BA_Harrison Directed by Andrea Bianchi, the man who also gave us the hilariously trashy Italian zombie classic Burial Ground and the magnificently sleazy giallo Strip Nude for Your Killer, Malabimba is a fairly humdrum tale of possession, clearly inspired by The Exorcist but given a massive shot in the arm by the presence of some serious Euro-babeage and the inclusion of several very steamy scenes, some of which even enter XXX territory thanks to the use of hardcore insert shots.Star of the film is the rather lovely Katell Laennec who plays sixteen year old Bimba Karoli, whose over-protective father Andrea keeps her away from the rest of the world in the family castle, which is also home to several other relatives. During a séance, intended to allow Andrea to contact his dead wife Daniela, Bimba becomes possessed by the spirit of evil ancestor Lucrezia and is transformed into a sexual deviant. Apprentice nun Sister Sofia (Mariangela Giordano) realises the truth, but can she save Bimba without falling victim to Lucrezia's seductive power herself?Lots of shots of luscious Laennec in the altogether indulging in all manner of perversion; Giordano whipping off her wimple and habit to get saucy; and busty blonde Patrizia Webley (as Bimba's nympho aunt Nais) making a couple of the men in the castle very happy chappies indeed: despite the rather mediocre plot, Bianchi's film has more than enough quality sleaze to ensure a good time, with the added explicit footage only making matters even more seedy.In the film's predictable finale (if you've seen The Exorcist, that is), Sofia sacrifices herself by becoming the vessel for Lucrezia's corruptive spirit and promptly dives head-first off the castle's ramparts before she is able to succumb to sin. What a waste of a randy nun!Interestingly, a virtual remake of Malabimba—entitled La Bimba di Satana (Satan's Baby Doll)— was directed the following year by Mario Bianchi (no relation of Andrea, as far as I can find out); the uncut version of that film also featured several equally explicit sex scenes but the tortuously slow pacing and shoddy direction made it a far less entertaining affair than it's predecessor.

The_Void Ah...you've got to love seventies exploitation. What we basically have here is a rip-off of The Exorcist; except instead of spewing green gunge all over the place and turning her head round 180 degrees; the possessed in this film becomes addicted to sex. Anyone going into this expecting a horror film is liable to be extremely disappointed; but director Andrea Bianchi serves up plenty of lurid sex scenes, and anyone that knows of his work (Strip Nude for Your Killer, What the Pepper Saw) is likely to have been expecting that anyway! The film focuses on a young (apparently sixteen year old) girl named Bimba. Bimba lives in an old castle along with several of her relatives. Some members of her family, for some reason, conduct a séance and apparently it went wrong and the young girl has began acting strangely. She has become obsessed with sex and begins seducing other people in the household; including her own family members.Malabimba has a reputation for being sleazy; and that reputation is not exactly unfounded. The sex scenes are shot as gratuitously as possible and the film is rather erotic in places. It's not all just regular sex scenes either, and Andrea Bianchi has been kind enough to include perversions such as incest and lesbianism into the mix. The title character is played by Katell Laennec (who, incidentally, never made another film) and the actress seems very at home during her numerous sex scenes. She is a little androgynous if you ask me, though. The central location works well and the director adequately ensures that we are always aware of the fact that what is happening is isolated from society at large. There's not a great deal of atmosphere in the film, however, although clearly the sleaze was always intended as the main focus. The film saves its best sex scene until last and the ending wraps things up nicely. Overall, this film certainly won't appeal to everyone; but if you like your Italian sleaze, you owe it to yourself to track this flick down!

