Don’t Torture A Duckling (1972)

The copy of director Lucio Fulci’s Don’t Torture A Duckling (1972) on Tubi that I watched felt like it was an older DVD transfer uploaded as the image quality was desaturated and a little fuzzy, which added to how the Italian village of Accendura comes across in the movie. The rocky hills seem almost yellow and the town centre, which is made of white stone, feels further visually drained of life.

Aside from the presence of sex symbol Barbara Bouchet (from The Red Queen Kills Seven Times) – playing the daughter of an absent rich industrialist, moved back to her hometown to kick her drug addiction – this giallo thriller feels different to the others shot in Rome, or taking place within the fashion or publishing industry. There’s not a lot of glamour in this provincial existence and that’s further compounded by the string of child murders that upset the town’s quiet existence, and add an eerie atmosphere to the film’s thriller mechanisms. As young boys turn up strangled and bashed, the police and an outside investigator pursue leads and a few suspects, each one causing the town’s mob mentality to rise up. Even as a newspaper man (Tomas Milan) and Bouchet’s character eventually become the film’s main investigators, there doesn’t feel like a fixed protagonist and everyone feels included within its procedural narrative. One of the most striking characters is Florinda Balkan (from Fulci’s A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin), harried and unkempt, observed in the opening scenes digging frantically in the dirt upon a hill and finding the bones of a baby’s skeleton. We find out later that she is an outcast who believes in witchery and black magic, and there are hidden secrets among the townspeople, as well as a latent capacity for violence.

Don’t Torture A Duckling has that narcoleptic quality, which I do enjoy, of giallo thrillers; usually I find giallos a bit sleep-inducing due to the drawn-out, convoluted mysteries, and yet here there’s a clarity to what’s happening even as the identity of the killer is held back until the very end. For the majority of its length, I thought this was good, a solid thriller, and was wondering a bit why it’s held in high regard for Fulci fans. Apparently this is one of his first films to get stuck into gore and body horror, and there’s a clear and striking sequence halfway through where Fulci’s brutality is on display, a very upsetting moment that underscores his critique of small town mentality. And then I was like, oh I get it, this is a strong Fulci moment! The other clear highlight is the very ending, more because of its absurdity as it collapses tones between an image of gore-laden violence and sentimental music by Riz Ortolani, a strong conclusion that speaks to the specific quality Fucli has as a horror filmmaker that would be expanded upon in his later masterpieces like City Of The Living Dead.

Even if a body looks like a fake dummy, as long as it can be demolished to show skull and blood, that’s cinema, Fulci-style! Recommended.

Manhattan Baby (1982)

After watching Italian horror director and gore-meister Lucio Fulci’s ‘Gates Of Hell’ trilogy last year for spooky movie Halloween season, the collapse of logic was definitely understood as an auteur trademark across all those movies. Manhattan Baby (1982) is Fulci’s Exorcist rip-off, which follows an archaeologist digging around a haunted tomb in Egypt whose family becomes cursed when they move back to New York, specifically the youngest daughter, when she receives a special amulet from a stranger. Fulci’s disregard for anything making sense is in full swing: characters disappear, some return, some don’t, a few people attempt to explain what’s going on only to end up bleeding profusely from their face. Anybody watching will be puzzled by what transpires, and why. In any case, I learned to stop worrying and love the baffling supernatural shenanigans. While Fulci’s other trademark – slow grotesque gore – is dialled down until the last half hour, you can still have a fun ride with the location shoots in Egypt and New York, the eerie mists and glowing orbs, blue supernatural beams that blind people, random violence visited upon tangential characters, and transdimensional glowing doorways. Not to mention some classic Fabio Frizzi synth work on the soundtrack that keeps everything pumping; I did enjoy the saxophone pieces used to remind us that we’re in New York (that and the family’s youngest son having a Noo Yawk accent in the English dub). My favourite sequence was the build-up and pay-off when the wife’s insufferable work colleague with a penchant for pranks goes to investigate noises up stairs – I laughed heartily at his eventual fate (that’s what you get for wearing Groucho glasses in a working office, buddy). While it might not reach the heights of City Of The Living Dead or The Beyond, it’s still a fun spooky time, particularly if you’re on the Fulci wavelength. Available to stream on Tubi in Australia. Recommended.

The Psychic (1977)

