The Doll of Satan

As we all know by now, Italy has several million huge castles within its borders and all of them are either filled with soul dead hipsters bent on murdering each other, or incestuous siblings, or men in drag who murder women, or are just plain haunted by either Barbara Steele or someone related to her, or maybe Barbara Steele haunting herself. The Doll of Satan tries to mix up most of these elements to keep things going, but then forgets to add a bit of spice to the mix.

Elizabeth has just been bequeathed one of these huge castles by her late uncle and is heading there with her hipster boyfriend to check out what's going down. The lady in charge there, Claudine, seems to think that Elizabeth's uncle wanted to sell the house, which is all new to Elizabeth. Worse still, Claudine puts the willies up Elizabeth by telling her of the ghost of a past relative, also called Elizabeth, and that the ghost of her lover stills walks the walls of the castle. Oh, and by the way Elizabeth, have you noticed that new torture dungeon downstairs? Claudine got it from Ikea.

Throw in a mysterious lover for Claudine and a ton of dodgy characters up to something (a guy in a bar, a hippy lady who draws pictures in the countryside, a friendly neighbour who stops Elizabeth walking into quicksand (?)), a black gloved killer who doesn't really kill many people at all, some erotic dreams and an insane person kept in a locked room and you're really ticking a lot of boxes here. You're also taking a lot of time throwing all these details in and although the film looks great, it's kind of good but not great too.

The vengeful dog bit was great though! The film needed more eccentric bits like that. No giallo fan is going to hate this film, but then any casual viewers will probably end up wondering what the fuss is all about. If you're going to show you're granny this, as people often do with gialli ("Hey gran - let's watch Iguana with the Tongue of Fire!") DO NOT get this film mixed up with Satan's Baby Doll. That's one you'll want to watch on your own. With some Kleenex.

With a cob-webbed plot creakier than Miss Marple's bowling shoes, and a deliciously Scooby Doo'd twist, director Ferruccio Casapinta's audacious hybrid of Gothic black-gloved giallo, and pulpy Edgar Wallace castle-set calamity proves to be a bit of a camp classic in spite of itself! While nowhere near as phantasmagorically perverse as, Polseli's 'Black Magic Rites!', or Bianchi's sleazy 'Satan's Baby Doll', it has a engagingly skewed Gothic vibe many Euro-schlock seekers may find irresistible! Distractingly perky blonde Elizabeth Ball Janon (Erna Schurer) inherits a forbidding castle estate worthy of Frederick Usher himself, and even before the delectable Schurer has sinuously slinked into her slinkiest of nighties, some sinister, castle-creeping creep has slipped poor Elizabeth a mickey, and she suffers the most terrible visions, her S&M tormented think sponge begins to soak up all these saucy shenanigans as some prototypically elusive Giallo misfit attempts to surreptitiously snuff out all the guests; but just who is the shadow stalking snuffer, and what exactly might their murderous agenda be?

'La Bambola Di Satana' aka 'The Doll of Satan' is a wickedly warped, captivatingly kitsch whodunnit, while ultimately a little tame, its satanic nature, no less diminutive than petite scream dream Schurer, but Ferruccio Casapinta's swinging sixties, ominously outlandish, pop-gothic mystery, with its en suite, fully loaded torture chamber, hot and cold running lunatics, 24hr meth lab, conveniently located burial plots, and tantalizingly torrid terror plots guarantees your shuddersome stay in the hysterically horror-haunted Ball Janon castle will be a far from uneventful experience! Beguilingly steeped in kinky atmosphere, this endearingly quirky 60s Italian creepshow is certainly not without its charming eccentricities, and the fabulously funky, ear-wormingly groovy score by Franco Potenza is one of the more maddeningly compelling aspects to Casapinta's vastly underappreciated, sweetly sadistic Gothic fantasy.

Elisabeth visits the ancestral castle for the reading of her late uncle's will.But the legend of the castle's ghost is only one of her problems-she starts having disturbing erotic nightmares and is abducted by a hooded figure who imprisons her in the torture dungeon.These vivid dreams are in fact nightmares and not a carefully stage-managed reality designed to drive her mad or to her death.Her boyfriend Jack suspects that someone is after her inheritance and begins his own investigation...Very colorful and atmospheric Italian giallo set in a medieval Italian castle with catacombs and torture devices.The killings are very tame and bloodless,there is a black-gloved killer stalking his victims and a little bit of soft eroticism.The wolves howling outside in the dark add a lot to the atmosphere.8 out of 10.

After inheriting her family's castle, a woman struggles to believe a family legend about her barbaric ancestors coming back to haunt her, which is being played up by her relatives to allow them access to uranium deposits underneath the castle, and must race to stop their plans.

This was a massively dull and barely worthwhile genre effort. Among the few positives to be had here is the film's use of bridging together the kind of storyline that links Gothic horror and giallo together. The central premise here about her returning home only to be confronted with the strange killer provides the kind of setting that brings about glorious Gothic horror shenanigans only utilized too frequently at the start of the decade with the proceedings bringing about family curses, long-held secret relations, a family with a dark, tragic past, and putting the whole thing into a multi-tiered Gothic castle. The first half of this one, with the arrival at the castle and the series of explanations looking at the different aspects of the family legacy coming back to haunt them, makes for a great case, tying into that environment where we get to see the whole thing taking place in a glorious Gothic castle. With some hints along the way that something is targeting her, from the visions of hooded figures trying to kill her or the series of revelations that take place in the finale, it all comes together well enough to have some positives. Outside of that, though, there's just not much here to work with. That's mainly due to the utterly bland and just absolutely lifeless storyline at play here, where it's not geared at all for genre thrills in any regard. The film tends to spend most of the running time explaining what's going on in long, drawn-out conversations around the castle where they tend to spew out the background information on the family curse and how it starts to affect them that are just dull and lifeless to sit through, and the repeated nature of this tactic to explain why she's returned and how everything comes together don't help much. That there's far more of this kind of activity on-screen than any kind of genuine genre shenanigans, whether it be the stalking scenes of the hooded killer looking to keep the whole thing a secret, and there's just nothing interesting happening for so long because of these scenes that it becomes quite difficult to get through. On top of that, with the film suffering from a slew of technical issues that range from lackluster gore, the way-too-bright castle that looks good but zaps the tension, and a series of bad day-for-night shots to show off how cheap it is, these are what hold this down.

Today's Rating/R: Violence, Language, and Brief Nudity.

A courageous french dvd editor released this early rare giallo from 1969, and it's a nice surprise, a blend of moody giallo (black-leathered masked criminal, sexy Erna Shurer, tough Roland Carey, jazzy psychedelic score, moody photography, light erotic scenes), of gothic (light torture scenes) and pure amateurism. Yes amateurism, the director is completely unkown, the fabulous documentary on bonus tells us it is the director of photography Francesco Atteni who really directed, but he was a very minor technician with few movies in his filmography, like there were so many in Italy. Even if this "Bambola di Satana" hasn't got the level of early giallos by Mario Bava, Romolo Guerrieri (with Caroll Baker), Umberto Lenzi (again with Caroll Baker, unforgettable) or Emilio Miraglia, it still suits for giallo fans.