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…

The 2018 Cult Movie Challenge
Week 5: Giallo Week

If you haven't seen Don't Torture A Duckling, let me do you a favor and clear something up that was bothering me during the entire viewing as I sat there half-waiting for someone to finally show up and torture a duckling, and then for someone else to say Hey don't torture that duckling. No ducklings were harmed during the course of this film. The original Italian title of this movie is Non si sevizia un paperino. In Italy, Donald Duck is commonly referred to as paperino, and someone in this movie has a doll of him, and believe it or not, in the context of the film's story, Don't torture Donald…

Lucio Fulci’s controversial giallo is one of those films which are easier to be appreciated during the second screening, when you are already well familiar with their final outcome and meaning. Initially, when I saw it for the first time (which was about 7 years ago), I thought it was too slow, a bit slovenly and chaotic (because, for example, the film’s mysterious villain murdering 12-yeard-old boys barely appears and there is no character that could be considered its main hero). How wrong was I.

First of all, the mercilessly ironic use of sound and music. The film is filled with interesting contrasts. When parents are crying because their kid was abducted, when the police is finding yet another dead…