Don't Torture a Duckling (1972)
Lucio Fulci
"I'm not doing it for me. It's for them."
This is our second giallo film of the Spooktober season, and is widely considered to be Lucio Fulci's best, just as Bay of Blood is considered Mario Bava's. Since I'll undoubtedly watch Dario Argento's Suspiria at some point during the month, I think I'll have a good understanding of the best Italian shock/horror films.
I don't have a good history with Fulci, although I've only seen his Dawn of the Dead pseudo prequel Zombie (despite Dawn of the Dead already having a prequel) and the truly incomprehensible City of the Dead. Neither are what you'd consider good, even if the infamous eye scene in Zombie will forever be the grossest death in film history:
I'm not sure that Fulci is the most talented of the Italian giallo directors, but he still has a style and taste for the macabre that you can see emulated by more modern slasher films, so I was excited to try out his supposed masterpiece. Plus the Blu Ray was only $12 and looks super cool.
Don't Torture a Duckling starts with a woman on an Italian hillside digging around in the dirt. After a moment she seems to find what she is looking for: the bones of an infant, which she lovingly picks up and carries away from the hillside. The camera then cuts to a boy on an overpass watching the cars on the highway speed by his tiny, uninteresting village. While he's waiting, he spots a lizard and kills it with his slingshot. We're only a minute into the film, and already we're surrounded by death, both tragic and unimportant.
This is a provincial film. It's dusty and gritty looking from the top down. The local village is plain and unadorned, just like its inhabitants. Not much of interest exists for the town's children other than smoking, troublemaking and soccer. We find out what the boy on the overpass was waiting for: a duo of traveling prostitutes, on their way into town to meet up with some local laborers. Spying on them seems to be a regular pastime for the boys.
Duckling is a highly sexualized film. The boy on the overpass gathers his friends so that they could sneak off to the laborer's cabin to watch the prostitutes work. Later, one of the boys is delivering a drink to a wealthy socialite and she's naked. Rather than covering up, the socialite flaunts her sexuality, questions the boy, and eventually propositions him (although it's unclear how serious she is). It's super uncomfortable.
It's not long before these young boys start turning up dead around the town, and its denizens begin crying for justice and revenge. The major themes here are superstition and suspicion. The town directs its rage at various suspects: a local simpleton, a self-described witch who lives in the woods, and the wealthy outsider socialite who propositioned one of the boys earlier. While there's circumstantial evidence that points to each of them, as the story develops we learn of their innocence.
I find the story of the local witch to be the most fascinating. She's the disciple of a local gypsy magician who claims that he has taught her the black arts. We discover, however, that they have also conceived a child together, which died either at birth or shortly after. She was the woman digging up the infant's bones at the beginning of the film, and it turns out she was fed up with the boys playing on the hillside where her child was buried. She readily confesses to causing the deaths of the children, but reveals to the police that she did so through the dark magic of voodoo dolls. She is convinced that it was her curse that killed the children, but in reality, she never even got close to the boys.
This immediately submarines the police investigation, and they're forced to let her go. The townspeople are far less understanding, and the parents of the murdered boys take their anger out on the disturbed, but innocent, woman:
This scene reminded me of the ear scene in Reservoir Dogs. There's inappropriate ambient music from a radio, the violence is brutal, and we know the character is an innocent. The townspeople don't trust the police, but they trust the religious and cultural outsider even less. Beating a gypsy to death on the outskirts of some tiny Italian village would not be a particularly unusual situation even if she was not suspected of murder. Her final indignity is climbing the hillside looking for help from passing motorists. They all ignore her, and she bleeds and dies alone in a ditch.
This sort of realistic background brutality is evident throughout the film. At the beginning, while the boys are in school at the local Catholic church, there's a skeleton (perhaps some saintly relic) positioned on the wall in the background. After one of the boys is found dead, we are taken through the funeral. There are many lingering shots on the devastated faces of the parents, family, and villagers. It's not an easy film to watch.
The most controversial element of the film, and perhaps the reasons why it was kept out of many theaters in Europe and the United States, is the role of the church in perpetrating violence toward children. The town has a collective distrust of the wealthy socialite who recently moved there and built a big, modern looking house. Like many small-town country folk, they have an ignorance or a fear of modernity, and possibly with good cause. Our first introduction to the socialite is her completely nude, propositioning a young boy. It's a completely inappropriate and illegal act, but she sees no harm in it.
The church, however, holds the town's complete trust. The parish priest acts as a positive shepherd for the local children, keeping them off the streets and on the soccer pitch. The final act of the film is where the bulk of the mystery lies. We know who has not been victimizing the children, but like any good giallo, it takes until the very end to find out who our murderer is.
The ultimate payoff is delightfully gory, and instantly reminded me of this:
I don't have a good history with Fulci, although I've only seen his Dawn of the Dead pseudo prequel Zombie (despite Dawn of the Dead already having a prequel) and the truly incomprehensible City of the Dead. Neither are what you'd consider good, even if the infamous eye scene in Zombie will forever be the grossest death in film history:
I'm not sure that Fulci is the most talented of the Italian giallo directors, but he still has a style and taste for the macabre that you can see emulated by more modern slasher films, so I was excited to try out his supposed masterpiece. Plus the Blu Ray was only $12 and looks super cool.
