Non si sevizia un paperino

The Southern Italian mountain village of Accendurra is terrorised by a series of murders of little boys. The inhabitants think they have caught the culprit, but they are mistaken.Non si sevizia un paperino focuses on an obsessive religious delusion that, combined with ignorance, propels the plot towards a lynching. There were major problems at the time with censorship about the violence and several nude scenes in the film. Fulci doesn’t shy away from any gruesome effect, but manages to move the audience with the lynching scene, in which the ‘honest citizens’ are confronted with the local ‘witch’. Southern Italy was for the first time portrayed as a location where the beauty of nature and a thousand years of tradition do not form the background to the noble soul of the poor inhabitants, but to evil. The film includes objects typical of the seventies such as all-terrain vehicles, large aquariums and baggy trousers. (SdC)