Halloween 2023: October 15th

Don't Torture a Duckling (1972)

Non si sevizia un paperino

When you look at the excessively gory horror films that would truly make Lucio Fulci a cult favorite among the Fangoria crowd, it's not surprising that Fulci's work frequently generated controversy. It wasn't always that way though. For the first decade of his directorial career, Lucio mostly made comedies. His first brush with controversy happened in 1971, when the fake dog corpses in “Lizard in a Woman's Skin” had him accused of animal cruelty. His next giallo, “Non si sevizia un paperino,” would barely be released in Europe due to its anti-Catholic Church themes. The movie wouldn't see a U.S. release at all until 1999, when Anchor Bay put it out on DVD under the title “Don't Torture a Duckling.” Since then, it has become regarded as one of Fulci's best films.

Accendura is, in many ways, a typical small Italian town. Young boys get into mischief, despite the local priest doing his best to keep them occupied. Rumors abound about a woman living on the edge of town, some calling her a witch. A young, sexy city slicker named Patrizia has moved in and is gaining attention. When a child is found murdered, it shakes up the entire community. The town idiot is blamed for the crime but, when another boy is killed, it's clear that a serial murderer is active. Big city reporter Andrea Martelli arrives to investigate, teaming up with Patrizia to dig into the town's hidden secrets... Yet the killings continue, more young boys being found dead. Who could be responsible for something so ghastly? 

Unlike most gialli, that are set in Rome or other big cities, “Don't Torture a Duckling” sets itself in the Italian countryside. With that change in setting comes an indictment of small town hypocrisies. People out there still believe in magic and witchcraft. Guys sneak off to spend time with prostitutes. Yet the seediest element seen in Accendura is a decidedly unwholesome fixation on young boys. The precocious kids are curious about sex, peeping on the hookers. When one of the boys walks in on Patrizia sunbathing, he's fascinated and she's a little too flirtatious. The boys being murdered seems to be a manifestation of a similar form of lust. When the perpetrator is revealed, it's clear that “Don't Torture a Duckling” is criticizing an especially vile – and common – form of small town evil. Fulci's film shows that communities, in isolation, will think up all sorts of excuses to justify and rationalize horrible actions. 

Lucio Fulci would become well-known, later in his career, for the dread-filled, cramped interiors and especially the gory violence of his horror movies. Though “Don't Torture a Duckling” would mark the beginning of the director's move towards the macabre, these instincts are still evident. The rooms of the film all seem dark and small, as if there's little oxygen left for anyone to breathe inside them. Fulci focuses in on the sweaty, panicked faces, furthering these feelings. While the murder of the boys are largely kept off-screen, “Don't Torture a Duckling” still features some graphic violence. The disturbing highlight of the film is when the townsfolks confront the accused witch in a cemetery and beat her brutally with a chain, to the inane chatter of pop songs on the radio. It's a moment possessed of the same visceral malice that would make Fulci's later zombie flicks so disturbing. 

“Don't Torture a Duckling” is a frequently unsettling, even subversive motion picture. Yet it's also still a low budget thriller from 1972. For all the moments when Fulci's direction is effective, there are multiple moments when it's tacky. There's several distracting crash zooms. The final minutes of the film features an unconvincing dummy falling off a cliff. Mostly, the plot is an unorganized mess. The script throws out countless red herrings, all of them being discarded once they've been disproved. There's a minor subplot about Patrizia having fled Milan because of mysterious drug issues. The characters are never really fleshed-out, with Tomas Milan's hero being a generic hot shot reporter. The killer's motivation is provided to us minutes after their identity is revealed. 

By the way, that bizarre title comes from a Donald Duck doll having a small role in the last third. I guess the dead boys are symbolic ducklings are well. If a style master like Argento had directed “Don't Torture a Duckling,” it would be easier to overlook the shaky narrative, underwritten characters, and cheesier special effects. Fulci isn't that strong of a visualist though. Yet the seedy darkness of the film is still compelling, especially when it turns its viciousness on the small town institutions that protect such cruelty. I can still see why “Don't Torture a Duckling” has been re-evaluate so highly by Fulci scholars. It's not as relentlessly nihilistic as his later films, while still featuring some of the strong venom that is uniquely Fulci. [7/10]

The Lawnmower Man (1992)

Being among the most popular writers of the last forty years, Stephen King's name has been attached to a lot of movies. Most of these films at least proclaim to be adaptations of King's words. By the time you reach “Children of the Corn 7” or “The Mangler 3,” it's fair to say that any connection to King's actual writing is vague... But at least the general ideas originated with him. Out of all the half-assed King adaptations, only one has been so loosely connected to the man's work that he actually sued to have his name taken off the poster. That would be 1992's “The Lawnmower Man,” an oddball piece of cyberpunk-scrambled camp that claimed to be inspired by King's 1975 short story about a satyr with green pubes and a murderous lawnmower. When it leaked that New Line simply slapped the title on an unrelated screenplay, that was the final straw (or blade of grass?) for Uncle Steve. Yet, in the intervening three decades, “The Lawnmower Man” has found a cult following of its own as a peculiar artifact of the nineties' cultural fascination with virtual reality. 

