Lucio Fulci's New York Ripper (1982) Review

During the 1980s the British government felt that the weak spirit of the poor and stupid was under assault from a new form of mass media distribution, the VHS tape. Given that the Conservative Party had long preached personal responsibility as opposed to social welfare and rejected notions of societal and socialising factors upon crime and morality it may seem on the face of it bizarre that a government would point to film as a corrupting influence, for this it could be argued is a social factor, an external. So when it came to supporting the death penalty our conservatives would argue that heinous crime is caused by the immoral individual, an argument I don't share but would respect more if it contained within it a shred of consistency. After all, if a person commits a depraved act after watching a film, is the film the cause of the depravity of the individual or is the individual solely to blame?

While you are mulling all this over I would like to point out that the Video Recordings Act did not just represent a repression of free expression it also represented a clear illustration of the contradictary nature of conservatism.

In some ways it could be argued that this contradiction is not as the result of inconsistency on the part of conservatives but indicative of the differing ideological strands that come under an umbrella organisation such as the Conservative Party which within its ranks contains people close to fascism, Christian moralists, social and economic libertarians. These strands would all have to be appeased to an extent in order to maintain what in effect is a coalition of forces under the guise of a party. When it came to video, however, it was the social authoritarian arguments that won out and Britain entered a dark age of censorship. James Ferman, the censor in chief, ordered all prints of New York Ripper to be escorted to the airport and deported from the country.

This weekend folks in the interests of science I attempted to watch New York Ripper to see if Ferman was indeed correct. But first precautions had to be taken and I was firmly strapped into a chair with Lecter style face mask just in case I attempted to kill my family, pets, neighbours or self. This was indeed potentially as dangerous as playing the William Tell Game with William S. Burroughs, and I took no chances.

To begin the experiment I needed a film and I sourced a copy of New York Ripper from a company with the ominous title of Shameless Screen Entertainment.

To go off on a tangent here for a second, I remember at school how we were told how dangerous things sometimes come in bright colours, for example wasps, bees or cluster bombs, though unfortunately in the latter example this has the opposite effect as it suggests colourful toy to children. But I digress. Anyhow the box for New York Ripper was bright yellow!!!! It screamed "Danger Herman!!!! Stay away!!! Remember what happened in The Shining!!!". I was extremely nervous at this point but I had come so far, I had to finish my experiment, science demanded it.

I took a deep breath and removed the DVD from the case, so far so good, there were no booby traps and the edges of the disc were not razor sharp. I exhaled. However I have recently watched Cube and so I am perfectly aware how these things sometimes come back to bite you, particularly when you least expect it. I tentatively placed the disc into the player, hesitated, and then closed my eyes and pressed play, quicky retreating from the player just in case that something evil happened. There was no going back.

"God forgive me for what I may have unleashed upon the earth", I may well have thought to myself as I settled back in the chair with my wife tightening the arm straps and securing my mask.

It all started ominous enough, a snuff style copyright notice led into some suitably grimey graphics followed by 19 minutes of trailers. Brilliant, I thought, I love trailers.

Nineteen minutes later after being informed of Shameless's desire to release Torso, Phantom of Death, Manhattan Baby and The Black Cat among others I was faced with an animated menu, where I duly asked my wife to select play as I was a bit tied up at that moment.

The film opened in what looks not unlike the location for the drummer accompanies the gang pow-wow in Bronx Warriors, the Fabrizio De Angelis connection. A man is walking his dog who instead of retrieving a stick returns with what appears to be a human hand, the credits roll and we get a theme music that echoes those from 1970s American cop series. This leads us into what is in effect a retelling of the Jack The Ripper story, complete with gynecological obsession and themes surrounding sex workers, involving a killer who quacks like a duck.

The kiler, who in giallo style has his or her identity concealed using trademark Fulci point of view shots commits a series of barbaric murders which while thematically no more mysoginistic than other of the genre, for example in What Have You Done To Solange?, trump all in the sheer graphic nature of the attacks, including the expected Fulci motif of eyeball trauma to some extent or other. In this case possibly to rival the painful to watch notorious splinter in eye in Zombie Flesh Eaters.

I have never been much of a traveller so the use of locations in New York gave me a feel for a place that I may never actually get to visit, a seedy side to the city. The shots of the red light area with the grindhouse cinemas, echoing Nightmare In a Damaged Brain a year earlier, were particularly effective and were a window on a bygone age of exploitation cinema.

While this film is in essence a giallo, there is little of the stylised killing that is quite common to the genre instead this is brutal, gritty, nasty, unsettling and effective. The quacking and duckspeak making the whole thing even more unnerving.

While the Shameless release does have 34 seconds of cuts, greater than the 22 for Vipco, they have secured here an excellent copy of the film and the image is pretty crisp and a joy for myself as I had only until now seen the film on VHS. The movie is an absolute delight for Fulci fans to be honest though possibly for others it may be a little bit rough, this is after all a film deserving of the title Nasty, though not deserving of the draconian idiocy that was the prohibition years.

So 87 minutes later, and I seem fine. Ferman and the censors it seems are wrong. But wait... there is someone in here with me, they are in my head, get out! get out! Quack! Quack Quack!

DVD: Shameless Screen Entertainment
Running Time:87 mins after cuts
Extras: 19 minutes of Italian genre trailers, excellent