Vulgar, no?
Do you know the film? No, it’s not Where The Wild Things Are. Or Law-Abiding Citizen, for that matter. A surprising Blu-ray choice, to be sure. I once considered the title the most morally reprehensible thing I’d ever seen. Silly me, with To Be Twenty and Night Train Murders and so much more ahead!
New York Ripper?
Quack quack quack quack quack quack.
Boy, I can’t get anything past you guys. It’s still a thoroughly and uniquely unpleasant experience, quack quack quack indeed…
Thoroughly unique and unpleasant? Quack quack quack quck? What is it, THE MIGHTY DUCKS?
I actually kinda dug it in spite of the really lame writing and acting and purple flourishes of violence – pervert that I am. My wife even liked parts of it, and she’s fairly squeamish. What a world we live in.
I’m really disappointed that the blu-ray cover doesn’t sport the classic tagline: “New York City: It’s a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to die there!” Oh well.
There are a couple Fulci movies I enjoy (The Beyond and, “Bob” aside, House By The Cemetery), but I’ve stayed away from this one. After subjecting myself to Cannibal Holocaust (speaking of thoroughly and uniquely unpleasant experiences…) I’ve decided I like my Italian horror more on the fun-tasteless side than the ugly-tasteless side, which from what I know is what New York Ripper falls under.
Does anybody else find LF’s Zombi to be sort of overrated? Beyond the moments everybody talks about, it’s really tedious. The Beyond has patches of tedium, too, but the cumulative effect of all the illogical set pieces there makes me wonder if he wasn’t a visionary (albeit a visionary of a pants-on-head retarded variety).
Does this have any relation to the “LET’S ROCK” scrawled on the windshield of a car in Lynch’s TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME?
Let’s rock !!
Sadly it’ll be a while before I upgrade to Blu-Ray but the presence of New York Ripper somehow makes the prospect more interesting!
“Does anybody else find LF’s Zombi to be sort of overrated? Beyond the moments everybody talks about, it’s really tedious. The Beyond has patches of tedium, too, but the cumulative effect of all the illogical set pieces there makes me wonder if he wasn’t a visionary (albeit a visionary of a pants-on-head retarded variety).”
I agree with reservations. Zombie Flesh Eaters is a bizarre sort of blue print for the modern sensation led film – as long as there are a couple of set piece moments that will go down in cinematic history then the film is considered successful. Of course Zombi 2 was inspired by the Argento recut of Dawn of the Dead, released as Zombi in Italy, a recut that removed most of the social comment and ‘slower’ scenes to play as a sort of prototype brainless horror film that Fulci’s film then fully embodied.
Certainly if Zombie is compared to Dawn of the Dead it seems rather dull. But when you compare Zombie to the other Italian zombie films to cash in on the Romero film such as Zombie 3, 4, 5(!), Zombie Creeping Flesh (which is a really blatant rip off of the main plot point of Dawn, even down to using the exact Goblin music cues!), Burial Ground, Nightmare City etc (though I find them all goofily watchable to varying extents), then Fulci’s film seems much more worth attention.
Interestingly on the Bird with the Crystal Plumage commentary track Steve Jones and Kim Newman talk about the way that there was a huge rift between Argento and Fulci since it seemed obvious that Fulci was blatantly following in his footsteps. So rather than being a visionary I would rather class Fulci as a mercenary – not in a bad way however as there few films as strangely compelling as The House By The Cemetery, The Beyond, Don’t Torture A Duckling, Manhattan Baby and, yes, New York Ripper. It seemed that they had patched things up though and were preparing to work together on Wax Mask (Fulci directing and Argento producing) before Fulci’s death in 1996.
Sorry, the above should be Alan Jones!