Unrated Edition
R1 DVD
Severin Films
Malabimba:The
Malicious Whore opens with a séance you will not easily forget. Andrea Karioli
has continued to grieve for his wife Daniela who died many years previously. In
a last ditch attempt to make contact with her spirit, he hires a well respected
local medium. Things do not go as
planned, rather than Daniela making contact and confirming their love has
continued after death, Lucrezia a sex obsessed ancestor puts in an appearance.
It seems she either committed suicide or was murdered by one of her many lovers
and she is not happy. She wreaks havoc on the household tearing off women’s
clothes, undoing men’s zips and roaring like a wind through the castle. After
she calls them all as whores, pimps and all manner of other expressive phrases,
she takes possession of the body of Bimba, the sixteen year old daughter of
Andrea.
Andrea
Bianchi is a well known Italian filmmaker who made a range of Giallo thrillers
including Strip Nude for your Killer. Here he has clearly taken the lead from
The Exorcist and adapted it into Euro trash conventions. Gone is the innocent
pain of a young possessed girl, here were have the uncontrollable sexuality of
a sixteen year old girl possessed by a nymphomaniac spirit. This is no average
nympho, she takes everything she can get. We have scenes of rough sex,
masturbation, sex with fluffy toys (from a bear to a Christmas elf), incest
(she tries to seduce her dad and then kills her uncle with some accomplished
mouth work) and finally, the crowning glory, she seduces Sister Sofia.
The
climax is a twist as it seems that naughty old Lucrezia was after the Nun after
all and after a rather nice soliloquy about lust, Sofia throws herself off the
castle wall saving poor Bimba’s soul, even though Bimba’s body is already quite
worse for wear !
This
is a superbly perverse film, packed with sex, demonic possession and family
squabbles. This is the unrated edition and certainly packs a nice punch; it is
suitably explicit, at times erotic, at other times perverse. It has a great
sense of dark humour as it ridicules the pretensions of the rich family at the
centre of the tale and also features a rather cool 70’s soundtrack.
The
DVD release from Severin also includes a selection of deleted scenes which can
also be viewed integrated into the film. I found this the preferred option as
these scenes including quite a lot of back-story as well as a lot of
interesting extra dialogue. These extra scenes are certainly not as clear as
the excellent quality of the print itself, but as this is quite a rare Euro
cult film, to simply have these scenes is marvellous.
Malabimba
Uncovered is an excellent documentary which features modern interviews with
Mariangela Giordano and cinematographer Franco Villa, who relate numerous
stories and anecdotes from the set. They also explain loud and clear that the
hardcore was not shot during the production but created later and added in.
Malabimba
is a superb Euro trash film which has all the sex and strangeness to make it a
must for cult film lovers.
This review will appear in Volume 2 No.2
(2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.
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