Don't Torture a Duckling () is a 1972 Italian giallo film directed by Lucio Fulci, starring Florinda Bolkan, Tomas Milian and Barbara Bouchet. The plot follows a detective investigating a series of child murders in an insular village in Southern Italy whose residents are riddled with superstition and mistrust. The film's score was composed by Riz Ortolani and features vocals by Ornella Vanoni.
Released in the Autumn of 1972 in Italy, Don't Torture a Duckling 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, including Zombi 2, The Beyond and City of the Living Dead. The film has been noted by critics for its commentary on sexuality in the Catholic Church.
The "duckling" in the film's title refers to a Donald Duck doll that has its head removed by a girl with an intellectual disability, which provides a clue to the murders.
Fulci once mentioned it as "perhaps [his] best film".
Plot
In the small Southern Italian village of Accendura, three boys, Bruno, Michele, and Tonino, engage in mischief and other activities. Giuseppe Barra, a local simpleton spying on two locals engaged with visiting prostitutes, is surprised when the three boys who are watching him begin to taunt him. Meanwhile, in the hills surrounding the village, La Magiara, a reclusive Gypsy witch, conducts black magic ceremonies, first by digging up the skeletal remains of an infant and then plunging pins through the heads of three tiny clay dolls. It is made clear that these are the three youths taunting Giuseppe.
When Bruno goes missing, a media circus begins as reporters from all over Italy converge on the town. One of them is Andrea Martelli, a sharp-witted journalist from Rome whose insights into the case are acknowledged by the regional police commissioner working with the collaboration of the village chief of police Captain Modesti. Amid local hysteria, Giuseppe is arrested when he picks up a ransom he demanded from the boy's parents for the boy's return. While he takes police to the buried body of Bruno, he protests his innocence of murder, for he claims to have only discovered the body of the boy and then phoned the parents in a feeble attempt to extract a surprisingly small ransom. When the corpse of Tonino is found, the police realize that Giuseppe is innocent. A few nights later, during a raging thunderstorm, Michele sneaks out of his house to meet with someone he speaks to over the phone, and he too is strangled by an unseen assailant, and his body is found the following morning.
Martelli soon meets and befriends Patrizia, whom he recognizes from newspapers where he used to work in Milan. Patrizia is living at her father's house in the town as she is lying low after a drug scandal. The rest of the insular villagers ostracize her because of her big-city ways, perceived lack of morality, and modern dress style with halter-tops and mini-skirts. She has various seemingly sinister interactions with several children from the town, including Michele, with whom she seductively teases, then rejects, while nude; Mario, a young boy whom she offers the choice of either payment or a kiss in exchange for fixing a flat tire; and Malvina, priest Don Alberto’s disabled sister, who is dragged by Patrizia across the town square against her will, in order that Patrizia could buy Malvina a doll.
Martelli also meets with the amiable young village priest, Don Alberto Avallone, and his reserved mother, Aurelia. Don Alberto runs a boys' group at the church, which the murder victims belonged to, and encourages the boys to play soccer on the church grounds to keep them out of trouble. As the local priest, he is well-known and respected in the area.