AKA: Lo Squartatore di New York, L'Eventruer De New York, Psycho Ripper, The Ripper

Tag Line : New York City. It's a nice place to live, but you wouldn't want to die there.

A maniac on the loose terrorising the streets of New York city is hardly an original concept. However, this particularly gruesome yarn is by Italian gore maestro Lucio Fulci and so is a far cry from your typical stalk and slash thriller.

The movie opens with the discovery of the decomposed body of a young call girl, whose been carved up and dumped on the banks of the Hudson river. The police investigate, but shortly afterwards another young girl is found brutally murdered on the Stanton Island ferry.

As more badly mutilated bodies pile up, the killer begins phoning the detective in charge, Lt Williams  (Jack Hedley), at the police station to taunt him, which he finds rather odd as the killer seems to quack like a duck whenever he talks. With no other clues to go on, Williams (Jack Hedley) enlists the help of psychologist Paul Davis (Paolo Malco) hoping he can shed some light on the case. But he does little to help apart from spout a lot of confusing psycho-babble.

A breakthrough appears to come when one potential victim, Fay Major's (Almanta Keller), identifies the killer as having 2 finger's missing on his right hand. But despite a massive manhunt they fail to net him, who we see goes on to carve up several more young female victims in graphic detail, which includes a stripper (Zora Kerova) getting a broken bottle jammed into her crotch, a young swinger named Jane (Alexandra Deli Colli) being disembowelled with a knife and the Lt William's girlfriend being sliced up with a razor in slow-mo. Which includes a long lingering shot of the killer dragging the blade across her eyeball and breasts.

Described by Fangoria magazine as "his sickest ever film" (and that's saying something), this isn't your typical Fulci pic. In many ways it was just low budget detective thriller, which kinda reminded me of the Michael Caine film "Dressed to Kill". However, the graphic excesses in this far surpass those in that or any other stalk & slash thriller to have come out before or since. Just try not to laugh at the end when he explains the reason why the killer quacks like a duck (and no he wasn't Walt Disney).

Overall marks : 5/10.

Other Information.

• The film earned the nickname "Quack the Ripper", among fans, due to the killers way of talking.

• Producer Fabrizio De-Angelis also worked with Fulci on the zombie films "The Beyond", "House by the Cemetery" and "Zombie Flesh-Eaters".

• Director Lucio Fulci makes a cameo appearance as the police cheif.

• Paolo Malco was a regular in Italian films, his other notable credits including Fulci's "House by the Cemetery" and Lamberto Bava's "Demons 3 : The Ogre". These days he seems to have sunk into oblivion, his last acting role being an obscure Italian soap opera in 1998 called "Incantesimo"

• Jack Hedley was a prominent actor during the 60's and 70's, most notably starring in the original 1969 film "Goodbye Mr Chips" and the BBC drama series "Colditz" with Robert Wagner. He continues to act today and has most recently appeared in the british cop show "Dalziel & Pascoe".

• Zora Kerova seems to have an ill fated career in horror/exploitation pics. In this film she plays a stripper who is killed by having a broken bottle rammed into her crotch, prior to this she appeared in Cannibal Ferox and met a similarly nasty demise by being strung up by hooks impaled through her breasts, and before that she was one of the victims of the Antropophagus beast in the Joe D'amato film of the same name.

• The film was submitted to the BBFC for a UK cinema release in 1984. However they were obviously not very impressed with it, as not only did they reject the film outright, but they refused to let the distributer have it back and even had the police escort all the footage back out of the country to its original supplier. Oh dear!

• Vipco managed to get the film passed in 2001, but this version suffered 22s of cuts which removed the scene where the ripper drags his razor blade down the body and across the breast of a victim who's tied naked to the bed.

• The film is available uncut on Greek, Swedish, Dutch, Italian and Austrian video. Also available uncut in Europe by Cosa Nostra video. There is also an uncut Dutch DVD by Italian Shock and an uncut US DVD by Anchor Bay.

Cast & Crew.

Cover Gallery.

Theatrical trailer. Uncut version. (1.9MB)

Buy the US DVD (uncut).

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