Don’t Torture a Duckling (Non si sevizia un paperino, 1972) is remembered as one of the most unsettling and thematically ambitious entries in the Italian giallo cycle. Its premise is deceptively simple: a series of brutal child murders shatters a seemingly idyllic community, prompting an investigation led by journalist Andrea Martelli (Tomas Milian) and local police. Suspicion falls quickly – and tellingly – on society’s outsiders: a reclusive “witch” (Florinda Bolkan), a mentally vulnerable man, and anyone who doesn't conform to the village’s rigid moral order. As the mystery unfolds, the film reveals a gallery of compromised adults whose piety and respectability mask repression, misogyny, and latent violence.
Should Don’t Torture a Duckling be released from the oubliette and re-examined like an uncomfortable truth finally brought to light, or left buried with Maciara's baby? Find out!
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