Don't Torture A Duckling (1972)

A reporter and a promiscuous young woman try to solve a series of child killings in a remote southern Italian town that's rife with superstition and distrust of outsiders.

Don't Torture a Duckling is a 1972 Italian giallo film directed by Lucio Fulci. It is significant within Fulci's filmography as it is one of the first in which he began using violent gore effects, something he would continue to do in his later films.  The soundtrack was composed by Riz Ortolani and features vocals by Ornella Vanoni.

This film has all the elements of the Italian mystery/thriller genre known as the giallo, but really pulls the viewers in by having each key character with a skeleton in his/her own closet. This keeps the viewer doing as much detective work as the detectives in the film itself. Who is killing the young boys in town?  There is a long list of suspects and there are many twists and turns along the way.  Trust me.  You won´t know who the killer is until the last moments of the film.  The long list of kooky characters include the towns police force, a small-time reporter, a beautiful and rich ex-drug addict, a young priest and his mother, An old man who practices witchcraft and his female protégé, a mentally handicapped townsman, and a deaf/mute little girl.

A drowned fine young Christian boy

This is not a  typical Fulci gore film.  Although it does contain elements of both - it is more of an old-fashioned murder mystery, with darker subject matter and a few scenes of graphic violence. (although nothing nearly as strong as some of Fulci's later works)  The background music is effective, and ranges from jarringly creepy at the beginning to low-key jazz, to indigenous Italian songs. Acting is generally average, though in a couple of cases, it's a bit overdone.  The film is actually a thoughtful and disturbing examination of the dangers of superstition.

One rather strange and disturbing part of the film is the beautiful young woman who flirts and makes sexual advances to the young boys. At one point she's hanging out butt ass naked and asks a boy if he'd like to sleep with her. And these aren't 16 and 17 years old boys...they appear to be in the 10-12 year range. Awkward.

I enjoy young boys

While this film may not feature loads of gore, it does have two of Fulci's nastiest sequences to make up for it. The nastiest involves a woman being brutally slaughtered by a group of men in a cemetery, while the image of a man falling from a cliff and hitting any number of rocks on the way down is liable to turn some stomachs. 

This film is not quite as easy to get hold of as most other Fulci flicks, but I assure that searching it will pay off.  Overall, it's a shame that Fulci didn't make more films like this. Don't Torture a Duckling is one of his best works and every Giallo fan should see it. 

This bitch is crazy.

Trivia:

Because of the film's controversial storyline, which criticized 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. In 2000, Anchor Bay secured the rights and released the film for the first time in the United States on DVD.

Composer Riz Ortolani reused a small segment of music from this film in his later composition for Cannibal Holocaust. 

Lucio Fulci has said in numerous interviews that he ranks this movie as his most personal favorite of all the movies he directed in his career.

While talking to Andrea (Tomas Milian), Patrizia (Barbara Bouchet) at a certain point says "A rose, by any other name". This is a quotation of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", but also the name of the episode of Star Trek where Barbara Bouchet has appeared in 1968: "By any other name" (Season 2, Episode 22) 

Voodoo dolls even make an appearance.