Don't Torture a Duckling starts with a woman on an Italian hillside digging around in the dirt. After a moment she seems to find what she is looking for: the bones of an infant, which she lovingly picks up and carries away from the hillside. The camera then cuts to a boy on an overpass watching the cars on the highway speed by his tiny, uninteresting village. While he's waiting, he spots a lizard and kills it with his slingshot. We're only a minute into the film, and already we're surrounded by death, both tragic and unimportant.
This is a provincial film. It's dusty and gritty looking from the top down. The local village is plain and unadorned, just like its inhabitants. Not much of interest exists for the town's children other than smoking, troublemaking and soccer. We find out what the boy on the overpass was waiting for: a duo of traveling prostitutes, on their way into town to meet up with some local laborers. Spying on them seems to be a regular pastime for the boys.
Duckling is a highly sexualized film. The boy on the overpass gathers his friends so that they could sneak off to the laborer's cabin to watch the prostitutes work. Later, one of the boys is delivering a drink to a wealthy socialite and she's naked. Rather than covering up, the socialite flaunts her sexuality, questions the boy, and eventually propositions him (although it's unclear how serious she is). It's super uncomfortable.
It's not long before these young boys start turning up dead around the town, and its denizens begin crying for justice and revenge. The major themes here are superstition and suspicion. The town directs its rage at various suspects: a local simpleton, a self-described witch who lives in the woods, and the wealthy outsider socialite who propositioned one of the boys earlier. While there's circumstantial evidence that points to each of them, as the story develops we learn of their innocence.
I find the story of the local witch to be the most fascinating. She's the disciple of a local gypsy magician who claims that he has taught her the black arts. We discover, however, that they have also conceived a child together, which died either at birth or shortly after. She was the woman digging up the infant's bones at the beginning of the film, and it turns out she was fed up with the boys playing on the hillside where her child was buried. She readily confesses to causing the deaths of the children, but reveals to the police that she did so through the dark magic of voodoo dolls. She is convinced that it was her curse that killed the children, but in reality, she never even got close to the boys.
This immediately submarines the police investigation, and they're forced to let her go. The townspeople are far less understanding, and the parents of the murdered boys take their anger out on the disturbed, but innocent, woman:
This scene reminded me of the ear scene in Reservoir Dogs. There's inappropriate ambient music from a radio, the violence is brutal, and we know the character is an innocent. The townspeople don't trust the police, but they trust the religious and cultural outsider even less. Beating a gypsy to death on the outskirts of some tiny Italian village would not be a particularly unusual situation even if she was not suspected of murder. Her final indignity is climbing the hillside looking for help from passing motorists. They all ignore her, and she bleeds and dies alone in a ditch.
This sort of realistic background brutality is evident throughout the film. At the beginning, while the boys are in school at the local Catholic church, there's a skeleton (perhaps some saintly relic) positioned on the wall in the background. After one of the boys is found dead, we are taken through the funeral. There are many lingering shots on the devastated faces of the parents, family, and villagers. It's not an easy film to watch.
The most controversial element of the film, and perhaps the reasons why it was kept out of many theaters in Europe and the United States, is the role of the church in perpetrating violence toward children. The town has a collective distrust of the wealthy socialite who recently moved there and built a big, modern looking house. Like many small-town country folk, they have an ignorance or a fear of modernity, and possibly with good cause. Our first introduction to the socialite is her completely nude, propositioning a young boy. It's a completely inappropriate and illegal act, but she sees no harm in it.
The church, however, holds the town's complete trust. The parish priest acts as a positive shepherd for the local children, keeping them off the streets and on the soccer pitch. The final act of the film is where the bulk of the mystery lies. We know who has not been victimizing the children, but like any good giallo, it takes until the very end to find out who our murderer is.
The ultimate payoff is delightfully gory, and instantly reminded me of this:
Summary:
Don't Torture a Duckling is an interesting film, but certainly not the best thing I've seen this month. Its pacing is a little laborious at times, and there's not as much hilarious killing or clever filmmaking as there was in Bay of Blood. I know that Fulci revered the work of George Romero, and that makes sense based on the workman-like quality of the filmmaking here. There's nothing too complicated and no fancy lighting. Besides the murder of the gypsy, there isn't even much gore.
That's not to say it's a timid or boring film, and if you're trying to gain a better understanding of the Italian horror world, it's worth a look. While not what I'd call a traditional horror movie, the dark elements of the film are certainly unsettling.
It's free on YouTube, and would make a solid Sunday afternoon hangover movie. If you're feeling a little fancier, the Blu Ray is fairly cheap on Amazon, and makes a fine addition to any horror collection.
It's free on YouTube, and would make a solid Sunday afternoon hangover movie. If you're feeling a little fancier, the Blu Ray is fairly cheap on Amazon, and makes a fine addition to any horror collection.
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