Satan’s Baby Doll DVD review

The short review:

Satan’s Baby Doll is another release by Shameless. If you digged their previous DVDs of classic Eurotrash, you’re gonna like this one, too. If you don’t like their output, then stay clear.

Three stars. The end.

The longer review:

Directed by sleeze veteran and future Italian porn director Mario Bianchi (under the slightly ludicrous nom-de-plume Alan W. Cools), Satan’s Baby Doll is a remake of Andrea Bianchi’s (no relation) Malabimba.

The plot itself is just a pretence for showing as much skin as possible in its short 75 minute running time. Following the death of her mother, a young girl gets possessed by her spirit (read: walks around naked a lot) and goes to lengths to avenge her mother’s murder (read: in various disguises beds just about anyone in the castle before seeing them all being topped off).

This is one of those Italian productions that, for obvious financial reasons, is limited to just one single location, a very Gothic looking castle, and only uses a small cast of clichéd characters including the dysfunctional family, a nun, a doctor with wandering eyes and some mystic of sorts.

The most familiar looking actor is Aldo Sambrell who featured in Leone’s Man With No Name trilogy as well as alongside Caroline Munro in The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad and can certainly lay claim to being a genuine Spanish character actor. Here, however, we have the doubtful pleasure of seeing his manhood exposed through a loose fitting nightgown while running around the castle’s corridors.

Most of the other actors will not be as familiar to the audience and at least the female ones were primarily hired for their sizzling good looks and their willingness to drop their clothes at a moment’s notice.

Special mention should go to Mariangela Giordano as Sol, the resident nun, who displays the most athletic body this side of Ursula Andress and at the very least appears to have had some career of sorts. Something that cannot be said for gorgeous looking lead Jacqueline Dupré, for whom this is the one and only film credit.

This film is one of those Italian productions that rely heavily on scenes in which nothing much happens other than watching the lingering looks of male characters secretly observing attractive females in the buff while the same five notes of the film’s soundtrack are repeated ad infinitum.

Speaking of which, is it just me or is that the biggest Goblin-inspired rip-off ever courtesy of composer Nico Cantanese? All that was missing were some crazy lines declaring that “the witch is dead” and we could have been in a different and altogether better movie than the present.

There are actually some inspired moments of madness in the film that transport the production to somewhere near Gagaland. One of the most eye raising moments of any production must come when we see the resident mystic perform something resembling crazy reiki for no apparent reason on a mummy. Or what about the final scene that can best be described as a naked lesbian murderous sex romp with a corpse? Not something you see a lot these days.

And before you ask, there is no babydoll in sight anywhere. Not even a baby or a doll. And as for Satan, he may be hinted at but never makes a personal appearance either. The film’s Italian title, La Bimba di Satana (Satan’s girl), more correctly focuses on its female lead. Then again, yet another version of the movie is also known as Orgasmo di Satana. No translation needed here, I think.

The Shameless print is in Italian with English subs. Some more explicit scenes that were excised from a previous Region 1 release, but had been available on a German DVD of the movie, are included and can easily be identified by their scratchy and washed up quality. These are primarily shots of additional scenes of nudity. The Shameless DVD has, however, not included two hardcore scenes that were also available on the German release and, though more complete than the US release from Severin, can therefore not claim to be completely uncut.

Extras

Extras are relatively slim and include the film’s trailer, a different version of Sambrell’s gown scene (Too. Much. Info.), an alternate opening copied from the German DVD and a text biography of Mariangela Giordano together with scores and scores of trailers for other Shameless releases.

Overall, this is an enjoyable nonsensical slice of Eurotrash, however, with too little plot to be of interest to anyone outside the small niche camp of Italian sex/horror aficionados.

Satan’s Baby Doll is out now and available from the Den Of Geek Store.