New York Ripper is not a Jack the Ripper film. It’s not even about a Ripper copycat (though Jack the Ripper—JtR for short) IS mentioned at one point during the investigation. This film is what I call a “Faux Ripper” movie (i.e. a film which uses “Ripper” in one of its titles—generally for marketing reasons—but which is not about JtR). This film uses “Ripper” in its original Italian title, and in all English versions.
At any rate, this film is an Italian giallo film, by ultraviolent filmmaker Lucio Fulci. The killer in this movie is extremely sadistic (in the film’s most famous scene, he slits a woman’s eyeball with a razor), and he taunts the NYPD by phoning them up and speaking in a duck-quack voice.
Though this film fits into the giallo subgenre of Italian horror, it is not really representative of gialli as a whole. The giallo subgenre generally combines murder mystery, high body count, variety of killing styles, dazzling cinematography, and the ultimate unraveling of the mystery… kind of like Halloween (part ONE!) and Friday the 13th (part ONE!)–though neither of those movies has the high cinematic style of the typical giallo.
FYI: gialli are pretty violent films. BUT in New York Ripper Lucio Fulci goes beyond the violence of the standard giallo film… particularly the gialli by filmmakers like Mario Bava and Dario Argento. That’s partly why I’m saying it’s not really a representative giallo. But in addition, it has a much more gritty look than any Bava or Argento giallo would. If you watch Bava’s Blood and Black Lace or Argento’s Deep Red—and then watch New York Ripper—you’ll quickly understand what I mean.
The ultraviolence in Fulci’s film is not really surprising, given that one of the script writers also contributed to the script of Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust… a movie so extreme that many people thought it was a snuff film. Actually, you could say it was so extreme that it got banned in ITALY!!! (I believe that it’s still banned to this day in the U.S.).
Despite its ultraviolence (and the fact that it’s not about Jack the Ripper), New York Ripper is well-made, presents an interesting mystery, and really explores the seedy side of New York. But this film is not recommended for anybody who does not have a very strong stomach or who does not want to watch extreme screen violence. I’m saying that as a critic who has seen the film for professional reasons, but who does not generally watch movies THIS violent for pleasure.
So consider yourselves warned! :-)
Resources:
Giallo (Wikipedia)—Encyclopedia overview of giallo.
Mario Bava, “Bava Speaks”—What the “creator” of giallo says about his work.
Dario Argento, Dark Dreams—A UK website devoted to the work of Dario Argento
Lucio Fulci, Official Lucio Fulci Website—includes a useful bio
jack the ripper or adolph hitler?
Since the first part of the Hitler movie ran last night on ABC, I got into a conversation on the nature of evil today. What’s odd is that I’m not the one who raised the obvious question: Was Hitler more evil than Jack the Ripper? Or did Hitler just have more power to wreak havoc?
Here are excerpts from the blog I wrote on that movie elsewhere last night:
staring into the eyes of a monster
I was expecting it to be just sort of another one of those historical movies. But it wasn’t. It looked deep into the eyes of the monster. And what it showed there was absolutely terrifying. It still has me shaken.
My husband and I watch a lot of scary movies–from the silent era to the present. We’ve seen the Universal horrors, the Hammer horrors, the cheapies, the high budgets, Night of the Living Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a variety of slashers, Italian giallo films, even Cannibal Holocaust. And a whole lot of Jack the Ripper films. The really intense ones can give you some immediate and visceral chills. But most of them are cathartic. Most of the time, you identify with a potential victim in a battle against a monster/killer. And once the film is over (and the potential victim usually has won), you go home and feel just fine.
This wasn’t cathartic. Yes, they do give you a character to identify with, but you suspect that he will ultimately be crushed under the wheels of Hitler’s rise.
The main character in this movie is Hitler. Viewers are usually led to identify with the main character–no matter how vile that character is–by placing us close to the main character’s point of view. Though this film does place us close to Hitler’s POV, it never tries to get us to identify with him. When he is holding a pistol to his head after the disastrous putsch, you just wish he’d pull the trigger. When soldiers start firing on Hitler’s armed mob, you wish they’d land a shot to Hitler’s head. When Hitler’s on trial for treason and starts speechifying, you are more horrified at his rhetoric than caught up in the excitement of the main character turning disaster into triumph. You watch all the lost opportunities to stop the Nazi horror, and just feel helpless that the juggernaut continues to roll on.
This dynamic is very unusual in filmmaking, and very hard to pull off because of the audience’s natural identification with main characters. I think the filmmakers pull it partly because we know the future that these events will lead to. We know about the war, the death camps, the genocide. But most of the credit belongs to the the brilliant performance by actor Robert Carlyle, who plays Hitler in this film. Without him, the filmmakers probably could not have pulled it off.
Carlyle plays Hitler as a man of intense anger and hatred. You suspect that he is psychotic. You know that he’s evil. And Carlyle’s portrayal is terrifying. Hitler becomes the bogey-man. The darkest depths of the human soul. The monster. And all this without ever going beyond what we’ve seen of Hitler on old newsreels. If you didn’t know it were true, you’d think it was over-the-top. But you stare into the eyes of the monster and know that they’ve got it right.
In Hitler’s early years, the “bad” things that happen to him are no worse than the normal trials involved in growing up. He doesn’t get along with his father. He doesn’t get into art school. Sure, his mother dies. But by that time, he is in his late teens, not early childhood. The film shows no trauma that could ever explain what Hitler became. He’s more a product of nature than nurture–the demon child, the bad seed, the boy born bad. If he had not grown up to be a genocidal dictator, he would most likely have become a serial killer (his childhood behvarior fits nicely into the serial killer profile). And if not a serial killer, some other type of menace to society, or (if we had been so lucky) an inmate of a mental hospital.
All I have to say is that if you like scary movies, this one is really scary. And even scarier… it’s true.
(First blogged: Monday, May 19, 2003)
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