Don't Torture a Duckling

A giallo set in a small town in southern Italy. Children are being murdered in the town. Nobody knows anything and everyone looks for an explanation. Suspicion moves in turn: a local woman is accused of witchcraft, a wealthy woman from the city is singled out, a man with a learning disability is arrested. A journalist and a policeman conduct the investigation. But what the film is interested in is not the investigation; it is the town: gossip, superstition and how fast a crowd reaches its own verdict. The hardest scene is a lynching. A woman is caught in the cemetery and beaten to death; the scene is held long and cars pass on the road nearby. The director uses the known shapes of the genre but ties the matter to rural piety and the pressure of the community. The film met a hostile reaction in Italy for it. Florinda Bolkan, Barbara Bouchet and Tomas Milian are in the cast. Lucio Fulci directed; it is often named as his best film. One of the genre's strongest examples for anyone who likes giallo and Italian cinema of the 1970s. Before you watch, know this: the film takes the murder of children as its subject and its violence is heavy.