Nostalgia Kinky

Last year, Arrow upgraded its older Blu-ray edition of Don’t Torture a Duckling to spectacular 4K. Working with a new restoration, Arrow presents one of the most important Italian films of the seventies in the most immaculate way imaginable. Fulci’s brutally intense rural masterpiece has never looked or sounded better, and the hours of valuable extras from the older edition are all thankfully ported over, plus new ones. This exceptional release is available directly from Arrow or from MVD if you are located Stateside.

Buddy, I’ll never forget the first time I saw Don’t Torture a Duckling. Mid-nineties, I’m basically a pirate for Italian horror. Gather the money, make the selection, send that money order, wait for that fuzzy VHS dub like our lives depended on it. And they sort of did discovering the likes of Argento, Bava, Martino, and on. Those early days of finding whatever we could find, wherever we could find it is gone forever, but goddamn, I will always miss my days on the high seas with my pirating mates. It was during one of our drunken whoring adventures that we found Don’t Torture a Duckling, a game changer.

Don’t Torture a Duckling helped destroy the narrative going around in lame film circles of the early nineties that Lucio Fulci was a hack, a lesser light than the giants. Discovering Don’t Torture a Duckling and then A Lizard in Woman’s Skin shattered that propaganda. At his best, Lucio Fulci delivered work just as profoundly transgressive as Argento and certainly Don’t Torture a Duckling represents Lucio Fulci at his best. Seeing it for the first time, after only being familiar with Fulci’s gore classics from a decade later, was a mind-blowing experience and the film remains an unnerving masterpiece on par with the great films of the period.

So much has been written about Lucio Fucli and classics like Don’t Torture a Duckling in the decades since my mates and I discovered it.
It makes it hard for me personally to write a lot.
What can I add?
Well, I can share that I share Lucio Fulci’s obvious hatred for authority, the wealthy, and organized religion.
That is all
kind of key, for me at least.
Fulci, like many of his fellow Italian maestros, has a real obvious ax to grind when it comes to authority figures.
I like that.
I do as well.
I like watching films that reflect that.
Lucio Fulci made those kinds of films.
It has never been truer than in Don’t Torture a Duckling. Centered on child abuse, gossip, and religious hypocrisy, Don’t Torture a Duckling as a mystery is perhaps easily solvable. As a great work of art about abuse, though, this is heavyweight cinema made by a true uncompromising force.

One of the angriest works of the early seventies, Don’t Torture a Duckling isn’t the bloodiest film Fulci ever made, but it still might be the most intense. From its isolated Monte Sant’Angelo location to its beautiful but shocking Riz Ortolani score, Don’t Torture a Duckling is a real beast. This isn’t a horror film of jump scares. Fulci creates something remarkable, grounded with a terrifying realist flair, far removed from his fantastical-based gore masterworks. Don’t Torture a Duckling is a genuinely damaging and uncomfortable film, hard to watch at times but impossible to look away from.

Films like Don’t Torture a Duckling feel like a legend to me at this point. These are GOAT-level works, and Fulci is someone my crew and I fought many a fight for on our troubled travels. Speaking of GOAT-level, Don’t Torture a Duckling features both Florinda Bolkan and Barbara Bouchet, along with the likes of Tomas Milian, Irene Papas and Marc Porel. This is damn near a rural art-house classic as much as an intense look at child harm by one of Italy’s most violence-powered filmmakers.

Bolkan and Bouchet are both especially incredible throughout Don’t Torture a Duckling. It is fascinating comparing their acting styles: Bolkan so over her top in intensity, whereas the sometimes nude Bouchet is menacingly cool but still damaged. One of my favorite things about Don’t Torture a Duckling is the way Fulci pivots back and forth between these two incredible icons and performers.

Considering how visually stunning many of Fulci’s later powerhouse films are, Don’t Torture a Duckling is a dirty looking film. Like literally, there is a lot of dirt everywhere in this ancient little town that supplies the setting. Cinematographer Sergio D’Offizi brings this area to vivid and sometimes nightmarish light with his excellent photography. This is the same guy who got down in the dirt with Ruggero Deodato less than a decade after this for Italian Cinema’s most notorious production.

I think Don’t Torture a Duckling is close to a perfect film. Few works depict religious childhood trauma as well as this one. Everyone seems traumatized in Don’t Torture a Duckling, making it one of the most penetrating PTSD driven films ever made. Damaged people do damaged things and Don’t Torture a Duckling is a savagely unforgiving look at badly damaged individuals. It took Dario Argento decades before he could make something quite as uniquely unforgiving as this with his masterpiece, The Stendhal Syndrome.

Arrow’s Blu-ray edition of Don’t Torture a Duckling was already very pleasing, but this 4K is an obvious upgrade, making this an ideal presentation of perhaps Fulci’s most important film. Containing hours of interviews, video essays and an audio commentary, it is hard to imagine a more definitive version of Don’t Torture a Duckling on home video. This edition also includes an upgraded booklet and packaging from the near decade of Blu-ray. Don’t Torture a Duckling is one of the films I never mind upgrading, although this release will be hard to top.
A super easy massive recommendation.

-Jeremy Richey, August 2026-