Satan's Baby Doll (1982)

MAY 3, 2012

GENRE: POSSESSION, REVENGE
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Discovering that there’s actually an "adult" version of Satan’s Baby Doll (Italian: La Bimba Di Satana) with 10 extra minutes of hardcore sex actually answered one of my questions about it: why is it so talky? For a horror film there aren’t really a lot of scares or kills, and folks just stand around talking forever, even more so than a typical “kind of slow” movie. But knowing it was basically a porno at one point explains that – they needed to give the, uh, “active” audience a chance to recharge, and it would probably be kind of weird to ask them to get drawn into any scare scenes. Gross, yes, but it explains a lot.

But even with the excess of talking and the lack of full blown horror, it’s a delightfully odd little slice of trash that I’d recommend to anyone with 73 minutes to kill. The plot involves a woman possessing her daughter in order to get revenge on her husband (who murdered her) so she can finally be together with her lesbian lover, so it’s already the best movie I’ve seen all week. And a guy assaults a rooster at one point, which… actually why bother trying to follow up on that.

It’s also got a lot of what I assume are badly translated lines, or maybe the people are just more despicable and dumb than I suspected. One character is said to have “always dreamed of desecrating a temple”, which is kind of an odd goal to have, and it doesn’t seem too hard, really. Just go in and knock over something sacred and you’re done! There’s also a bit where a doctor is killed in their castle, and they decide that they’ll tell everyone it was an accident. Fair enough, but then they opt to bury the body in the cellar and dump his car in the lake, which would seemingly undermine the whole “accident” idea. But fear not, because the main asshole explains if anyone finds the car, the slime in the water will explain the lack of a body? Maybe they live by the lake from Creepshow 2 or something, I dunno.

Another perk: the main girl, Jacqueline Dupre, is a knockout, and spends most of the movie disrobed (and even pleasuring herself at least once). And I think she’s of age, which is a relief after the last couple of Eurosleaze movies that I’ve seen starred girls who were only 15 or 16 at the time (I’d assume if she was also underage it would be in the trivia, like those other films). You can watch this without feeling like a scumbag, yay! Sadly this appears to be her only movie – her only other IMDb credit is for performing with an orchestra for a TV movie, and I suspect that’s actually a mistake for another woman with the same name. She’s not bad, relative to other films of this type, and I’d think her looks and obvious lack of modesty would have secured her a few other films even if she was the worst actress of all time, so it’s a bummer this is her only role. Hell, I’d watch her in a family movie.

But man, the chatter can get on your nerves. Not sure if this is always the case, but the subtitles on Severin’s disc are often jammed together and a bit early or late, which can render some scenes a bit confusing because it’s hard to tell who is saying what. However, there’s no real way around it since no one ever shuts up – only a dub would help, and while I don’t usually care I know most folks prefer the original language, making Severin’s choice the lesser of two evils.

The disc has two extras, a rather clunky (but honest!) trailer that features full frontal nudity for both sexes (a rarity), and an interview with director Mario Bianchi. It’s kind of dry compared to others of this type, and by that I mean he doesn’t slam the actors or tell stories that would probably get someone banned from Hollywood for sharing on a DVD, like most of his peers. He mostly seems like a guy who has accepted that he never had a big career (he frequently mentions how he’d like to have done bigger budget movies with bigger stars), and thinks highly of the people who he worked with. Admirable to be sure, but not particularly enlightening. He only talks about this movie for less than half the 18 minute runtime, and most of his memories of it are vague (he doesn’t even recall Dupre’s name, just “the young girl”). In 30 years no one has really dug up any info on the movie, so I guess it’s fitting that the director is no help. It exists and it’s kind of fun, and that’s about it.

What say you?

P.S. Below trailer has been modified to be more work safe, for those of you can't wait to get home to watch it.

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