Don’t Torture a Duckling (4K UHD Review)
- Review Date: Apr 07, 2025
- Format: 4K Ultra HD
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Director
Lucio FulciRelease Date(s)
1972 (March 25, 2025)Studio(s)
Medusa Distribuzione (Arrow Video)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: B+
- Audio Grade: B-
- Extras Grade: A-
Review
One of the most fruitless debates among cinephiles is the endless back-and-forth regarding whether or not a given film qualifies as a giallo. “But is it a giallo?” is a phrase that may engender limitless enthusiasm among the gatekeepers, but it often generates loathing from, well, petty much everyone else. The controversy has even inspired some memes of its own (proving conclusively that no subject matter is exempt from becoming a Simpsons meme at one point or another). Yet like many such debates in the world of film, it frequently misses the forest but for the trees. Arguing about whether or not Suspiria qualifies as a giallo is wasting valuable time that would be better served by actually watching and discussing Suspiria. Yet even when a given film clearly does fit the criteria for gialli, that can still be an unproductive way to analyze it. Such is the case with Lucio Fulci’s 1972 shocker Don’t Torture a Duckling (aka Non si sevizia un paperino).
Don’t Torture a Duckling may be a giallo, but it’s so much more than that. Along with The New York Ripper, it’s arguably the ultimate expression of Fulci’s worldview, and that would be true regardless of whatever genres that the films may inhabit. Like many other directors who have dabbled in the world of horror, Lucio Fulci has faced frequent accusations of misogyny. Given the brutal treatment of the female characters in both Don’t Torture a Duckling and The New York Ripper, that’s at least partly understandable. Yet like the debate over whether or not a given film qualifies as a giallo, it’s missing the forest but for the trees. The reality is that the harsh destinies faced by the women in these films isn’t an expression of misogyny at all. Given the awful natures of the men who brutalize them, it’s actually something closer to misandry. Yet even that classification misses the real heart of darkness in Fulci’s films. No, Fulci was much more egalitarian than that; it would be more accurate to refer to him as a misanthropist. He didn’t trust human nature in general, and that mistrust reached its fullest form in Don’t Torture a Ducking.
Fulci’s screenplay for Don’t Torture a Duckling (written with Roberto Gianviti and Gianfranco Clerici) revolves around one of the most horrifying tragedies of all: a series of child murders in a small rural Italian village. Yet the boys who have been victimized were hardly a picture of innocence, having engaged in the usual boyhood mischief like smoking, mistreating animals, bullying, and obsessing over sex. Their misadventures have drawn the attention of a variety of people like the local village idiot Guiseppe (Vito Passeri); Maciara (Florinda Bolkan), a reclusive woman who the villagers consider to be a witch; her hermit father Francesco (Georges Wilson); Patrizia (Barbara Bouchet), a wealthy, free-spirited former reporter from Milan; and the local priest Don Alberto (Marc Porel). With the police investigation going nowhere, reporter Andrea Martelli (Tomas Milian) starts investigating on his own, aided (somewhat reluctantly) by Patrizia. Yet the suspicions and superstitions of the locals means that more innocent victims will end up dead while the real culprit has been hiding in plain sight the whole time. Don’t Torture a Duckling also stars Irene Papas, Antonello Campodifiori, Ugo D’Alessio, and Virgilio Gazzolo.
Fulci’s misanthropic nature ended up turning Don’t Torture a Duckling into something that goes so far beyond giallo that the term becomes a rather useless descriptor for the film. Don’t Torture a Duckling is really a portrait of Othering in all of its forms, with anyone who seems different from what society deems to be “normal” serving as the object of fear, hatred, and even violence. The developmentally disabled Guiseppe becomes an easy scapegoat for the villagers, but so do the uncanny Maciara and Francesco. Even Patrizia’s libertine nature falls outside of the strict Catholic morality exhibited by everyone else in this rural town, making her the object of mistrust at a bare minimum, if not necessarily outright suspicion. Anyone who doesn’t fit in with accepted norms is automatically the subject of suspicion. Fulci even has one of the characters voice that sentiment directly:
“Is this it? We can build highways, but we can’t overcome ignorance and superstition.”
Don Alberto also tries to overcome this kind of superstition, loudly proclaiming that “No one can be killed with black magic, no one! It’s nonsense.” Of course, the irony with his statement is that the Roman Catholic church has been trying to fight ignorance and superstition while simultaneously perpetrating its own forms of both—and the real killer is driven by raw Catholic guilt in its purest form. Significantly, none of the murdered boys were ever molested; in point of fact, they died precisely because they hadn’t yet been given the opportunity to become sexually active. The killer has become obsessed with their mischievous natures and especially their interest in sex, wanting the boys to die in a state of grace while maintaining their innocence in this Garden of Eden, long before they have the chance to taste the forbidden fruit. It may be true that no one can be killed by black magic, but people are victimized every day by the repression of sexuality that’s part and parcel of religions like Catholicism.