Dr. Lawrence Angelo is using drugs and virtual reality technology to expand the intelligence of chimpanzees, in services of a military contractor the Shop. When one ape escapes, kills a security guard, and gets gunned down, Dr. Angelo quits the project. He soon befriends Jobe, a mentally disabled gardener. He continues the experiments on Jobe, injecting him with brain-boosting drugs and strapping him into a VR simulator for hours. Soon, Jobe's intelligence begins to expand. He becomes smart, and then brilliant... Before Jobe realizes he can move objects with his mind. Now a god among men, Jobe becomes determined to rule over Earth and cyberspace. Dr. Angelo has to stop the monster he created before it's too late.

Brett Leonard's “Lawnmower Man” – as opposed to King's “Lawnmower Man,” which shares exactly one moment with this movie – is another variation on the classical Frankenstein premise. Like all cinematic mad scientist, Dr. Angelo is only focused on “could,” not so much on “should.” He thinks of himself as advancing the human race and only begins to regret his rash actions after Jobe develops superpowers and a God complex. Of course, his studies are being used for war training from the beginning, as the Shop has trained Rosco the Chimpanzee in a swirling first-person shooter. While Angelo – played with a sweaty self-seriousness by Pierce Brosnan – does realize his mistake eventually, he still emerges as the movie's hero. This perverts the traditional sci-fi/horror moral of the mad scientist getting his just dessert for meddling in God's domain. Instead, “The Lawnmower Man” is the story of someone irresponsibly unleashing an omniscient entity on the world and their half-hearted repenting. 

Of course, this particular “monster” isn't stitched together from dead body parts. Instead, “The Lawnmower Man” is a rather hilarious depiction of someone with mental disabilities. Jobe is depicted, not as a complex human being with many facets, but as a child-like simpleton. At first, he can't tell the difference between reality and comic books, mistaking the chimpanzee for his favorite superhero. He plays games with a neighbor's young son. Despite his limited intelligence, Jobe is a savant with lawnmower technology. The fact that he's seduced by a woman next door, his sexuality awoken, further shows that “The Lawnmower Man” considers its titular character to be some cartoonish, half-human caricature. When paired with Jeff Fahey's goofy performance – almost absolutely an inspiration for Ben Stiller's “Simple Jack” performance in “Tropic Thunder” –  the result is the kind of highly patronizing depiction of neurodivergent people that are all too common in the media. 

Despite its derivative script and hopelessly simple characters, “The Lawnmower Man” is a movie of massive unearned pretensions. Jobe's name is just the first of many references to Christianity. He has a crucifix above his favorite lawnmower, some mangled literalization of “God in the machine” before the cyper-space finale takes it further. His brother is a priest, who insists on flagellating Jobe himself.  Anytime Jobe logs into the digital world, symbols from Kabbalah and demonology literally flash on-screen. This is alongside all sorts of cyberpunk themes that were common at the time, like transhumanism and the boundaries between reality and technology. That “The Lawnmower Man” is attempting to invest itself with such high-minded themes is quite funny, as this is a standard-parts revenge movie in many ways. Once he has superpowers, Jobe takes revenge on those that have tormented him. This manifests as extremely cheesy scenes of a lawnmower leaping across a room to chew an abusive asshole up or goof-ball mind control.

The truth is none of these elements are what people remember “The Lawnmower Man” for today. Instead, the film's hopelessly dated CGI effects is what has made this a so-bad-it's-good cult classic. Looking back on it now, there's a certain charm to the computer generated hemorrhoids that make-up so much of “The Lawnmower Man.” The attempts to replicate human faces with Sega CD level graphics are hysterically hideous. (Yes, there was a video game adaptation on that very console.) This is especially true of the film's final act, which heavily features a showdown in cyberspace. The searing colors, weightless environments, and crude graphics all root this version of the future to the early nineties. When combined with a script that typically believes virtual reality could do anything, the result is a frequently hilarious camp artifact. I mean, shit, the movie starts with a monkey in a body suit spinning in a gyroscope. Whether in meatspace or cyberspace, that is hilarious. 

