Satan's Baby Doll

I don't quite know what to make of "Satan's Baby Doll", to be honest. As the title suggests, it's another cheap, wicked-minded and umpteenth excuse for Italian producers to come up with sleaze and satanic nonsense – and it is – but on the other hand it's a surprisingly stylish and well-made film. Yes, really! Well, talking in terms of early 80's exploitation standards and in comparison with the other titles on director Mario Bianchi's repertoire, that is. It even has a plot that is slightly above average, competent acting performances (I'm not kidding!) and genuine young beauty that sadly only ever appeared in this one film. Oh Jacqueline Dupré, what an angel you are. The sinister events all take place inside the walls of an ancient family castle atop a hillside. This location is always filmed from underneath in the valley, just to make really sure the viewer knows we're dealing with a very isolated setting here. The lady of the house just died, but she was involved with black magic rites and Satanism, so her malignant spirit attempts to return from the afterlife. She finds the perfect host inside the ravishing body of her young daughter Myra and commands her to kill all the remaining dirt bags in the castle. So what we have here, basically, is an Italian variation on "The Exorcist" (another one), but with a Gothic setting and buckets full of gratuitous nudity. Also living in the castle is a masturbating nun, a Peeping Tom in a wheelchair, a sleazy lawyer, a crazy voodoo-obsessed servant and the sickly jealous and tyrant patriarch. There are quite a lot of senseless dialogs and boring parts you unfortunately have to struggle yourself through, but the death scenes are fairly imaginative and Dupré beauty & sex-appeal brightens up the screen with every appearance she makes. The other female leads are filled in by Mariangela Giordano (yes, THE woman whose nipple gets bitten off by her creep son in "Burial Ground") as the household nun and by adult movie starlet Marina Hedman as the undead but still very horny Maria. This is bizarre early 80's exploitation, to say the least , but it's worth seeing if only for the imaginative choreography, the uncanny set pieces, the ominous musical guidance (courtesy of Nico Catanese) and the naked body of Jacqueline Dupré. Shallow? You bet!

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.

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.

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.