Don’t Torture a Duckling was Lucio Fulci’s personal favorite among all of his films, which isn’t particularly surprising given that he was very much a tortured Catholic soul of his own. It wasn’t just his personal favorite, but also the most personal statement that he ever made (well, outside of the audaciously self-referential Cat in the Brain, anyway). Don’t Torture a Duckling is suffused with Catholic guilt, and it’s the kind of guilt that ends up being expressed by what some people have misconstrued as misogyny. The irony is that while the male characters in the film do indeed fear the earthy, chthonic nature of female sexuality, their internal misogyny ends up being expressed outwardly via misandry instead. The issue isn’t really female sexuality per se, but rather the inability of men to control their own lusting after women, and thus the boys had to die before they ever had a chance to indulge in that kind of lust. Even the one woman who dies at the hands of the male villagers isn’t really brutalized just because she’s a woman, but rather because she’s been falsely accused of the murders of the boys. A woman dies because someone decided that the boys needed to die before they could act out their lusts toward women. Male fears regarding female sexuality are expressed by violence against other males, which ends up resulting in the death of an innocent woman.
Thus, misogyny and misandry become a vicious circle in Don’t Torture a Duckling, which is one reason why Fulci’s worldview is better described as misanthropy. Fulci didn’t actually fear women or men, but he didn’t trust either of them, and he certainly didn’t trust in the human institutions like the Catholic church that have tried to control the relationship between men and women. Don’t Torture a Duckling is the clearest articulation of Fulci’s inherent misanthropy, which means that it’s not really a giallo at all. It’s also not really a horror movie, a thriller, a satire, or any other genre designation that could be attached to it. Instead, it’s something much purer than that:
A Lucio Fulci film.
Cinematographer Sergio D’Offizi shot Don’t Torture a Duckling on 35mm film in 2-perf Techniscope using spherical lenses. The resulting flat negative was then optically blown up for anamorphic release prints that were framed at 2.35:1. This version is based on a 4K scan of the original camera negative by L’Immagine Ritrovata, with digital cleanup and grading performed at Dragon DI (both Dolby Vision and HDR10 are included). The negative wasn’t particularly well-preserved, and it suffered from heavy scratches, damaged frames, and significant deterioration. That’s something worth keeping in mind when considering this 4K version, because expectations do need to be kept in check. Most of the major scratches have been eliminated, but there are still some fleeting ones remaining, and there’s visible speckling throughout. It’s also important to note that the optical work in Don’t Torture a Duckling was quite poor, with the opening title sequence looking particularly rough (especially the Italian titles). There’s nothing that could be done to correct any of that, although the titles have been stabilized somewhat compared to other versions. It’s an evolutionary improvement over Arrow’s previous Blu-ray, but not a revolutionary one.
Audio is offered in Italian 1.0 mono LPCM with removable English subtitles, and English 1.0 mono LPCM with optional English SDH subtitles. (Note that the two versions need to be selected up front since they utilize different opening and closing credits.) They were remastered from the optical soundtracks, with additional work performed by Þorsteinsson Gíslason. Don’t Torture a Duckling was post-synced regardless of language, so the dialogue doesn’t always match the lip movements in both versions, but the Italian is still preferable thanks to its superior voice acting (although the English version isn’t necessarily terrible, so YMMV). Either way, the audio sounds thin and a little harsh, with occasional distortion on the peaks, especially with Riz Ortolani’s score. That’s pretty much how Don’t Torture a Duckling has always sounded, so it’s accurate if not necessarily the most euphonious.
Arrow’s Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD release of Don’t Torture a Duckling is UHD only—there’s no Blu-ray included in the package. The insert is reversible, featuring new artwork by Ilan Sheady on one side and original theatrical artwork on the other, as well as a slipcover featuring the Sheady artwork. There’s also a 24-page booklet with essays by Barry Forshaw and Howard Hughes. The following extras are included:
- AudioCommentary by Troy Howarth
- Giallo a la Campagna (HD – 27:44)
- Hell Is Already in Us (HD – 20:30)
- Lucio Fulci Remembers:
- Part 1 (Upscaled SD – 20:13)
- Part 2 (Upscaled SD – 13:12)
- Who Killed Donald Duck? (HD – 18:31)
- Those Days with Lucio (HD – 28:20)
- The DP’s Eye (HD – 46:21)
- From the Cutting Table (HD – 25:38)
- Endless Torture (HD – 16:03)
- Theatrical Trailer (HD – 3:56)
The extras are all ported over from Arrow’s 2017 Blu-ray release of Don’t Torture a Duckling, with one new addition. They kick off with a commentary by Troy Howarth, author of So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films. He calls it an angry film, one that contains plenty of exploitation elements yet it’s still an impassioned plea for tolerance. He breaks down those themes, tells stories about the making of the film, and provides biographical information about the cast and crew (where available, anyway—he was unable to track down the uncredited actors playing the key roles of the children). He even points out product placement like the J & B whisky. He does spend some time narrating the action (especially during the finale), but there’s still plenty of good information to be had here.
