Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972)
aka Non si sevizia un paperino
Genre: Giallo | Horror | Mystery | Thriller
Country: Italy | Director: Lucio Fulci
Language: Italian or English (2 separate audio tracks)
Subtitles: English (Optional, embedded in Mkv file)
Aspect ratio: Cinemascope 2.35:1 | Length: 105mn
Bdrip H264 Mkv – 1920×816 – 23.976fps – 4.23gb
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069019/
Audio 3: Commentary by Film Historian Troy Howarth,
Author of So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films
A reporter and a promiscuous young woman try to solve a series of child killings in a remote southern Italian town that’s rife with superstition and distrust of outsiders.
Lucio Fulci, later known for his graphic horror films like The Beyond and Zombie, was years earlier a master of the Italian giallo (in the company of Argento and Bava) with films like A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin and his masterpiece, Don’t Torture A Duckling.
This film has all the elements of the Italian mystery/thriller genre known as the giallo, but really pulls the viewers in by having each key character with a skeleton in his/her own closet. This keeps you doing as much detective work as the detectives in the film itself. Who is killing the young boys in town? The young rich woman who is so bored that she sexually taunts the eventual victims, the reporter who likes to tamper with a crime scene to get a better photo shot, the townswoman with a mentally retarded daughter, the local witch, the town idiot….the list goes on, and you have to keep mental notes like a true game to play and solve.
The themes in this film are very daring and done with that perfect Italian style in the early 1970s. It is certain that no American studio would have even considered making a film of such strong content, and that is precisely why this is such a satisfying film (despite some unusual accent choices for the dubbing) and will definitely have people discussing its meanings long after viewing it. As the saying goes, they don’t make them like this anymore, so get a copy and cherish an important film like this one!
Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972)
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