This particular effort by director Lucio Fulci is considered by many to be one of the director's best films, if not his best film. Though I haven't seen all of Fulci's movies (yet), what I have seen of his filmography so far does place this movie at the top of the list. It's an interesting giallo movie for several reasons. What is curious about it is that there aren't that many sequences of suspense and terror. Indeed, the movie is curiously missing an underlying feeling of building terror despite the rising body count. Though the few scenes that do qualify as being labelled creepy, such as the cemetery sequence and the climax, do come across both as horrifying and disturbing. And while Fulci does miss with adding a slowly building feeling of terror, he does manage to build a great sense of another kind of atmosphere. You really feel the isolation and primitive living conditions the people are experiencing in this out of the way small town in the countryside.The screenplay (which Fulci co-wrote) also has some interesting themes, condemning the backwards and sometimes cruel way people in rural areas live by. If there is a flaw in the screenplay, it is that the revelation of the killer at the end of the movie is no surprise. That's because the character seemed to have no other purpose in his/her earlier scenes. But while the movie has flaws, it still holds up pretty well for the most part, and is essential viewing for people with interest in Italian genre cinema of the 1970s.

Following a child's death in a small-town, a reporter and a woman from a nearby city try to solve the strange killings that continue to be carried out on the children and once they find the demented culprit at the center they try to stop the rampage from continuing.This was quite the enjoyable and underrated Giallo. The biggest factor here for this one is the film flying boldly along and feeling comfortable in it's rather strong and confrontational themes that may be quite uncomfortable. Its initial premise is tied around a serial killer offing children that alone gives it some courage to be unique and brave, but there's more to that here as several scenes here with the opening strangling scenes or a rather chilling scene finding another drowned in a town well, though the fact that this features even more types of similarly controversial scenes is what really sells this one. The type of plot here is one thing, but to have the kids smoking, bullying the town retard and the film's showpiece scene of a fully naked woman openly toying with him, teasing him with her figure and about sleeping with her makes for quite a sleazy, depraved time in a truly memorable scene. Beyond this, the film is a fantastic Giallo that features a lot of stylistic elements usually associated with these as the stalking scenes come off incredibly well regardless of their target. The cemetery stalking here is impressive through the driving rain before the killer strikes, a chase through the open woods out into the mountains to corral a suspect and a later scene where the suspect is viciously and brutally beaten in retaliation for what happened all come together to give this one some really enjoyable scenes. As well, there are some great times in the big brawl at the end which gets fun with the action as well as the location playing into it for some fun here, and these here make this good enough to overcome the flaws. The biggest issue here is the flimsy plot line for a Giallo, where it jumps around to the different suspects here without any reason only to start doing investigative work in the final minutes as the rampage continues despite the supposed death of the killer which starts it up again. This might be a revolutionary ploy for the style, but it causes the film to flip around pretty constantly here. Along with the subject matter being a little tough for some to take, there here are the film's only flaws.Rated UR/R: Graphic Violence, Full Nudity, Graphic Language, children smoking, themes of pedophilia, violence-against-animals and children-in-danger.

Eccenlente. Fantastico. Magnifico. Grande. Molto grande. This is probably the finest Fulci movie. The first Fulci movie I saw was 'City of the Living Dead' and I was blown away. Then naturally I saw 'Zombi 2', 'The Beyond', 'House by the Cemetery' and 'The Black Cat. 'The Black Cat' being the weakest among them. I think they're all good atmosphere and gore horror movies - 'House by the Cemetery' being the most disturbing one - but I often thought that I should see something more coherent. Something more bound in reality. Don't get me wrong, Fulci makes excellent super-natural/abstract horror movies, I just felt he must be also good at making movies with coherent plots and stories. That's when I turned to 'Don't Torture a Duckling'. A sinister Giallo with a murderer strangling young boys. Already from the beginning we go into something very disturbing, something controversial. As the movie progress it just gets worse. Themes: repression, sin, guilt, sexual aberrant behavior, bigotry and violence. Genre: thriller/horror. Subgenre: Giallo/murder mystery. Writers: Lucio Fulci, Roberto Gianviti and Gianfranco Clerici. Director: Lucio Fulci.This movie is strongly critical of society and religion. For example, people were blaming the outsider for all the killings. The outsider being a disturbed woman who is a supposed witch. This is where the bigotry comes in. A person who doesn't believe in God is labeled a bad person by the majority of people in the movie. In fact, she ended up being beaten to death with chains by men. All because she was different and because people had the opinion of it might be her, because she was the odd outsider. To make it worse, she tried to get help by crawling to a road where a lot of cars were driving by. But they ignored her. They were too occupied with what they were doing they did not care about a dying woman. I cried because of that scene. That scene evoke such strong emotions in me. It was the first time I cried watching a Giallo and the last time so far. It was a strong criticism of society's bigotry. Religion was strongly criticized too. It showed that repressing sexual tendencies made things worse. As shown by a priest repressing his homosexual tendencies by strangling young boys. Strangling is the most intense form of intimacy there is.Christianity sees sexuality as a sin, although it is completely natural. To make matters worse the priest was justifying his crimes as a service to God. Denying his sexual urge which disgusted him and made him aggressive. It was very brave to come up with such criticism by Fulci. Especially with sexuality and religion being taboo at the time of release. It is no wonder this movie was blacklisted and Fulci became a notorious figure. The movie is also relevant to this day, with scandals of pedophile priests who are being bailed by the Vatican. Anyway, the movie has an iron grip atmosphere, thought provoking story, engaging plot, horrifying murders and a direction by Fulci which has never been better. Should be watched by all Giallo aficionados. This is my favorite Fulci movie and think that it is definitely his finest. I put the movie in such high regard I think it is on par with Dario Argento's 'Deep Red'. 10/10. Molto grande Giallo.

"Don't Torture A Duckling" is a rather unsettling movie which central themes are rather quite sick and twisted, but being a big fan of Italian slasher movies and the fact this movie was directed by Lucio Fulci, I was very keen to give this movie a go. The setting is rather unique and as always the scenery and location is as beautiful as ever. That's where all the action takes place, the victims are not beautiful scantily clad models but young boys, despite a list of suspects the police as always clueless so it's up to a reporter and a local woman to work together and solve the crimes themselves. That aspect of the movie I rather enjoyed and all the performances by the cast were convincing and each worked well to they're situation.In what starts off as a murder mystery quickly becomes violent and vicious especially the part where a local woman gets lynched by a mob of angry townspeople, which was prolonged and very nasty. The child murders are thankfully not shown in great detail but still shocking and unnerving , and the final showdown was a real highlight and kept me on tenterhooks which I enjoyed.All in all this movie offers a rather different story in a beautiful setting, but still the central theme is not to everyone's taste.