Giallo a la Campagna is an interview/visual essay with Mikel Koven, author of La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film. Koven opens by examining gialli from a different angle: the second-run Italian theatres that played these kinds of films, and the way that watching them was a louder, more interactive experience (hence “vernacular cinema”). That’s one reason why gialli relied on shock effects—it was a way of regaining the attention of the audience. There was also a regional aspect to the genre, something that’s reflected in Don’t Torture a Duckling with outsiders being punished. Koven finds a strong irony in the fact that these films were always intended to be disposable, and yet they’re now preserved and celebrated.
Hell Is Already in Us is an absolutely indispensable visual essay by Kat Ellinger, who takes the bull by the horns (or the duck by the bill, in this particular case) and addresses the accusations of misogyny against Fulci. She says that it’s really a critical stance against the animal nature of man, in all of its manifest ugliness. It’s not just violence against women, not shock for the sake of shock, but rather a statement on violence against women (she directly addresses the disquieting nature of the fatal beating in Don’t Torture a Duckling). Fulci acknowledged his own pessimism, telling an interviewer that “Hell is already in us.” His own life was filled with tragedy and misery, and when added to a lifetime of Catholic guilt, that meant he viewed God as being a god of suffering (which helps explain his tortured view of Roman Catholicism in Duckling). Ellinger also examines the gothic influence in Fulci’s films, even in Duckling, where the rural setting avoids any real hint of modernity. She sees the women in this film as divided into the archetypes of Witch, Temptress, or Mother, and that ultimately it’s not women who are evil, but rather the men who have all the power over them.
Lucio Fulci Remembers is an audio-only interview with the director in two parts. It’s really a monologue, or rather a response, because Italian journalist Gaetano Mistretta had sent a list of questions to Fulci in 1988, and Fulci responded by recording answers on tape and sending them back. The first part focuses on his own life and career, while the second part expands to include his thoughts about other filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick and Dario Argento, David Cronenberg, and Mario Bava (and he wasn’t particularly impressed by The Shining, either).
The rest of the extras consist of interviews with various members of the cast and crew of Don’t Torture a Duckling. The first two are devoted to the cast. Who Killed Donald Duck? is with Barbara Bouchet, and it’s new to this edition (although it still looks like an older interview). She discusses the various erotic comedies that she made in 1972 as well as her experiences making Don’t Torture a Duckling. Those Days with Lucio is with Florinda Balkan, who describes Fulci as being very peculiar, but that’s how she believes that directors should be. She covers working on A Woman in Lizard’s Skin as well as Don’t Torture a Duckling, and watches her infamous final scene in the latter while describing what it was like to shoot it.
The last three interviews are all with crew members. The DP’s Eye is an extended interview with Sergio D’Offizi, who explains how he met Fulci and then discusses working with him on Don’t Torture a Duckling. He talks about their approaches to photography, including areas where they were simpatico and others where they weren’t (D’Offizi hated doing Fulci’s signature zooms). From the Cutting Table is with editor Bruno Micheli, who describes how he got into the business and his own experiences with Fulci—and like pretty much everyone else, he goes into detail about Balkan’s fate in Don’t Torture a Duckling. Speaking of which, Endless Torture is with makeup artist Maurizio Trani, who goes into all the gory details about that scene while watching it (he complains that he used the wrong color blood). He also talks a lot about the nature of the Italian film industry.
Arrow has included all of their previously available extras here, but there are a few things from other labels that are missing. The Region B Blu-ray from Le chat qui fume in France offered interviews with Lionel Grenier, Olivier Père, Jean-François Rauger, and Fathi Beddiar, while the Region B Blu-ray from 84 Entertainment in Germany included a German-language commentary with Marcus Stiglegger. Going back a bit farther, the Region 2 DVD from Medusa Home Entertainment in Italy had an interview with David Grieco. Aside from some random trailers, that’s about it. Arrow clearly has the edge thanks to their new 4K restoration, and they’ve got pretty much all of the available extras that involve the original participants in the making of Don’t Torture a Duckling. It’s an essential purchase for fans of Lucio Fulci, giallo, and Italian horror films in general.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).