) The New York Ripper is also one of his best.
New York Ripper is a great chunk of Fulci and a competent horror film.
The "plot" is as follows: A killer who talks like a duck is on the loose in New York City, killing many people (especially prostitutes) in extremely violent ways.
Fulci is one of the most inventive and most talented horror directors to ever pick up a camera, and I won't hear otherwise.The movie is filmed on location in New York City and it follows the escapades of an intelligent killer that is murdering the lady inhabitants of that city.
Fulci's direction for The New York Ripper is fantastic, and it's maybe the best direction he's ever given a film.
Even though we don't know, or even care for a lot of the characters that are in the firing line; the tension is still there, and that is testament to Fulci's direction.The New York Ripper is by no means a 'nice' film, but that doesn't hinder it from being a very good one.
A burned-out New York police detective (Jack Hedley) teams up with a college psychoanalyst (Paolo Malco) to track down a vicious serial killer randomly stalking and killing various young women around the city.The film gets criticized for its sex and so-called misogyny.
Even though Lucio Fulci was not as great as for instance Dario Argento is, he has made his fair slash of good and enjoyable Italian thriller/horror flicks, better known as giallo movies.
I GIVE LUCIO FULCI'S THE NEW YORK RIPPER TWO STARS JUST BECAUSE I ENJOY THE GORE..
What makes this psycho different is that he talks with a duck's voice but after letting one victim escape, the police have a good idea who is doing the slashing.The giallo genre offered up quite a few bloody and graphic movies but Lucio Fulci's THE NEW YORK RIPPER is without question that most vile, disgusting, sexually perverted and notorious of them all.
With that said, not too many people come to any Fulci film for the story but what also helps is the scope cinematography that perfectly captures the dirtiness of New York City.
I can't quite say yet after seeing only three Lucio Fulci films (the other two being Zombi 2, which was good though far from the great cult status many claim, and Zombie which was about as close to awful as a zombie movie can get) if he's really all that much of a terrific director like I've heard at times.
But if The New York Ripper does reveal anything it's that Fulci has a kind of twisted grasp of how to do a serial killer thriller that comes off a little like Dario Argento done for the grindhouse.
I preferred Maniac and Tenebrae, and indeed those 2 films make an interesting double bill....I will watch New York Ripper again but I don't think I'll like it any more than I do now...a shame really.....