tenebrean White City haunted by black figures & the grey Cyclopean Towers of the hi-way & everything wiped over in bleached pales, like the landscape is a dirge & requiem for all the women burnt & slashed in the graveyards & all the mad who have no place but to wander those lonely green pales.

& the old Phantom: here the Patriarch who Knows What's Best For You & will make you conform to the shape of His Hand.

& fulci's shaking vitriol at the anti-human & anti-life church (note the cowled & looming dead in the dark of prayer) :::

there is sympathy, on some level, for witches & "loose" (free) women ::: made here the left hand that is the flesh to the right hand of the black glove,…

In the past few months, Lucio Fulci has grown to become my favorite director. Yet, I am always a little worried about recommending his movies to anyone who isn't the slightest bit interested in horror or unconventional film. Usually what I like the most about his film are how it subverts western values, the insane onscreen violence, the satirical tone or the impending doom surrounding his characters, and these aren't exactly things that would please everyone. But then there is Don't Torture a Duckling, a movie I never gave a rat’s ass about because of this seemly idiotic title and the awful poster. I should have known better...

Don't Torture a Duckling is Fulci's least trippy work, out of the…

Another excellent giallo from Lucio Fulci from before his gore-fest days!

This one is about an isolated village where young boys are being murdered and, because it’s a giallo, everybody’s a suspect and nobody’s safe. It had honestly been so long since I watched this that all I could remember was Barbara Bouchet’s swingin’ early 70’s pad and that insanity of an ending. Somehow, I had completely forgotten about all the intense and heavy themes this one deals with head on: small-town skepticism, rural conservatism, religious hypocrisy, pedophelia, witchcraft. All that’s here and yet I managed to only remember that glorious 70’s drenched house up on the hill. I have no idea what that says about me, but there you…

Only a handful of filmmakers in cinema history were as uncompromising as Lucio Fulci, the infamous “Godfather of Gore.” By labelling Fulci uncompromising, I refer both to his moribund sensibilities (excessive gore, barbaric mutilations, dread-inducing atmospherics) as well as his intrepid methods of grappling with controversial themes, particularly the moral ills of religious miscreancy. In this regard, no film better expresses Fulci’s mastery of transgressive form and content than Don’t Torture a Duckling, one of the finest entries into the giallo sub-genre.

Narratively, the film focuses on a string of child killings that plague Accendura, a Southern Italian village, and the labyrinthine investigation that ensues to apprehend the culprit. As the bodies continue to pile up, with no end in…

De primeras, admito que llegando a su final me puse con el teléfono mientras la película seguía su transcurso.
Sorry not sorry.

El caso es que Don't Torture a Duckling es un cóctel de géneros, pasando por el Giallo, el slasher, el terror pueblerino, cine de explotación y demás. Fulci se las ingenia con la narrativa, poniéndonos pistas verdaderas y falsas, mezclandolas para hacernos partícipes como la policía.

Bastante genial el manejo de la tensión en los momentos decisivos y con un gore que, a mí parecer, no ha envejecido tan mal. Se nota que el director quiere enfatizar algo detrás de todo el misterio y el sorprendente giro final.

Atónito de la belleza que me he encontrado personificada en…