Italian horror maestro Lucio Fulci’s giallo thriller, The Psychic (1977; aka Seven Notes In Black, Sette Note In Nero, Murder To The Tune Of Seven Black Notes), received attention awhile back due to its great soundtrack by Franco Bixo, Fabio Frizzi, and Vince Tempera (listed as Bixo-Frizzi-Tempera); it was another score cannibalised by Quentin Tarantino with its key thriller theme used in moments of high suspense in Kill Bill Vol. 1 (it’s theone RZA raps over on the released soundtrack album). As a thriller, it once again brings in an Edgar Allen Poe vibe alongside its use of supernatural elements as Virginia (Jennifer O’Neill) is The Psychic, a power that has always been latent ever since she was a child where she psychically witnessed her mother’s cliffside suicide; you can see the Fulci touch from this opening sequence – other directors would just film a dummy flying off a cliff, Fulci includes inserts of the mother bashing her head on the rocks as she continues to fall. As an adult, Virginia is married to a wealthy Italian jetsetter Francesco (Gianna Garko – Sartana himself) and plans to redecorate a countryside mansion that he owns. However, as Virginia drives there, a montage of strange images flood her mind – a broken mirror, a girl on a magazine cover, a bloody dead body. All of this leads to the discovery of a body buried behind the walls of a room, walled in with bricks, a skeleton corpse. As detectives trace the remains to a missing woman from several years ago and the investigation closes around Francesco as the likely suspect, Virginia tries to investigate with the help of her hunky therapist Luca (Marc Porel). In contrast to Fulci’s later gorefests, this is more restrained even as the blood runs freely at certain points. It’s more of a straight ahead solid giallo thriller that provides a lot of style, particularly around how O’Neill is filmed being frightened and framed with the architecture and lighting. The main high points are the use of thebuilding thriller theme – during a chase sequence and in the climactic twist – and even if not a lot of the plotting makes sense, it does wrap up with a strong finish. I’ve also become a fan of the Olivia Newton John styled song, ‘With You’, during the title sequence. Available to stream on Kanopy. Recommended.

Conquest (1983)

After listening to the recent Pure Cinema Podcast episode on Fantasy movies, I was keen to submerge myself into some 1980s era sword-and-sorcery flicks. One title they talked highly of, and that I’d heard good word for some time, was Italian horror maestro Lucio Fulci’s entry into the post-Conan genre, Conquest (1983), an Italian-Spanish-Mexican co-production, which is available to stream on Amazon Prime. Even in the recent remastered edition with it looking better than any VHS ex-rental, the first thing to notice about Conquest is its foggy, hazy aesthetic. Along with cinematographer Alejandro Ulloa, Fulci ensures that every scene is swimming with mist or smoke, and at times even the film lens feels like it was shot through gauze; the effect is definitely dream-like, like an impressionistic oil painting coming to life in slow motion. That, and Claudio Simonetti’s (from Goblin) ethereal, pulsating synth score, and the markers of 1980s special effects such as the key weapon wielded by the heroes – a mythical bow that fires laser arrows – cements Conquest as having a distinctive retro fantasy style. The plot? A young hunk named Illias (Andrea Occhipinti) from a mythical land journeys to a primordial landscape of cave dwellers and wolf warriors, which is ruled by a nude sorceress wearing a gold mask, Ocron (Sabrina Siani). Eventually Ilias teams up for with an older hunk, Mace (Jorge Rivero) who communes with animals (like a beastmaster) and survives on his own wits (that, and a pair of nunchucks made of bone). The story then alternates between one of the two – Illias or Mace, Mace or Illias – getting jumped by a group of strange creatures, and the other rescuing them, intercut with Ocron writhing around with a snake and tripping out over a vision of her own death, which she seeks to stop with all the creatures and warriors under her command. Also, because it is directed by Fulci, it’s quite violent in a splatter way with either someone getting brained or blood spurting out of someone every ten minutes or so (if not splatter violence, then something very weird will happen every ten minutes i.e. the Fulci touch). I thought this was very entertaining, and a true vibe experience, depending how much you’re into the misty and mythical fantasy aesthetic; the film definitely has a greater sense of style than other low budget European Conan knock-offs (even though it was a box office flop on release). Conquest is like if you were staring hard at a Frank Frazetta painting by a camp site fire and then tripped out on a smoke induced haze while listening to some synth prog pumping out of car stereo speakers. It’s also great that for a fantasy film that features a nude sorceress, a bow that shoots laser arrows, and lots of man-animal warriors, the first thing we see in the closing credits is: ‘Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.’ Recommended.

The House By The Cemetery (1981)

On the night of Halloween, I intended to finish Lucio Fulci’s ‘Gates of Hell’ trilogy by watching the final film, The House By The Cemetery (1981; Quella villa accanto al cimitero). I have to agree with the consensus out there that it’s the weakest of the trilogy; I still enjoyed watching it however. It’s basically an Italian version of The Amityville Horror and The Shining shot in Boston and Massachusetts. An academic (Paolo Malco), his wife (Catriona MacColl from The Beyond) and child (Giovanni Frezza) stay at a house… by the cemetery… where a colleague had lived and studied. Though the husband never tells his family the dark secrets within the house – that he’s investigating why his colleague killed his mistress and hung himself. Not to worry, the son is only communicating psychically with a young girl in a photo of the house… telling them not to go there! And when they arrive there, the young girl appears to the boy telling them to leave. If only they listened! The film opens with a brutal knife slaying by an unseen assailant of a young couple making love in the house. As the film continues, there are more gruesome deaths in trademark protracted Fulci fashion with rubbery prosthetics pumping out blood freely like there was a sale at the fake blood store. Yet it’s a slower, more moodier film than the madcap onslaught of The Beyond. In the end, City Of The Living Dead is my favourite of the three ‘Gates Of Hell’ movies for its atmosphere and brutality. This was still good, and seems to mirror in a different, sadder way the eerie, downbeat ending of The Beyond. Brooding synth score by Walter Rizzati. Recommended.