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…

Trivia--Lucio Fulci's favorite film and was banned throughout Europe because of its criticism of the Catholic Church.

Young prepubescent boys begin to turn up dead in the Italian countryside. The police and a journalist scramble from suspect to suspect.

Legendary filmmaker Lucio Fulci pulls no punches in this Gialo--nudity, dead children, witchcraft, etc. The film was so controversial at the time that it never received a wide release and, although ready for release in 1972, did not even get a limited run in the United States until 1978 (which is where I will place it when, Lord willing, I get to that year).

Fulci is hit or miss for me. "The Beyond" is brilliant, "Zombie" is fun but other movies…