[The News Bot]

Reviewed by Chris McEneany, 13th November 2009
It naturally seems wrong to label The New York Ripper as a classic, but this is most definitely what it is … of its kind. As well as the copious gore and vastly disturbing imagery, this was proof that Lucio Fulci was becoming far more accomplished as a filmmaker and, perhaps even on his way to reaching a point where he would be able to stand toe-to-toe with Dario Argento. It is beyond doubt that his cycle of bloody epics, starting with Zombie Flesheaters and reaching a grisly pinnacle with Ripper, were getting more assured and better produced with each instalment, and they are certainly much better than anything that Argento has come up with in the last twenty years. Sadly, Fulci wasn't able to maximise on this new maturity, with his career pin-balling from one crazy new concept to another throughout the eighties, never settling on one genre for long and many promising projects never even seeing the light of day. The disastrously personal Cat In My Brain and the woeful Demonia and his final no-hoper before his death in 1996, Voices From Beyond, are not exactly the kind of thing that, in his own warped and wacky way, he showed so much potential for achieving with this and his earlier violent fantasies.

The New York Ripper remains a powerful and potent psycho-sexual thrill-ride that may have lost some of its once-alarming ferocity, but is still a defiant and historically important milestone in the genre ... and it is has never looked or sounded better than here on Blue Underground's macabre new BD release.

Recommended.


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