Don’t Torture A Duckling AKA
Non si sevizia un paperino
(1972) 102 Min.
Rated: Unrated (sexulized nudity, adult language, some gore)
Country: Italy
Director: Lucio Fulci
Stars: Florinda Bolkan, Barbara Bouchet, Tomas Milian
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Children are getting murdered in a small Italian town.
Synopsis:
The setting is a small town in Southern Italy called Accettura.
We come upon a mysterious brunette woman digging frantically into the dirt. She unearths the bones of a very small child.
A couple of kids sneak off during prayer to smoke cigarettes. Meanwhile two women drive up to a small shack on a hill and meet two men to have sex inside the shack. Another man, Giuseppe, tries to watch them and one of the ladies laughs and tells him no peeking as she covers the hole. Giuseppe sneaks around to another door where one of the men opens it to allow him to watch. The school boys are standing nearby taunting Giuseppe who runs after them and threatens to kill them all.
In another scene a woman is pulling a wax figure out of a black soupy pot and inserts a needle into the figures neck. There are three figures. And as the needles are inserted into each one, flashes of the three school boys are seen.
One of the boys, Michele, Goes home. His mother asks him to take some juice up to Patrizia, a well off woman she cares for. Michele goes up to find Patrizia completely naked on a chair. She smiles at him and asks him to bring the drink closer. She pours a bit of the drink on her body and asks him how many girls he’s been with. He replies “lots” and she laughs and calls him a liar. She then asks him if he’d like to sleep with her. He replies “yes” and she laughs at him. From downstairs, Michele’s mom calls him and annoyed he replies and goes downstairs.
At night, a boy, Bruno, runs through the woods as he’s being chased by something. The thing hits him on the head and he falls over.
Dogs and police are sent out in search of Bruno and have not found him for three days. The kidnapper has apparently asked for a 6 million lira in return for the boy. Bruno’s parents are very poor and can’t come up with the ransom money. Bruno’s mother swears that they are respected in their town and that they couldn’t possibly come up with that sum of money.
Andrea Martelli, a man of the press, overhears the conversation with Bruno’s parents and tries to help but is shoo’d away by the police.
The next day Bruno’s father puts a package where the kidnapper told him to. Another man comes to retrieve the money. Once he takes the money out the police spring into action capturing him. It is Giuseppe.
While being held by the police Giuseppe claims it was a spot where he always hid things. He claims he didn’t kill the kid. The police ask Bruno’s father if Giuseppe’s voice is the voice of the man that asked for the ransom and he agrees.
The police are able to dig up Bruno’s body. Giuseppe screams that he didn’t kill the boy and that he found him that way. Though the police dismiss this claim, Andrea the reporter is more likely to believe it.
Meanwhile in town, outside of the jail house an angry mob is forming. They are angry at Giuseppe for killing a child and want to tear him apart, but he is hastily taken away before the mob can harm him.
A woman wanders down the steps of her town to a well to do her laundry only to find the body of a boy in a well.
The police go over the facts. The boy was killed in a fashion similar to Bruno.
In the next scene, muddied hands take one of the wax figures, spits on it and buries it in the ground.
The reporter, Andrea, talks to the priest Alberto who knew the victims well. While he talks to Alberto, Patrizia stops by to chat with them, then goes away.
The police discuss that Patrizia was born here but that her father made his fortune in Milan, built a house in the town for show and sent Patrizia to live in the house after she was in some kind of scandal in Milan.
At home during a rainstorm, Michele does his homework and crudely draws naked women on paper as he studies. He recieves a phone call asking him to sneak out of the house. It’s Patrizia.
While he is out in the rain he is attacked and choked by a someone.
The police ask Michele’s parents why he is missing. They are worried and say he’d never be gone so long before. The police also question Patrizia. She says she got nervous the night before and was driving all night. In the past she did drugs and now that she is sober she gets cravings. She also says she can’t remember much.
The mysterious brunette woman picks up the last wax figure, spits on it and buries it in dirt. As the mysterious brunette goes to attend the funeral of Michele, she is being recorded.
We overhear policemen talking about Malvina. During the funeral Michele’s mother cries out that the killer is among them all. The mysterious brunette woman runs back out of the church.
The police notice this and discuss it as they review the recordings. Maciara is the name of the woman who ran out. She lives with Francesco who is a famed practitioner of black magic.
The police pay a visit to Francesco who is making wax figures. He claims to have not seen Maciara for two weeks and that she couldn’t possibly do anything evil.
The police leave and hide among the rocks of the hills as Patrizia drives up to Fracesco’s shack. She speaks to him and the police speculate as to what it might be.
Many more police are called into the town to search the countryside.
Andrea is curious about Aurelia Avallone with her daughter Malvina.
From a tip they are told where Maciara has been hiding out. She’s been in some caves, but she runs away before the police can catch up to her. The police find the skeleton of the child in the cave. Maciara and Francesco’s child. The child was supposedly born deformed. The police also find the three mounds with figures in them made by Maciara.
Meanwhile Machiara is running away from the dogs in the woods until finally she is circled and arrested. At the station she confesses that she murdered them.
She said she had seen Michele and the other boys at the place where her son was buried. She warned them to go away and instead they returned and started digging around. She says she also did not tell Francesco. She goes into a frenzy and has to be calmed down.
