Satan's Baby Doll

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.

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".

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.

"Satan's Baby Doll" is a true cinematic oddity, as it is such an extreme mix of good, and awful. The creators of this film had everything that they needed to make a true classic; access to a lavish castle on a cliff, decorated for royalty, a memorable music score, and a beautiful young actress in the central role. There is even a fairly interesting story here, of an angry mother who possesses the body of her daughter from beyond the grave, to exact revenge on the inhabitants of the castle. Seriously, the sets need to be seen to be appreciated. Italian director Luchino Visconti would have filmed one of his masterpieces in this opulent setting! Unfortunately the people behind the scenes were lacking in some regards. Beautiful images sit awkwardly next to very ugly scenes, of ugly old men biting the heads off of chickens and writhing around on the floor making guttural, vomiting sounds for long stretches of time. Unappealing scenes of actors past their prime, getting naked and having very graphic sex. To make matters worse, the director decided to film actual hardcore scenes for this film. This is the version I saw, and I can attest to the fact that they add nothing to this film. Said scenes include a woman in her late 40's/early 50's giving on-screen oral sex to a rather unattractive man in a wheelchair, and another scene of the same tired old whore performing oral sex on a completely disgusting old man, and there is a short insert of his penis entering her old-lady vagina. The young girl Jaqueline Dupre is of course involved with none of these tasteless scenes, (luckily for her!) Anyway, this awkward mix of artistic art-house beauty and ugly pornography don't really work. and it's a shame because much of the film really is gorgeous to look at, atmospheric and sad. In more capable hands, "Satan's Baby Doll" could have been a true cult classic. what we have instead is a result of a film maker who could not seem to make up his mind, whether he wanted to create art, or garbage. Strangely the end result is artistic garbage. i don't think i have ever seen any film as uneven as this; did it have two directors?