Malabimba

This isn't necessarily a high compliment, but this might be the best of the many Italian rip-offs of "The Exorcist". It's definitely better than bigger budgeted nonsense like "Beyond the Door" and "The Temptor". It may be kind of a toss-up between this film where Mariangela Giordana plays a middle-age nun engaging in hot inter-generational lesbian sex with her demon-possessed teenage charge and "The Sexorcist" where Ivan Rassimov plays a demon/Christ statue come to life who pulls himself off a crucifix and nails, in quite a different sense, a sexy female artist. I guess what it comes to though is that I'd rather see Giordano naked than Rassimov (that or I'm just a sucker for nun-related, inter-generation lesbian scenes). This movie does much more faithfully follow the plot of the "The Exorcist". The possessed girl, Bimba, lives in an old castle with sundry relatives and a nun guardian. She is somewhat older than Ravin in "The Exorcist"--the character is supposedly sixteen but the actress (the never-to-be-seen-again Katell Laennac)looks to be a few years older than that. This is no doubt a good thing as she spends the movie graphically masturbating with stuffed animals, spying on her sleazy aunt having sex with her uncle and her widowed father, dispatching an unfortunate (or lucky?)elderly relative with a fatal bout of oral favors, or having the aforementioned lesbian sex with Giordano.

This movie works for two reasons. The first is the director Andreas Bianchi who, though far less prolific, was a lot like Spanish auteur Jesus Franco in his ability to take irredeemably sleazy material like this and make it somehow oddly watchable. Bianchi's work includes "What the Peeper Saw" which offered the unusual pairing of Swedish sex kitten Britt Ekland and the kid from "Oliver", scuzzy giallo favorite "Strip Nude for Your Killer" where the usually classy Edwige Fenech simulated both oral and anal sex (not surprisingly, it's the only recent DVD release she hasn't provided any commentary for), and his follow-up to this film "Burial Ground" again with Giordano who this time gets her latex nipple bitten off by a strange-looking dwarf who is supposed to be her zombified son. Which brings me to the second reason:the infamous Mariangela Giordano. Although she is sometimes labeled a "scream queen" this label doesn't really fit Giordano as she was an actress for twenty-five years in Italian genre films before she ever started doing nude sex scenes in sleazy horror movies like this in her early 40's (during her marriage to producer Crisanti). She proved so good at it though that even years later when she appeared in Michael Soavi's "The Sect" she has a scene as the world's sexiest 53-year-old naked corpse! But besides having a virtually un-aging body, she was a pretty decent actress. It is a testament to her thespian abilities that this sultana of sleaze is even remotely believable as a nun. (And if her initial seduction by the possessed teenager seems amazing just wait around for the "exorcism").

The only serious downside to this movie is the inclusion in most available versions of unappetizing hardcore "inserts". In this case though they may, at least, have involved the original talent: Bianchi often did hardcore work, the actress playing the aunt certainly looks like a porn star,and even Laennac at one point shares the screen with a visibly aroused male. Still these scenes could easily be lost. It's a sufficiently sleazy and enjoyable movie without them.