|
|
|
Don't Torture a Duckling: Limited Edition
[Blu-ray 4K]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Arrow Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (25th February 2025). |
|
The Film
 The rural village of Accendura is plunged into a nightmare when young boy Bruno mysterious disappears. His parents (Lady Frankenstein's Andrea Aureli and Il sorpasso's Linda Sini) receive a ransom call for the boy's return but it turns out to be an act of opportunism by the dimwitted Barra (Meridian's Vito Passeri) who claims not to have killed the boy but buried his body and made the ransom demand. When young Tonino turns up submerged in a laundry basin, the killings draw the attention of police and reporters from Milan. As local police captain Modesti (Bread and Chocolate's Ugo D'Alessio) mediates between the insular locals and the city police commissioner (Day of Anger's Virgilio Gazzolo) as they explore the connection between the two boys and the next victim Bruno, Milanese reporter Andrea Martelli (Almost Human's Tomas Milan) takes an interest in promiscuous city girl Patrizia (Amuck's Barbara Bouchet) for whom Bruno's mother worked as housekeeper. When Maciara (Footprints' Florinda Bolkan), an outcast the locals believe is a witch, is murdered by a mob after being interrogated and released by the police, many believe the danger is over until the next body is discovered. A bored Patrizia helps Martelli in his investigation, and the discovery of a Donald Duck doll's head near one of the bodies leads them to a possible witness in Malvina (Phenomena's Fausta Avelli), the mentally-disabled sister of the local priest Don Alberto (L'innocente's Marc Porel) whose mysterious mother Aurelia (Oasis of Fear's Irene Papas) has also been shunned by the village and carries a deep resentment. "A horrible crime, bred of ignorance and superstition," surmises the police commissioner of one murder, but he could just as easily be describing all of the violent acts committed by murderer and mob in Lucio Fulci's most effective, moving, and tragic giallo Don't Torture the Duckling. Eschewing jet-setting protagonists, cosmopolitan locations, razor-wielding black-gloved assassins and comely female victims, the film is one of the rare examples of the "rural giallo" and Fulci at his most pessimistic exposes all of the characters for their ignorance. The well-intentioned – among them the police commissioner and the local police captain who is well aware of the provincial shortcomings of the citizenry – are ultimately ineffectual or hopeless naïve, including Don Alberto who channels the boys interest into sports and is one of the first to dismiss the fear of witchcraft ("No one has ever been killed by magic") but also censorious, repressive, and actually shocked at the sexual curiosity of his young flock who are seen spying on prostitutes and other couples who make use of the local "haunted house" ("But you're so young. You're just boys"). The village men and women are afraid and quick to identify scapegoats from anyone who is different or strange, including Barra, Patrizia, Aurelia, and Maciara. Although Martelli takes more of a compassionate interest in the killings, he and the other reporters in search of sensationalism ultimately have a role in stirring up the fear and anger of the villagers. The paperino in the Italian title "Non si sevizia un paperino" has a double meaning in referring to Donald Duck (in Italy, Paolino Paperino) – a clue that takes the protagonists in the right direction – and to the young victims, whose deaths bear no traces of carnal violence or sexual sadism. The film's most sadistic treatment of a victim is reserved for Maciara, a truly tragic figure whose supposed possession by the devil is revealed to be an undiagnosed case of epilepsy, who believes as much as the villagers that she is responsible for the deaths of the boys by sticking pins in poppet dolls to summon demons to kill them. When she is asked who actually physically commits the acts, she replies "Anybody, man or woman," unwittingly identifying the real suspicion that the villagers do not want to admit. The real killer's motivation is quite novel for the genre and would be inverted by Fulci himself for his considerably more graphic latter day giallo The New York Ripper into which Donald Duck also figures as a key to the killer's identity. Fulci and cinematographer Sergio d'Offizzi (House on the Edge of the Park) are continually inventive visually, contrasting agoraphobic wide angle views of the looming hilltop town and the surrounding countryside (along with the highway which brings strangers suspicious and enticing to the town while also providing the villagers spectatorship of those who drive past the town on the way to presumably more exciting lives) with the perspectives of its immature (physically and mentally) characters spying forbidden sights through splayed fingers, cracks in doors, through distorting seesawing wave machines, or on the periphery of gathered crowds. Riz Ortolani – credited on both the Italian and English credits as "Ritz Ortolani" – contributes another score that alternates between stabbing strings and plaintive melodies (pop singer Ornella Vanoni provides a vocal version of the film's theme in "Quei giorni insieme a te") anticipating his work on Cannibal Holocaust. 
