I’ve written on giallo films before, and have gotten on an Italian horror kick lately. Even (especially) for the skeptical, I’d recommend an open mind and a fair chance. (Read this warning first.) The “masterworks” of the 60s and 70s Italian horror, from Mario Bava or Dario Argento, are undeniably stylistic coups, adopting the language of the international art film and wedding it to the Hollywood suspense genre, often to surprising effect. Argento’s Bird with Crystal Plumage uses jump cuts and shock flashbacks so skillfully that it makes you wonder why people are crazy about Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. Bava’s Kill, Baby, Kill! has color every bit as expressionist as Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible. I’m not kidding.
Don’t Torture a Duckling: visual metaphor
Lucio Fulci’s Don’t Torture a Duckling is giallo, but of a different sort. The tone is definitely moving away from horror/suspense toward gore. (One part I found difficult to watch). Furthermore, the subject matter is topical and contemporary: a series of child murders shock a Southern Italian village. On one hand, the villagers’ superstitions allow the film free reign to evoke giallo conventions in evocating black magic.
art film composition
On the other hand, the town’s reaction is treated sociologically, as a desperate reactionary response to trauma (including the priest’s very Rick Santorum pronouncement that liberalism was the cause!); Fulci accordingly employs handheld camera and flat color lighting throughout parts, lending a semi-documentary feel.
semi-documentary realism
The final resolution of the plot may be a little too obvious and the explanation of the murders may be a little too pat for Ducklings to qualify as a grand social statement. But the filmmaking remains sharp to the end. And it’s a remarkable feat to get some amount of social truth out of stock characters and fantastic material.
Thanks as ever to Bruce, Rebecca and Zoe for film recommendations and some shared enthusiasm for viewings of these.
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