10 Underappreciated 80s Slashers

The New York Ripper is a super sleazy exploitation Slasher by the great Lucio Fulci. It is one of Fulci’s strongest narratives, teaming an NYPD detective with a psychologist to catch a serial killer terrorizing New York.

It feels a lot like a Giallo from the outset with all of the kills being quite savage and more than a little Argento-esque. The setting is that of the old, turn of the ‘80s New York - sex theatres and prostitutes and a sense of real danger serving to give us a cavalcade of pretty odd characters and red-herrings to blame the murders on. The killer, who we only hear though most of the film, is a strange one and taunts the detective and his victims in a Donald Duck voice. The reason behind this, once made clear, adds a real emotional impact to the end reveal of the killer.

This was a move away from the zombie-oriented horror Fulci had been making in the years previous and was a welcome shift back to movies like Don’t Torture A Duckling, another highlight of his filmography.