Don't Torture A Duckling
Kat Ellinger and Dima Ballin Selects • Horror
From Lucio Fulci, the godfather of gore (The Psychic, The Beyond), comes one of the most powerful and unsettling giallo thrillers ever produced: his 1972 masterpiece Don't Torture a Duckling.
When the sleepy rural village of Accendura is rocked by a series of murders of young boys, the superstitious locals are quick to apportion blame, with the suspects including the local "witch", Maciara (Florinda Bolkan, A Lizard in a Woman's Skin). With the bodies piling up and the community gripped by panic and a thirst for bloody vengeance, two outsiders - city journalist Andrea (Tomas Milian, The Four of the Apocalypse) and spoilt rich girl Patrizia (Barbara Bouchet, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times) - team up to crack the case. But before the mystery is solved, more blood will have been spilled, and not all of it belonging to innocents...
Deemed shocking at the time for its brutal violence, depiction of the Catholic Church and themes of child murder and paedophilia, Don't Torture a Duckling is widely regarded today as Fulci's greatest film, rivalling the best of his close rival Dario Argento.
Up Next in Kat Ellinger and Dima Ballin Selects
-
Evil of Dracula
In Evil of Dracula, a professor takes up a new post at an all-girls school only to discover the school's principle conceals a dark secret and the pupils are in grave danger.
-
Vampire Circus
1972 • United Kingdom • Robert Young
As the plague sweeps the countryside, a quarantined village is visited by a mysterious travelling circus. Soon, young children begin to disappear, and the locals suspect the circus troupe might be hiding a horrifying secret...
-
Blind Beast
1969 • Japan • Directed by Yasuzô Masumura
Blind Beast is a grotesque portrait of the bizarre relationship between a blind sculptor and his captive muse, adapted from a short story from Japan’s foremost master of the macabre, Edogawa Rampo (Horrors of Malformed Men, The Black Lizard, Caterpilla...