Don't Torture a Duckling

In a small Italian village, pre-adolescent boys are turning up dead and evidence points to either the local witch (Florinda Bolkan), or a beautiful, bored, city girl (Barbara Bouchet) hiding out after a drug scandal... From Lucio Fulci, the infamous director of The Beyond and The New York Ripper, comes this accomplished, stylish thriller in the Italian giallo genre. Naturalistic settings, stunning make-up effects and inspired use of music lend a genuinely shocking intensity to a violent tale of tragedy, prejudice and murder, depicting a world in which injustice goes unpunished, moral values are a sham, and innocence is destroyed.

Don't Torture a Duckling is also a stinging attack on the Italian Establishment which allegedly resulted in Lucio Fulci being blacklisted for many years. A strong story full of challenging moral concepts, Don't Torture a Duckling is as brutal and disturbing as Lucio Fulci's horror films, but it's also his most powerful and morally focussed work, and a magnificent high point in his long and distinguished career.