Don't Torture a Duckling (1972)

Good movie but grossly overrated

best movie i've ever seen.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The film was controversial for its day, due to criticizing the Catholic Church, which led to a limited run in Europe and the film being unreleased in the US until 2000.In the south of Italy, more specifically the small village of Accendura, Bruno, Michele, and Tonino are engaged in mischief and other activities. They do all the things you expect little Italian boys to do — smoke cigarettes, watch prostitutes have sex, abuse a pepping tom — earning the ire of La Magiara (Florinda Bolkan, also the star of Fulci's giallo Lizard in a Woman's Skin), a witch who digs up the bones of an infant before conducting a ritual where she creates voodoo style dolls of the three boys, stabbing them with needles and chanting over them.Bruno is the first to go missing, inciting a media frenzy as reporters from all over Italy find the story of the week. Andrea Martelli (Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie, Fulci's Four of the Apocalpyse) is one of them, but smarter than the rest. Sneaking in to the police investigation, he wonders aloud why the kidnappers, who have called in a ransom, have asked for a small ransom. The peeping tom is arrested once it comes out that he buried the boy's body — but he claims that he only did so to try and get the ransom. While he being held for questioning, the second boy, Tonino, is found dead, proving the innocence of the pervert.Meanwhile, the final boy, Michele, meets rich girl gone bad Patrizia, (Barbara Bouchet from The Red Queen Kills Seven Times) who sunbathes in the nude and has no problem letting the young kid watch. Someone calls Michele during a rain storm the next evening and he becomes the third victim.This gives the reporter the chance to meet and get close to Patrizia. Turns out she's hiding out in her rich father's modern house after a drug scandal — MARIJUANA!!! — and the villages have already condemned her as a slut due to how she dresses. The reporter also meets the young village priest, Don Alberto Avallone, who lives with his strange mother and deaf, dumb and mentally deficient little sister.Don Alberto is deeply affected by the boys' deaths, as they were all pupils at his school and he attempted to keep them off the streets and playing soccer. He's so well connected — both in town and with the Catholic Church — that he censors even the magazines on the newsstand. He remarks that he wishes that he could censored Patrizia.One of the things you'll notice about giallo is that the more you watch them, the more you realize that they just introduce you to character after character after character, unlike the traditional British or American detective story where everything happens for a reason.That means it's time to meet someone new — Francesco, an old man who lives in a cave, practices black magic and considers Magiara as his student. He refuses to cooperate with the police, so they hunt Magiara down and interrogate her. She begins to convulse, scream and froth at the mouth, happily admitting that she killed the boys because they disturbed her son's grave. And oh yeah — that child was the son of the devil.Even though she was nowhere near the murder scene, the villagers are convinced that she's the killer. The police can do nothing but release her — a release that leads to her doom, as a walk through a cemetery leads to her being beaten with chains by a gang of men (several of the grieving fathers are in their number). This is where Fulci lets loose with the gore — each hit brings shards of flesh and bone and blood to the fore, ending with Magiara crawling up a cliff, begging for help as cars just pass her by.To the shock of the villagers, the murders don't stop. But at the latest one, Martelli has found a Donald Duck head. This makes Patrizia realize — she bought that doll for Don Albeto's sister, after she found her walking with another headless doll.Their theory — that the little girl is imitating her mother by pulling the heads off the dolls — is a decent one. But they're wrong — it's really the priest who was behind it all, killing the young boys so they can go to Heaven with clean souls. After a brutal fistfight, the priest loses his balance and falls to the rocks below. This scene would be awesome with modern effects work, but instead Fulci must rely on a mannequin looking body — a sad sight as it's in full close up numerous times as the body bounces off rocks and emits showers of blood.Read more at http://bit.ly/2yHBEUq

This really is a most impressive giallo from Lucio Fulci. The distinctive but odd title seems to distract somewhat from what is one of the director's finest. There is a Donald Duck toy in the film and while we have no reason to believe it was tortured it does lose its head. Even so, the more vicious 1982 outing, New York Ripper is only hampered by a Donald Duck voice in the taunting killer phone calls, so maybe that could have had this title instead. In any event here, Florida Bolkan, Barbara Bouchet and Tomas Milian turn in top notch performances and indeed even all the lesser parts are well accounted for and what with all the, presumably, local extras involved Fulci does a brilliant job in ensuring very believable performances from everyone. There is a strong sense of nastiness and hypocrisy running throughout and the film is racing non-stop from the very off with some worrying concerns for the many children involved.

Fulci's "Don't Torture a Duckling" is not only one of the best gialli, it's also an unforgettable portrait of life in a cloistered, superstitious Italian town. Fulci scandalously turned propriety on its head by introducing a usual suspects line-up of outsiders we would normally see as the killer in movies like these: there's a village idiot everyone hates, the witch doctor mistrusted but still relied upon by the suspicious villagers, the out-of-town snob who flirts with young boys to cure her boredom. Florinda Bolkan, particularly, is unforgettable as the madwoman who believes so strongly in the supernatural that she confesses to the movie's child-murders because she placed a curse on the victims. Her death scene is heartbreaking for what it reveals of the callousness of humanity.Fulci was, in this early stage of his career, a wizard behind the camera. The movie is filled with amazing shots. He shoots his subjects hypnotically, framing faces in close-up to suggest private thoughts; indeed, thoughts are the only thing the inhabitants of this town seem to be able to keep private, as they all live on top of each other.The depiction of small town life is so good, and so damning, that by the time we get to the final revelation of "who did it", we don't really care. The cruelty and idiocy displayed in such a place is like a petri dish for violent crime, and in fact, when the culprit is finally revealed, you see that his actions are intended as reactions to this moral turpitude.Perhaps, for a self-described decent person living in such a situation, violence is the only possible act.

My first reaction after watching the ending was a standing ovation. This is a fantastic Giallo tale of murder, mystery, and obscure traditions inside a little town that is not everything it seems. The plot surrounds the death of three infants. There are many suspects but the truth is horrifying. It is up to a news reporter and an impressively gorgeous woman to discover who is behind this atrocious murders in a town that hides more than a dark secret.Lucio Fulci has an unfair reputation as a Director of bad taste. OK, he has done many brutal and extremely gore flicks but he has also produced extraordinary Gialli and other memorable films.This film is in my opinion his true masterpiece. The atmosphere is eerie, you can feel you are wandering the town that is afraid of the night. The story is very interesting and thrilling. Also, it is ahead of it's time when displaying taboos such as pedophilia. The acting is surprisingly good. Florinda Bolkan and Barbara Bouchet shine with their roles. Fulci's Direction is solid and demonstrates his peculiar vision towards Horror.There are many memorable moments such as the shocking cemetery murder while Heavy Metal plays in the background, the disturbing yet poetic ending, and many more.This is on the top 5 Gialli ever. I don't want to spoil it because it is an experience that any Horror movie fan should live. It demonstrates that Mr. Fulci did know a lot about Horror and style. His name deserves more recognition among the pantheon of the best Horror Directors. P.S. Barbara Bouchet is possibly the hottest actress ever to appear in a Giallo. Just look at her amazing nude body and her sexy mini skirts.