Video
Presumably because of its very provincial Italian setting and Italian characters, Don't Torture the Duckling went unreleased theatrically and on video in the U.S. and U.K. until Anchor Bay Entertainment's stateside DVDin 2000 and subsequently ported over in 2016 by Blue Underground. The U.K. had to contend with a cropped DVD until Shameless' 2011 DVD. When the film made its Blu-ray debut in Germany from '84 Entertainment – in 2015 as an expensive limited leather box Blu-ray/DVD/CD combo – then the next year in a mediabook and in 2017 as a single-disc edition – along with a 2016 Japanese edition from Happinet and a 2017 limited edition from French boutique label Le chat qui fume, these editions were unfortunately derived from a new restoration that featured a strange flaw in which the extra frames at each splice on the negative were printed, extending the running time by roughly three minutes and requiring the audio to be cut at each shot change to maintain synchronization.  Arrow Video's 2017 Blu-ray/DVD combo – U.S. and U.K. – eschewed the special packaging but rectified this flaw on the master running three minutes shorter than the Japanese/German editions by deleting the extra frames while also being three minutes longer than the previous SD transfers due to the extended exit music (presumably also part of the additional six minutes of the German restoration). Their new 2160p24 HEVC 2.35:1 widescreen Dolby Vision edition comes from a new 4K scan of the original camera negative runs within a second of their earlier Blu-ray without having to undo the work on the previous master with which they had to work. As expected, scenes with opticals have flaws baked into the dupe materials – both the Italian and English credits available via seamless branching – but after the credits things improve. Framing is virtually identical apart from the loss of slivers on the right and bottom of the frame while colors are punchier and the image overall brighter – perhaps too bright during Bouchet's nude scene which seems overexposed due to the presence of tanning lights as practical lighting – bringing out the larger grain from underexposure in the smaller Techniscope frame in the daylight forest and church scenes where the sun is practical lighting (included screen captures are from the older Blu-ray to illustrate the film review only).
Audio
English and Italian versions are selectable from the main menu – the intermission that accompanied Italian theatrical play is present in both versions as it was on the earlier editions – enabling English or Italian LPCM 1.0 tracks respectively with optional English SDH or English subtitles selectable via the setup menu. The audio tracks are cleaner, with anguished and angered voices as piercing as Ortolani's strings while iterations of the theme song buried in the mix – particularly during the main titles where it fights with environmental sounds and the traffic of the highway near the town – are now more apparent and enhance the emotions of the scenes in which they appear. 
Extras
Extras start off with an audio commentary by film historian Troy Howarth – author of Splintered Visions: Lucio Fulci and His Films – who touches upon the film as an example of the "rural giallo", draws from interview with Fulci who reveals that the fictional Accendura was meant to be emblematic of such villages and the people, the ways in which the film explodes the myth of the purity of children while still maintaining their essential innocence in the scenario, and the effect of the suicide of Fulci's terminally ill wife during the filming Beatrice Cenci and how that may have contributed to his increasingly despairing and pessimistic view of humanity while also arguing that the film is not anti-Catholic as it has been fashionably viewed by some critics. He provides some production anecdotes like the use of a midget double to share the frame with nude Bouchet in a sequence in which she and the child actor otherwise inhabit separate reverse angles, and also provides some information on the two towns used for the setting. He reveals that the film's uncredited producer was Edmondo Amati had previously funded Fulci's two first and second gialli On on Top of the Other and A Lizard in a Woman's Skin as well as the erotic comedy The Eroticist, and would later also serve as uncredited producer on Fulci's Western Four of the Apocalypse, and also points out not only a number of popular bit players but also a number of familiar voice artists in the English dub. In "Giallo a la Campagna" (27:44), Mikel J. Koven – author of La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film – discusses the film in the context of "vernacular cinema" a term he coined for the cinema that existed outside of the Italian mainstream and those who viewed it with the knowledge of its makers, as well as the second and third tier cinemas in which the films were scene (noting a deliberate design on behalf of the filmmakers to periodically engage the attention of moviegoers for whom the cinema was a nightly place for socializing). He also compares the typical giallo and the rural giallo in the ways in which the cosmopolitan was viewed as a source of novelty and suspicion as a foreign influence. In the video essay Hell is Already in Us" (20:30), Diabolique Magazine's Kat Ellinger addresses the common charge against Fulci of misogyny, suggesting that tragedy in his private life (his ill wife's suicide and the death of one of his daughters) tainted his outlook on humanity, and that the victimization of women in the context of his film's plots (with respect to how they are subjugated and reduced to certain roles of witch, temptress, and mother) is an expression of the evil of man and the victimization of those who are more vulnerable.  "Lucio Fulci Remembers" is a pair of archival audio interviews by co-writer/director Lucio Fulci responding on tape to questions sent in writing by Gaetano Mastretta (co-writer of Spaghetti Nightmares: Italian Fantasy-Horrors As Seen Through the Eyes of Their Protagonists). In the first part (20:13), Fulci recalls how he got into film, working as an assistant to Steno (Uncle Was a Vampire) and his early directorial credits with the Franco and Ciccio comedies. Of his gialli, he recalls how One on Top of the Other was greenlighted in response to the success of Romolo Guerrini's The Sweet Body of Deborah (for which he collaborated on the screenplay), and how the opportunity to direct it came out of a failed project with actor Ugo Tognazzi, as well as how A Lizard in a Woman's Skin came as a response to the success of Dario Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, the production troubles that befell Don't Torture the Duckling, as well as a rundown of the major titles in his horror filmography. The second part (13:13) is more general as he expounds his ideas of what makes a good horror or fantasy screenplay, bemoans the lack of interest in the fantasy genre in contemporary Italian cinema, gives his opinions on contemporaries like Argento and Kubrick, and also relates a bit more of the behind the scenes problems on The Psychic. There are also a selection of interviews ported from the German and French Blu-rays starting with "Who Killed Donald Duck?" 2017 interview with actress Barbara Bouchet (18:31, in Italian with French subtitles) from the French edition but was not included on Arrow's Blu-ray release. Bouchet recalls that she made eight films in 1972, mainly sex comedies in which she played pretty much the same character, and the Fulci film was her first thriller. She recalls constant drama between Milian, his wife, and Papas who fell for him while she hung around Papa's hunky, younger boyfriend. She also recalls being called into the public prosecutor for "corruption of minors" for her nude scene and reiterating that a dwarf was used to double as the child in her scenes and she was not present at all during the child actor's close-ups (she was also doubled in the driving scenes since she could not drive a manual transmission). In "Those Days with Lucio: Florinda Bolkan 'La Maciara'" (28:20), Bolkan recalls taking the rolls in her Fulci films because she was intrigued by the characters and the challenge of becoming them (as well as Carol's wardrobe in A Lizard in a Woman's Skin) while describing Fulci as hot-headed, ultimately sweet, and sadistic when he wanted a specific reaction out of his performers, catching her completely off-guard in a deleted sequence in which Maciara is attacked by bats. In "The DP's Eye: Sergio D'Offizi, Cinematographer" (46:21), D'Offizi recalls meeting Fulci through producer Amati and discusses the challenges of lighting interiors and exteriors for atmosphere, as well as shooting handheld shots, and reveals that Bolkan's agent initially demanded the use of a cinematographer with which the actress had previously worked to ensure that she would look good on film but was eventually won over by the rushes. In "From the Cutting Table: Bruno Micheli, Editor" (25:38), the editor recalls getting fired from RAI over a vending machine and going to work at Technicolor where he would observe sister Ornella Micheli (Beyond the Darkness) editing pictures and would soon learn the trade himself. He recalls how he and his sister would create a premix soundtrack with music and sound effects to enhance the first viewing of the assembly for producers, and how this would lead to him being assigned to create the sound design for important sequences in subsequent Fulci films. In "Endless Torture: Maurizio Trani, Make-Up Artist" (16:03), Trani recalls first working with Fulci's later effects artist Giannetto de Rossi on Bertolucci's 1900 and Fellini's Casanova but first worked on here under Franco Di Girolamo (The Black Cat), learning both cosmetic make-up and special effects make-up. He also discusses the construction of the child skeleton seen in the opening credits, the bats designed by Corridori and Company for the aforementioned deleted scene – Trani also admits that he borrowed some ideas from this unused sequence for a rat attack in Wild Beasts – and how Fulci himself innovated the chain-whipping effects through the use of editing and reverse motion. Video extras close out with the film's Italian theatrical trailer (3:58). 
Packaging
Not included for review is the reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Timothy Pittides or the first pressing slipcover. The collector’s booklet – also included with the first pressing only – features the essay "Lucio Fulci's Dark Dream" by Barry Forshaw in which he designates the film Fulci's magnum opus and discusses its themes of rural horror and repressive religion and their place in the giallo genre, as well as Howard Hughes' "In Sunshine and in Shadow: The Music of Riz Ortolani" which provides an overview of his career in the genre and its practitioners as well as how the film at hand is a departure from the jet-setting milieu of Ortolani's other giallo scores and the rural village a different kind of Gothic setting from his other genre scores. The "about the presentation" and disc credits section has been updated for the new transfer.
Overall
Lucio Fulci's "rural giallo" Don't Torture a Duckling looks forward to his gorier Gothic horror films - along with The New York Ripper - but it is more bitter and vicious in its treatment of repression and provincial bigotry.
|
|||||
|