11. The New York Ripper (1982)
A mean spirited 1982 effort from Lucio Fulci, The New York Ripper has, for the most part, been critically reviled and despised by even the most hardcore Italian sleaze aficionados. The film doesn't particularly offend me but it is highly lurid and sensationalist in its violence towards women. If you took Fulci seriously, there would be serious charges of extreme misogyny laid against him. This latter state of affairs is mainly due to the way the female victims in the film are killed. Crotch stabbings are the killer's main modus operandi. And that is basically the plot. A madman running round New York stabbing women in the groin. Oh, and he has a particularly stupid Donald Duck voice which renders the whole spectacle quite ridiculous. There is a hard boiled detective on Mr Ducky's trail and a lot of red herrings thrown into the plot to distract us from the fact that the film is a pile of crap. Why, you may ask, did I include such a dud film? Well, I think that the New York Ripper exemplifies all of the worst excesses of Italian Giallo/horror/exploitation cinema. This includes grotesque murder scenes, a poor plot, gratuitous sleaze galore and a profound hatred of women - although Fulci himself denied being a woman hater. The film was considered so obnoxious by the British censors, every single print of it was escorted by the police out of the country. For this infamy alone, The New York Ripper deserves a spot in the list.