La bimba di Satana

La bimba di Satana/Satan's Babydoll is a strange early 80s film that does not really ever make much sense, but is marvellously weird and pleasantly gothic, albeit with a string of extended sex scenes which may or may not try the patience of viewers. Some of the highlights are Isidro's very, very long spellcasting (and yelling/gurning) scenes, and when Ignazio spies on the sleeping Sol (and imagines all kinds of self-induced hijinks on her part). The latter is notable in that it is essentially the same scene repeated countless times, and so it is (especially with regard to the repeated close-ups of Ignazio's startled boat race) pretty much the very first media gif! However, it is fair to say that these scenes can equally also try the patience of saints due to their endlessness. However, the film has possessions, a spooky castle, a pretty cool mummy and so is a horror curio, if nothing else.

"La Bimba di Satana" by Mario Bianchi is actually a remake of Andrea Bianchi's supremely sleazy "Malabimba". It was shot as a hard core sex feature from the outset. There is plenty of explicit sex, perversity and full-frontal nudity in this lovely piece of Italian smut. The role of the innocent nun who is thrown into nightmare of possession plays again Mariangela Giordano, famous from "Burial Ground" and "Giallo a Venezia". There is also a little bit of zombie action, unfortunately the complete pornographic version of this piece of sleaze is probably lost forever. Still if you enjoyed "Malabimba" you can't go wrong with "La Bimba di Satana". The story of possessed Miria is just so wonderfully murky and sleazy that it truly has to be seen to be believed. She is apparently possessed by her dead mother, or her ghost, using the image of her daughter and is soon erotically enticing everyone in the castle and killing them off one by one.

Mario Bianchi's A Girl for Satan is apparently a remake of Andrea Bianchi's Malabimba, and although I can't compare the two having not yet seen Malabimba; this remake is stylish and sexy enough to at least be considered half decent. I've read that Malabimba is a rather more hardcore affair; and it would seem that the director here tried to cut that out, and while this film does feature a fair amount of nudity; there's no hardcore sex scenes, but this does actually benefit the film as it certainly seems a lot more erotic than it would have been were it padded out with a load of sex scenes. The plot is mostly nonsensical but has something to do with demonic possession and some horny naked woman coming back from the dead. Our lead character is a young girl who gets possessed by the spirit of her dead mother; who was murdered by her husband. The mother uses the girl in order to get revenge on a whole range of people that had something to do with it; including the family doctor and her husband's crippled brother.

As is always the case with cheap Italian trash, the script here leaves a lot to be desired and there's far too many scenes in which the characters say 'that's impossible!'. In fact, it happens just about every five minutes or so and naturally it's not long at all before it starts to get very tiresome. The film's main assets belong to Jacqueline Dupré, who is simply stunning and doesn't seem to mind getting her kit off at every given opportunity; and that's no bad thing. The film does look fairly cheap; but some of the set design is nice to look and the lighting is also marginally impressive - which does help the atmosphere of the film. It does get a bit hard to follow at times because the plot line takes so many illogical steps; but the style and the leading lady do at least serve in keeping things mostly interesting. At just seventy minutes, the film is rather short so it doesn't really have to become too boring. Of course, it all turns out to be a big waste of time in the end as the film never goes anywhere and doesn't really do anything; but even so, there's worse trash out there and this does at least have some redeeming elements.

Erotic Italian Gothic horror La bimba di Satana, from director Mario Bianchi, takes place in exactly the kind of imposing, brooding castle one would expect from the genre: sat atop a stormy hill, shrouded in shadows, with endless stone corridors and a dusty old crypt, it is inhabited by a collection of 'unique' individuals all hiding dark secrets. Clichéd though these elements might be, the film's narrative could never be described as predictable...

Aldo Sambrelli plays Antonio Aguilar, the recently widowed owner of the creepy castle whose hot teenage daughter Miria (the gorgeous Jacqueline Dupré) has been acting rather strange since her mother's death. Also living in the castle are sexy nun Sol (Mariangela Giordano), who is employed to take care of Antonio's paraplegic brother Ignazio (she gives very thorough bed bath), and a strange manservant named Isidro who conducts satanic rituals in the crypt.

Antonio spends much of his his time shooting up drugs and pestering Sol for sex; but the nun isn't having any of it, preferring to swan around in just her stockings, tempting poor immobile Ignazio. Meanwhile, Miria's fevered state worsens and eventually, she rises from her bed in a trance to kill...

Unfortunately, despite its unusual plot, copious nudity from its attractive female stars, and plenty of general perversion, including lesbianism, voyeurism, murder, possession and necrophilia, La bimba di Satana is a real bore for most of the time: Bianchi's lousy direction is torturously slow and the structure of the film makes matters more than a little confusing—at least until the film's final minutes, when some of the plot threads are thankfully finally pulled together (although I never did quite understand how the reanimated mouldy mummy fitted into proceedings!).

***EDIT*** The above review was for the softcore cut of the film, but having just seen the uncut version, which contains a couple of explicit sex scenes towards the end, my opinion of Satan's Baby Doll hasn't really changed that much: it's still boring.

Producer Gabriel Crisanti along with his then wife, the sumptuous Mariangela Giordano, produced and sometimes co-wrote a number of horror/sex movies in late 1970's, always displaying an appalling lack of good taste that was sometimes a good thing ("Malabimba" and "Burial Ground")and sometimes not such a good thing ("Giallo Venezia" and "Patrick Lives Again") depending on the relative talents of the director. (The first pair was directed by a somewhat talented hack, Andrea Bianchi, while the second pair was directed by talentless hack, Mario Landi). This movie is unusual in that Crisanto uses a third director, Mario Bianchi, the brother of Andrea, to basically remake his brother's film "Malabimba", and the result, rather than being repellent and unpleasant like the Landi films, is more just toothless and boring.

A woman is murdered by her drug addict husband, and (while still an attractive nude corpse lying on the slab) she manages to possess her nubile young daughter and uses her to get revenge on her husband, her husband's bent doctor (who was also her lover), her husband's crippled brother (who was ALSO a former lover), and the local priest because. . .well, he's a Catholic priest. She doesn't really NEED to possess her daughter though since she also seems to have incredible psychic abilities that among other things allow her to reanimate the dead.

Of course, the name of the game of all these movies is sex, and here this movie is a mixed bag. If you favor mature, voluptuous "madonnas" like Giordano you will not be disappointed with her portrayal of a compulsively naked and self-gratifying nun (the mother is also pretty damn attractive given the considerable handicap of lying dead on a slab for most of the movie). On the other hand, if you prefer the nubile, barely legal "lolitas" the unknown Jacqueline Dupree is a very poor substitute for Catyl Laennac in "Malabimba" in that she fails to masturbate with a teddy bear or fellate her own uncle to death or even get naked below the waist. What will be disappointing to either camp though is that the inter-generational lesbian sex scenes of "Malabimba" that pass for "the exorcism" have been replaced here instead by a strange scene of necrophilia (albeit one that makes necrophilia look pretty attractive). It might have been pointless to remake "Malabimba" to begin with, but this is compounded by the the filmmakers not faithfully imitating the first film nearly enough.

There is also, by the way, a hardcore version of this film out there, but while some may disagree, nowhere in the history of cinema that I know of has hardcore footage ever IMPROVED a movie. Not really recommended. Stick with "Malabimba".