Satans Baby Doll

Satan’s Baby Doll

Cinema De Bizarre

DVD-R (E)

Satan’s Baby Doll (1982) aka La Bimba di Satana and Orgasmo di Satana is a notorious Eurosleaze film focused on sex, possession and family dysfunction. The most common version of this film is the softcore release, Cinema De Bizarre have the rare uncut 85 minute edition which includes wallops of wild sex of various forms. In some cases more explicit content takes away from a cult film, but in Satan’s Baby Doll it really adds to the atmosphere. This is a film centred on sex and sleaze and how a wild, highly sexed woman, when murdered by her husband possesses her daughter and uses her to wreak revenge and so all the hardcore action really fits the context of the film. It is beautifully filmed as well as featuring some awesome music, much with an “Exorcist” feel.

Essentially a horny remake of Malabimba, the Malicious Whore, Satan’s Baby Doll takes the sleaze to a whole new level including nearly relentless nudity and sex, strange rites, lesbian nuns, a weird chicken strangling and drug induced madness. Mario Bianchi planned the film with explicit content from the beginning and so the uncut release has a certainly continuity which is certainly lacking in the tamer softcore release.

A wealthy family which lives isolated in a decaying castle is mourning the death of Maria, the wife of rich and arrogant landowner Antonio Aguilar. While it is presumed she has died of a heart attack, it later becomes clear that she was murdered by Antonio due to his intense jealousy, triggered in no mean part by her persistent affairs. Antonio lives with his daughter Miria, his paraplegic brother Ignazio, Ignazio’s carer novice nun Sol and the superstitious servant, Isidro.

Miria, their young daughter is attending the funeral and as she lays flowers on her mother’s beast, the body spasms and seems to gaze into the young girls eyes. Miria is traumatized and this is not helped by the ongoing tensions in the household. Antonio is vicious and self centred, Ignazio is isolated having no use of his body from the neck down and Sol clearly has some problems balancing her lesbian feelings with her vocation.

It seems that the strength at the heart of the family was Maria and since she is gone the family begins to fight and bicker and Antonio’s drug use increases. Soon Miria hears her mother’s voice and goes to the basement to answer her call. When the corpse seems to open its eyes, she faints then becomes hysterical. When the doctor (who also had an affair with Maria) tries to send Miria away from the castle; the killing begins. Maria re-animates (or uses Miria, it is not quite clear) and injects him with embalming fluid in a scene which literally couples sex and death.

Miria is now under the total control of her mother who begins to take revenge on all and sundry. The visual interplay between the older experienced Maria and the young Miria is well done and effective; we are never quite sure who is actually doing the killing. Isidro attempts some strange rite involving a desiccated corpse to expel the spirit from Miria but it does no good and he goes down next. As the body count mounts Antonio seems more interested in seducing Sol than anything else, but this fails as her desires lay elsewhere.

Antonio has now had enough of Sol’s rejections and decides to do away with her reason to be in the castle - his brother (who it seems also had an affair with his wife – she seems to have been a very busy woman!). He takes him to the basement where he aims to leave him to starve to death. However it seems Maria has a different fate in store for Ignazio, she possesses Miria who awakens the dead (literally) with some accomplished mouthwork and then encourages him to walk, letting him fall through the floor.

Of course next Antonio must be taught a lesson and Maria/Miria “mother in daughter’s body” offer a very passionate but fateful revenge.

While there is a masterfully restored edition of the film on the market it is heavily edited. This uncut edition offers all the sleaze one could hope for and is a true eurotrash experience. This is a film designed to be watched with all the sex intact and so I recommend you visit the Cinema De Bizarre website and get yourself a copy. Have a good look through their range while you are there, you are likely to find other rare and obscure gems to titillate and amuse.

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This review will appear in Volume 2 No.6 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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