Capital Celluloid - Day 235: Thursday August 25

Shameless Films Double-Bill
The Frightened Woman (Schivazappa, 1969) & Don't Torture A Duckling (Fulci, 1972)
Roxy Bar & Screen 7pm

This is part of the Scala Forever season, a programme of 111 films at 26 venues through to October 2 that will celebrate the wonderful Scala cinema at King's Cross which closed in 1993. Here is an article I wrote in the Guardian on the history of the cinema and the season and here are the details of all the movies and special events on offer, via the Scala Forever website.

Here is the Roxy introduction to the evening's entertainment: The battle of the sexes has never been more stylish or stylised than in Piero Schivazappa’s pop-art fantasia The Frightened Woman. When a high-powered misogynist kidnaps a beautiful underling to subject to a course of degradation, he finds that the force of the feminine proves more powerful than he could possibly perceive… Featuring uber vixen Dagmar Lassander in her finest role, ‘The Frightened Woman’ presents a kinky feast for the eyes, ears and mind, and exudes an intoxicating euro-vibe of the funkiest, sexiest order.

With its very first image of the motorway cutting through the countryside like a scythe, Lucio Fulci’s sweeping giallo tackles the effect rampant modernisation has on rural mentality. A large-canvas, slow-burning epic, ‘Don’t Torture a Duckling’ immediately dispels the notion that Fulci is simply a blood and guts merchant. And when the blood and guts do surface, they are with tempered with one of the most heart-rending scenes in cinema. An outstanding achievement from one of the masters of Italian cinema.

Here is a fan's trailer for Don't Torture A Duckling, a movie which reportedly was a major influence on Quentin Tarantino.

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