The New York Ripper (1982) from Tuna

Lo Squartatore di New York is a Lucio Fulci giallo which people remember for two things: (1) the killer quacks like a duck; (2) a woman's nipple is sliced in half with a razor blade.

Fulci puts us on notice from the opening credits, which show a man playing fetch with his dog near the Brooklyn Bridge. The dog retrieves a severed hand from the bushes. Later, a girl (Cinzia de Ponti) is riding her bicycle in the lower west side. She runs into a red VW, and the owner is quite rude. She boards the Staten Island Ferry, sees the Volkswagen and decides to leave a message for the jerk on the inside of his windshield. Someone catches her there, terrifies her, and she tries to get out the passenger door, but it is too close to the wall. The killer slices and dices her. Cut to the morgue, where we see her with her incisions stitched up. The salty old coroner comments that "the killer used a blade. He stuck it up her joy trail and slit her wide open." The coroner then says it is the same killer that did the model a few weeks before -- the one whose hand was discovered in the opening scene.

The detective in charge returns to his office to find the chief of police there, played by Fulci himself. The chief tells him to give everyone the impression that the department is on top of it, and not to jump to any conclusions about it being a serial killer. The detective hires a psychology professor to assist.

The killer continues to target attractive women, and taunts the detective with his phone calls, where he always quacks like a duck.

Tuna and I use the term "giallo films" quite often. What does it mean?

Giallo is Italian for yellow. Just after WWII, the most common trashy crime thrillers in Italy were paperbacks with yellow covers. The books became known as giallos. This book market would be the equivalent to the sensationalistic "pulp fiction" in the USA in the 20's and 30's. As more and more Italian films were made based on this same kind of material, the films inherited the same name. The heyday of the giallo films was in the period from the late sixties to the late seventies, but the output continues in dribs and drabs to this day.

They are considered a sub-genre of horror films by many, but they are more accurately classified as an explicit subset of crime films. They rarely employ supernatural elements. They are horror films only in the same sense that Hitchcock's Psycho is a horror film. The horror is psychological - usually involving an insane slasher with a weapon that digs into human flesh.

The genre is defined by the graphic and sensationalistic portrayal of violent crime and sexuality, as well as highly stylized visual and musical flourishes, all meant to shock and/or arouse the viewer. Other commonplace elements include insanity, surrealism, sexual fetishes, drug abuse, and generally amoral behavior. The major directors in this genre are, of course, Italians: Argento, Bava senior and junior, Fulci.

The closest America has ever come to the giallo spirit are the films Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, and Basic Instinct. These films, however concentrate more on the mind of the killer and the hunt for the killer than they do on the explicit and shocking portrayal of the actual violent acts. Americans generally have no taste for the graphic violence and mutilations portrayed in Italian genre films. In fact, the giallo films are not the only Italian specialty films to explore splatter. The notorious Italian jungle films often feature graphic torture and cannibalism scenes.