By the way, the subplot involving Bosko the Chimp is only present in the two hour and twenty-minute director's cut, something that inexplicably exists. Honestly, a super-chimp in a latex diaper, wielding a handgun, and befriending a Faulknerian man-child before getting gunned down by the cops is a premise that easily could've supported it's own oddball movie. Either because of the notoriety afforded it by the King lawsuit, or because teenagers in 1992 genuinely thought these cornea-rendering special effects were cool, “The Lawnmower Man” was a box office success. New Line produced a sequel four years later, though “Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace” featured few returning cast members. Brett Leonard even had a brief chance to make other movies after this, including another digital relic called “Virtuosity.” “The Lawnmover Man” is cyber-trash but too goofy for me to hate. [6/10]

Freddy's Nightmares: Photo Finish

Last year, I managed to find an episode of “Freddy's Nightmares” that wasn't a complete stinker. “Photo Finish” is among the higher rated episodes on IMDb, so maybe it'll be decent. If nothing else, the two stories are set around Halloween. The first segment follows Stoney, a washed-up fashion photographer forced to do family portraits now. That's when she gets a call from Kink, a new cheesecake magazine looking for someone to do Halloween photoshoots. The models are attacked by Freddy during the sessions, an element of terror that Stoney's boss loves. The second half has a trio of FBI agents investigating a Halloween murder of a family in Springwood.  While trying to decipher what happened, head agent Petersen begins to have dream-like visions of the murders. It's not long before Freddy appears.

The Stoney half of “Photo Finish” has Freddy assuming a role he doesn't usually hold: A Mephistopheles style figure that gives success at a horrible price. By terrorizing the models, Stoney's work regains an edge it is lacking. Patty McCormick does a decent job of playing the character's inner conflict, horrified by the murders but happy to see her talent revitalized. Unfortunately, the rest of the episode is typically sloppy. The models just happening to fall asleep during every photoshoot, so Freddy can terrorize them, is hopelessly contrived. McCormick covering up one of the murders is a plot point that goes nowhere. The final moment, Stoney getting her comeuppance, happens before the story reaches any sort of pay-off, robbing the punishment of its ironic punch. 

The second half of “Photo Finish” is much weaker. Far too much of the segment is devoted to the other two FBI agents wondering if Peterson is crazy or a criminal. This just pads out the script, as the element is discarded once Freddy makes himself known. I'm not entirely sure I understand Krueger's M.O. here either. He apparently tricked a father into murdering his wife and daughter, which doesn't seem his style. The way psychic visions and dreams overlap here is not well explained either. There is one decent gore gag here, of Freddy slashing someone as they still in a spinning office chair. Otherwise, this story just meanders on until everyone is killed. 

I will admit that the Halloween elements here are welcomed. The monster movie themed photoshoots in the first half are fun. A moment where a model is killed with a stake through the heart is amusing. We also see Freddy dressed up as a mummy for a few seconds. The second half has the fun image of a trick-or-treater in a ghost costume shooting someone through the sheet. Obviously, Robert Englund being hammy is the main attraction but that only goes so far when the rest of the episode is so half-assed. The scripts are simply half-formed. This episode was directed by “Hell Night's” Tom DeSimone. While DeSimone made some New World classics, he also directed a lot of porn. That's what the grainy photography and lackluster production values of “Photo Finish” – and every episode of “Freddy's Nightmares” I've seen, honestly – reminds me of. [5/10]

Lucifer Rising (1972)

Kenneth Anger was always fascinated with the occult and was a life-long adherent of Aleister Crowley's Thelematic system. This is why, during the sixties, Anger would adopt Lucifer as a personal mascot of his. He saw the fallen angel, not as a demonic evil entity, but as a symbol of youthful rebellion and the artist's spirit. (He also took to calling his boy-toys of the week “Lucifer.”) This fascination would climax with “Lucifer Rising,” an underground short that had been in various states of development for about ten years – as well as involvement from various rock stars like Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page – before Anger finally completed it. The vaguely plotted short depicts the Egyptian gods summoning Lucifer and ushering in a new occultic age. 

Though less blatantly experimental than “Invocation of My Demon Brother” – the footage for which was salvaged from an earlier attempt to make this film – “Lucifer Rising” still qualifies more as an occult ritual put to film than a traditional movie. You see threads of the story in images of Egyptian gods standing around the pyramids and Sphinx, while young people in strange outfits perform arcane ceremonies. A climax of sorts arises by the time a red disc is floating over the statues of Egypt, while Osiris and Isis stand at attention. Yet any attempt at a narrative here is strictly up to interpretation from the viewer. Once again, as the slinking acid-rock soundtrack from Bobby Beausoleil suggests, you're probably meant to be high as shit while watching this. 

Anger was clearly much more interested in the sway these various symbols had over the viewer than telling a straight ahead story. There's admittedly something to be said for that. As the groovy score sways on, you do fall under the film's spell a little. Images of young people walking in magic circles, handling snakes, and casting sparks into the air are interesting. The often smooth camera movements and sped-up footage of young mages doing their thing are stylish. The sights of lava erupting from the Earth, the monoliths of ancient times, and Marianne Faithfull (playing Lilith apparently) emerging from a cave do invoke a Teutonic kind of feeling. I'm not going to pretend I'm well read enough in Crowley or occultism to totally understand what's going on here. But it is interesting and hypnotic in its own way. [7/10]