L'enfant de Satan

Satan's Baby Doll (1982)

** (out of 4)

Remake of Malabimba, The Malicious Whore follows the same storyline pretty much and also cuts out the hardcore sex scenes. This time out it's Jacqueline Dupre playing the young girl who is being possessed and Mariangela Giordano reprises her role as the nun. This is a pretty straight forward remake so if you've seen the original movie then you're not going to have any twists or turns that you don't see coming. It's hard to say which movie is better as both have good and bad things going for them. I think this one works nicely without the hardcore scenes but at the same time this film here isn't nearly as sexy or erotic as the original. This film is also pretty straight forward and doesn't contain as many campy moments, which is the main reason I'd rewatch the original over this one. This one here does have some great cinematography and some nice eye candy in the form of the beautiful naked women but I wouldn't really call this film necessary.

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.

I have wanted to see this movie ever since first seeing the wonderful poster artwork, in the eighties, featuring the red winged devil his bloodied and clawed arms around a naked girl. Well, now I have and almost wish it could have remained an unattained desire, still full of great promise. But, no, despite there being many moments of real style, beautiful, naked ladies, a wonderful setting, complete with great cloister areas, not to mention that super poster artwork, this still manages not to work. There is plenty of luscious flesh but too much soft core self stroking and ponderous, nay plodding periods of far too much incomprehensible dialogue. We care little for anybody and with so little regard paid to keeping even the simplest of story lines on track, the only word for this is inept.

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".