This early giallo from Fulci - previously only available on muddy bootleg tapes - is finally out in a beautiful letterbox transer from Anchor Bay. Those of you anticipating the usual Fulci splatter-fest ala City of the Living Dead and The Beyond will be disappointed, but afficianado's of Italian horror certainly can't afford to pass it up.

Some mysterious deviant with a hard-on for hairless crotches is choking the life out little boys in a provincial Italian hamlet, one of those little shit towns most people just pass through without stopping, except maybe for gas or a sandwich. Even though this town is in Europe, it just as easily could be upstate New York.

Could it be the local witch, whose chief pastime appears to be making voodoo dolls? Maybe it's the old warlock who trained her? Or perhaps it's the rich, beautiful and bored pedophile woman who makes sport of teasing the town's boys, most of which have the habit of turning up with their necks wrung like chickens? Or could it be the baby-faced priest? The answer is more obvious than the townsfolk are willing to realize.

What's weird is that while this has a far lower splatter-quotient than most of Fucli's giallos - it contains only two big "money shots" - Duckling leaves those films in the dust when it comes to just flat out disturbing you. In many ways Duckling is the best movie I've ever seen from Fulci as a pure filmmaker - in spite of his rightly earned reputation as a gore and gross-out meister (and subsequent dismissal by many critics as a hack), the guy knew how to frame a shot and establish a mood of quietly sustained dread and unease.

Like his best films - House By the Cemetery and The Beyond - it retains its grasp on your gut long after the end credits have run. The difference is, Duckling twists the knife in your belly with added gusto because the horrors it depicts comes not from the darkest regions of the artist's imagination but from your own backyard.

*** 3 Skulls Full of Maggots.

* Dead meat, ripe n' reeking.
** Moribund, but showing a slight flicker of life.
*** Good and healthy.
**** Brimming with vitality.