Trivia / Don't Torture a Duckling

• Completely Different Title:
  • Argentina and Chile: The Strange Secret of the Forest of Shadows
  • Brazil: The Secret of the Forest of Dreams
  • Canada: The Blood Dolls
  • Finland: The Village of Horrors
  • France: The Long Night of Exorcism
  • Greece: Voodoo
  • Peru: Hex Victims
  • Portugal: The Strange Secret of the Dream Forest
  • Russia: The Torment of the Innocent
  • Spain: Anguish of Silence
  • Turkey: Lynch
• Creator's Favorite: Lucio Fulci has called this film his personal favorite out of his entire filmography.
• Enforced Method Acting: Florinda Bolkan shot all of her scenes alone, with only Lucio Fulci and the camera operator present, to emphasize her psychological isolation.
• Fake Nationality: None of the film's main cast is actually Italian:
  • Tomas Milian (Andrea) is Cuban.
  • Barbara Bouchet (Patrizia) is German-American.
  • Florinda Bolkan (Maciara) is Brazilian.
  • Irene Papas (Aurelia) is Greek.
  • Marc Porel (Alberto) and Georges Wilson (Francesco) are French.
• Hostility on the Set: During the filming of the climax, Tomas Milian and Marc Porel reportedly got into a real fight.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Because of the film's controversial storyline and its critical depiction of the Catholic Church, the movie was blacklisted and received a limited theatrical run throughout Europe and was never released in theaters in the United States despite an English-language dub being produced. It wasn't released Stateside until 2000, when Anchor Bay secured the rights and released it for the first time on DVD.
• The Other Darrin: The infamous scene in which a nude Patrizia flirts with the underage Michele was strategically filmed in compliance with child labor laws. The characters' individual close-ups and mid-shots were filmed separately, while the shot of Michele walking towards Patrizia with a pitcher and glass of orange juice was done using an adult dwarf stand-in (if you look carefully, you will notice that the double has a different facial structure to the actor).
• Uncredited Role: Due to the film's violent subject matter, the child actors all went uncredited. As of 2020, Fausta Avelli (Malvina; who appeared in another Fulci film) is the only one to have been identified.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The original script was set in a working-class neighborhood of Turin.
  • Fulci originally wanted to cast Massimo Ranieri as Don Alberto and Fernando Rey as Francesco.