WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE MEN?
When people discuss Lucio Fulci’s classic bit of sleeze, New York Ripper, certain words always spring up: “misogyny,” “sexism,” “sadism” and, perhaps most prominently, “women.” It’s just so tempting and easy, with a film that focuses so squarely on sexual sadism and murder, to talk about the way it represents and degrades women.
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Well, I’ll be honest, I’m a touch bored of that. Maybe it’s because, as a women, I’m sick of being told I should be offended by material like this (I’m not) or maybe it’s because I’m sick of it being inferred that, because I enjoy films like this, I’m a disgrace to the sisterhood (I’m not). So, today, I want to write about men. One man in particular, in fact: Lt. Williams (Jack Hedley), the supposed hero of New York Ripper who I find fascinating. Why? Well, considering he is a giallo hero, he is strangely impotent and ineffective until the final few scenes. So here I go, but be warned, here be spoilers…
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Williams first appears in NYR as the archetypal burned-out cop that’s been around since Dana Andrews fell in love with a corpse in Laura (1944). He barely seems to care as he investigates the deaths and the attack on Fay Majors. Even though he knows the Ripper is a serial killer he feels no need to race against time to stop any more women being killed.
Indeed when Davies tells him, “You let me have all the data and we’ll wait for him to butcher another girl,” Williams, rather than telling him that they need to find their maniac before that happens, raises no objections and appears unfazed that Davies thinks the Ripper will strike again. Although he does want to catch the Ripper, he gives the impression that it’s simply because he’s a cop, rather than any personal motivation.
We are lead to presume that Williams has a somewhat lonely personal life. We only see him off-duty once, when he is in bed with Kitty, a prostitute. It is when he hears Kitty’s screams as she is butchered that William’s finally finds some motivation other than vague sense of duty although he waits a rather long time to send police to her and, at well over seventy minutes and four deaths into the film, it seems a little late for him to start running around.
This lack of clear motivation is odd in a giallo. The main characters in, for example, Argento’s Deep Red (1975) and Avati’s The House With Laughing Windows (1976), take active roles in solving their respective mysteries. In fact, emphasis in the giallo tends to lean towards the investigation process with over-the-top gore scenes interspersed throughout. The focus in NYR, however, is very much on the violence. Unlike Deep Red, where the investigation progresses steadily before being wrapped up in the finale, NYR sees the investigation at what can only be described as a standstill until the final ten minutes or so. Fay is the only character with a clue to the Ripper’s identity and even she opts to ignore it until around the same time that Williams figures it out – far too late.
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In Deep Red, Marcus Daly (David Hemmings) actively seeks out the killer in order to cast away the finger of suspicion and to stop more violence occuring. Apart from the fact that Williams (finally) kills the Ripper, he is generally useless throughout NYR. Unlike other gialli heroes he apparently sits back and lets other characters tell him the answers while he goes through the motions of police procedure.
Perhaps this is the reason why so many people have a problem with the film and its representation of women: not only are the women seemingly incapable of saving themselves, none of the film’s men seem interested in saving them either.
New York Ripper (cert. 18) will be released on Blu-ray and DVD by Shameless Screen Entertainment on 27th June 2011.