MARIO GAUCI Expecting an unashamed Italian rip-off of a Hollywood box office success to turn out into something remotely as good as its original source is like being born a millionaire (i.e. only one in a million {sic}) – and this belated eroticized EXORCIST-clone is no exception to the rule. Still, being aware of its notoriety for a couple of years (via "Stracult", an essential tome on Euro-Cult I picked up at the 2004 Venice Film Festival), I was rather looking forward to Severin's recently released DVD. However, the first online reviews I came across were far from encouraging...As it turned out, I found MALABIMBA not to be as bad as I was being led to believe and certainly deserving of its ungodly reputation for sleazy exploitation. In fact, I chose to watch the lengthier "Integral Version" of the film (which adds some 10 minutes of horrendously preserved expository footage – not too dissimilar in quality, in fact, to the R2 disc of WITCHFINDER GENERAL [1968]) and it's an enjoyably trashy ride. There's nudity galore and unlimited camp value (and, consequently, unintentional hilarity) as in the opening séance (with a man's zipper being undone by itself and a big-breasted woman going suddenly topless!) and Bimba's penchant (while possessed by her black sheep of an ancestor's evil spirit) for humping her teddy-bears!! The over-the-top dialogue, then, gives the whole a faux-sophisticated air which raises it slightly above its tawdry origins.As opposed to other Italian variants on THE EXORCIST (1973) I've watched – like Alberto De Martino's interesting THE ANTICHRIST (1974) and Mario Bava's wretched THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM (1975) – the film under review is (as was to be expected) more often sleazy than scary, thus also inviting comparison to contemporaneous Italian films of the "naughty teen" variety like Fernando Di Leo's LA SEDUZIONE (1973) and PECCATI IN FAMIGLIA (1975). Which brings us to the hardcore inserts; the film's numerous sex scenes are lengthy and flatly shot which, frankly, stop the narrative dead in its tracks (much like what happens in Jess Franco's movies). Still, director Andrea Bianchi may not even be in the league of a Franco (and certainly not Walerian Borowczyk) but his camera is, during the quieter moments, admirably mobile with the great location of the old castle enriching the film's interesting depiction of a decaying aristocracy; the score – with its accompanying spooky ghost sighs during the possession sequences – is also quite notable.Luscious short-cropped redhead Katell Laennec (whose only film this proved to be!) looks like a more sensual version of a young Shirley MacLaine; she is quite good in the role but should perhaps have tried to vary her range a little more in conveying possession than by just narrowing her eyes. Mariangela Giordano (who would go on to reprise the role of the nun in the 1982 remake; see below) is decent enough but the fact that Patrizia Webley is even more of an irrepressible nymphomaniac than her possessed niece in the first place, rather defeats the purpose of the whole enterprise!

lazarillo This isn't necessarily a high compliment, but this might be the best of the many Italian rip-offs of "The Exorcist". It's definitely better than bigger budgeted nonsense like "Beyond the Door" and "The Temptor". It may be kind of a toss-up between this film where Mariangela Giordana plays a middle-age nun engaging in hot inter-generational lesbian sex with her demon-possessed teenage charge and "The Sexorcist" where Ivan Rassimov plays a demon/Christ statue come to life who pulls himself off a crucifix and nails, in quite a different sense, a sexy female artist. I guess what it comes to though is that I'd rather see Giordano naked than Rassimov (that or I'm just a sucker for nun-related, inter-generation lesbian scenes). This movie does much more faithfully follow the plot of the "The Exorcist". The possessed girl, Bimba, lives in an old castle with sundry relatives and a nun guardian. She is somewhat older than Ravin in "The Exorcist"--the character is supposedly sixteen but the actress (the never-to-be-seen-again Katell Laennac)looks to be a few years older than that. This is no doubt a good thing as she spends the movie graphically masturbating with stuffed animals, spying on her sleazy aunt having sex with her uncle and her widowed father, dispatching an unfortunate (or lucky?)elderly relative with a fatal bout of oral favors, or having the aforementioned lesbian sex with Giordano.This movie works for two reasons. The first is the director Andreas Bianchi who, though far less prolific, was a lot like Spanish auteur Jesus Franco in his ability to take irredeemably sleazy material like this and make it somehow oddly watchable. Bianchi's work includes "What the Peeper Saw" which offered the unusual pairing of Swedish sex kitten Britt Ekland and the kid from "Oliver", scuzzy giallo favorite "Strip Nude for Your Killer" where the usually classy Edwige Fenech simulated both oral and anal sex (not surprisingly, it's the only recent DVD release she hasn't provided any commentary for), and his follow-up to this film "Burial Ground" again with Giordano who this time gets her latex nipple bitten off by a strange-looking dwarf who is supposed to be her zombified son. Which brings me to the second reason:the infamous Mariangela Giordano. Although she is sometimes labeled a "scream queen" this label doesn't really fit Giordano as she was an actress for twenty-five years in Italian genre films before she ever started doing nude sex scenes in sleazy horror movies like this in her early 40's (during her marriage to producer Crisanti). She proved so good at it though that even years later when she appeared in Michael Soavi's "The Sect" she has a scene as the world's sexiest 53-year-old naked corpse! But besides having a virtually un-aging body, she was a pretty decent actress. It is a testament to her thespian abilities that this sultana of sleaze is even remotely believable as a nun. (And if her initial seduction by the possessed teenager seems amazing just wait around for the "exorcism").The only serious downside to this movie is the inclusion in most available versions of unappetizing hardcore "inserts". In this case though they may, at least, have involved the original talent: Bianchi often did hardcore work, the actress playing the aunt certainly looks like a porn star,and even Laennac at one point shares the screen with a visibly aroused male. Still these scenes could easily be lost. It's a sufficiently sleazy and enjoyable movie without them.