Maciara tells them that she made the wax figures, painted them black and stuck in thirteen needles in each. She then said the words to command the demons to do it. To make anyone kill the boys.
The police decide she a bit crazy but innocent of murder and release her.
Maciara wanders the streets of town, but windows close and old women spit behind her as she walks past. She walks to an old graveyard, where some men turn music up loud to mask what they are about to do. They take chains and a stick to her and leave her a bloody mess. She tries to crawl toward a busy road, but no one stops to help her. She finally dies on the rocks.
The police investigate.
Patrizia comes across Malvina, the little girl. Andrea tells Patrizia that Malvina was born deaf and dumb. That she was also born slow. Patrizia tries to pull Malvina to buy a new doll for her (because the one she is carrying is headless), but Malvina starts crying.
Later we see Patrizia getting into a car.
One of the children, Mario decides to run off to a house. The kids tell Don Alberto that Mario went off to the house alone. They tell the priest that the boys go there sometimes to watch girls. Don Alberto rides off on his bicycle to get Mario.
Mario finds Patrizia’s car by a river. He honks the horn and she finds him there. She says she’ll give him money or a kiss if he’d fix her car and asks which he’d prefer.
Next we see Mario’s lifeless corpse face down in the river. The police are investigating. Don Alberto found the boy in the river. Andrea is at the scene and finds Patrizia’s lighter in the grass.
Andrea waits at Patrizia’s house for her. He reads a book called “I classici della magia nera” or “The Satanists” by Peter Haining. Patrizia enters her house and Andrea gives her back her lighter telling her he found it by the dead child. She looks surprised.
The next scene she is being questioned by the police. She claims she made a stop to call boys to get some drugs. She admits to visiting Francesco because she likes to read about Black Magic. She is released but under the condition that she cannot leave the town.
Patrizia talks to Andrea. She sees the cover of the newspaper where flowers were put over the graves of the children. And on top was the head of Donald Duck. Patrizia said she bought the doll for Malvina.
Andrea and Patrizia go out to the well to see if they find the rest of the Donald Duck doll. Instead the find the head of the doll that Malvina had. Andrea supposes that Malvina witness what happened to the child that was killed.
They visit the house of Alberto and his mother Aurelia to talk about his sister Malvina. Alberto agrees that if she had seen the murder that she would’ve tried to imitate it.
Back at Patrizia’s Andrea talks about how Dona Aurelia’s husband committed suicide and that the townspeople thought it was her fault. But that she did torment him with jealousy. Andrea guesses that maybe she is jealous of the attention the kids get from Don Alberto. Just then, Don Alberto calls and asks if Aurelia and Malvina are with them because he cannot find them.
** Spoilers to the plot below **
Patrizia and Andrea race to the mountain where they believe Aurelia and Malvina are hid. But just as they are about to reach the top Don Alberto breaks into the small house at the summit where Aurelia and Malvina are. Don Alberto and Aurelia fight over Malvina, finally Alberto pushes his mother off and walks off carrying Malvina. Aurelia cries out that Alberto is mad and is going to kill Malvina.
Don Alberto takes Malvina to the cliff to toss her off believing that doing so would save her. He killed all the children to save them. The boys were growing up and becoming were starting to think with the flesh. He did not want them to continue sinning as they got older.
Andrea runs up to him and fights with him to get Malvina. Andrea gets Malvina away, but ends up hanging off the cliff by his fingers. Alberto tries to smash Andrea’s fingers with his feet, but is pulled foward and falls off the cliff. As he falls he thinks of all the children and how he tried to save them from growing up and sinning. Finally he hits the bottom and dies.
The film ends.
Review:
This is an Italian Giallo film, which means it’s a murder-mystery. And since it’s a thriller it’s not a standard horror. Yes, there is some gore in it. There are dead bodies in it. But there is also a riveting whodunnit. The primary method of murder of the boys is by choking and the majority of the deaths occur off-screen. Instead we mostly find the corpses afterwards. The most graphic scenes in the film are the beating of the witch Maciara and the final death of the killer.
The film is pretty good at keeping the audience guessing and throws a few red herrings in to keep the audience interested.
Some of the most bizarre things in this film stem from the intercut scenes of the witch’s ritual for the death of the boys and their actual deaths. It almost feels like everyone is working together in some sort of plot against the boys. But this turns out to be incorrect.
There is a strong sense of coming-of-age of the pre-teen boys as they smoke cigarettes and talk about women. Their curiosity in the opposite sex. This aspect is portrayed pretty well. However I also found Patrizia’s nude teasing scene in the film to be creepy. Her flirtation with the young boys was unsettling. Even if the age of consent in Italy is low, if the gender roles were reversed I doubt more people would be comfortable with it.
One of the weakest things, however was the end scene of the killer falling down the side of the cliff in slo-mo as his (obviously manniquin) head slides against the rocks and bursts red tempera paint everywhere. The effect looks cheesy by today’s standards. And through the entire scene we are given flashbacks and a narration by the killer on why he felt the children needed to die. Honestly, it could’ve ended with the priest being tossed over the edge and the audience would’ve figured it out. It’s not that complex an idea.
Overall I thought the movie was pretty interesting and worth seeing at least once by anyone who likes murder mysteries, but if they can’t stomach a bit of tempera paint gore or the creepy paedophile implications, then this might not be to their taste.