The Scariest Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: Halloween Weekend Repertory Cinema Picks
Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972)
Directed by Lucio Fulci
When I think of blunt force trauma, I think of Lucio Fulci. His cinema pounds away at the senses. So it’s no wonder he’s best remembered for a string of brutal gialli films he made in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Giallo, the police procedural/thriller mutant genre, suits Fulci. Don’t Torture a Duckling is a fine example. In the film, a reporter (Tomas Milian) investigates a series of child murders. Like in his other gialli, Fulci enlivens shopworn narratives with maximum crass stylistics. The camera swings around people, rack focuses, and cants at sharp angles. Fulci and his cinematographer Sergio D’Offizi use split diopter lenses to distort space, keeping people in the foreground and background in focus. Smash zooms exclaim “look at me!” One moment during Duckling, a boy changes a young woman’s tire. She asks if he would like money or a kiss for his work? He smiles and wham! The next shot he’s lying face down in a stream, dead from a blow to the back of the head. Such is the crass aesthetic of a sleaze maestro. Tanner Tafelski (October 30, 6:45pm at Anthology Film Archives’s Fulchi series)