Critics reviews

The film admitting that there are homosexual and pedophile priests seems kind of radical, and using a priest as killer, well, that's anti-clerical if anything is, right? And exposing this via a soccer montage is, uh, interesting.

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.

Several of Fulci's movies, including those two titles, were largely set in and shot in the United States, but his attempts to establish anything like plausible regional setting are laughable—this is one of the aspects that makes Don't Torture a Duckling, which concerns a killer priest terrorizing rural southern Italy, among his most fully realized and satisfying works. Duckling showcases Fulci's passion for the infinite variations with which the human body can be destroyed.