Tuesday 16 March 2010

Malabimba, the Malicious Whore (1979)

Malabimba, the Malicious Whore is often dismissed as yet another 1970s Italian rip-off of The Exorcist, but the similarities are actually purely superficial. This is a typically over-the-top slice of Italian horror eurosleaze, which is fortunately just the sort of thing I enjoy!

Andrea Karoli has some problems. The family is wealthy, but the wealth is mostly in the hands of his brother Adolfo. Adolfo is more or less bed-ridden and cannot speak. Andrea’s mother wants him to marry his sister-in-law Nais when Adolfo dies, to keep the family money in the family. But Andrea is still mourning the death of his wife, and isn’t interested. Despite Nais’s constant sexual taintings. Nais sexually taunts everyone, and her special pleasure is to torment a man enough to persuade him to give her the sort of rough sex she craves.

Andrea has even bigger problems than this. There’s his 16-year-old daughter Bimba. Bimba is going through a difficult stage. A difficult stage that involves wandering about naked and talking dirty at the dinner table for starters, but soon progresses to much greater heights (or depths) of depravity. She also has a tendency to speak in a strange slightly gravelly voice, a voice that sounds too deep and too old for her. Is it possibly that something happened during the séance at the beginning of the film, when the medium made contact with Andrea’s dead wife?

Bimba’s hobby is watching other people having sex, and she tries to persuade her aunt Sofiato join her in these innocent pleasures. Her aunt, being a nun, isn’t keen but is eventually persuaded. Sofia is hoping to save Bimba, but Bimba has other disturbing habits. Like trying to persuade Sofia out of her habit and into Bimba’s bed. Bimba also likes to have sex with her teddy bear.

As you might expect events start to spiral out of control as Bimba becomes more and more sexually obsessed. Meanwhile Nais has managed to get Andrea into her bed for some hot sex, proceedings that are watched with interest by Bimba and her aunt the nun.

Since both films deal with the possession of a teenage girl the comparisons to The Exorcist are obvious, but really they’re too obvious. Bimba is not possessed by Satan, or by demons, but by the spirit of her deceased mother. And that spirit wants to corrupt Aunt Sofia, who had apparently rejected her sexual advances when she was alive. And while The Exorcist is little more than religious propaganda, a dire warning about the dangers of the Evil One, in Malabimba the possession is much more overtly sexual in nature. It’s a movie about the horrors of adolescence and the sexual turmoil that it brings rather than being movie about the Devil.

Malabimba is certainly a whole lot sleazier than The Exorcist. I saw the unrated version, but there’s also an even sleazier version with hardcore inserts which were added later (a fate that befell quite a few eurohorror movies). The unrated version is more than sleazy enough. And while it’s an unashamed piece of sexploitation Malabimba is also a whole lot more entertaining than The Exorcist, and not just because of the copious quantities of sex and nudity. It’s also a more interesting movie. The idea of adolescence, malevolent possession and sexual obsession being intimately linked works well.

The acting is mostly reasonably good. Katell Laennec as Bimba is the standout performer, in what was unfortunately her only movie role. She’s truly remarkable, managing to achieve just the right combination of innocence and depravity.

Severin have done a fine job as usual with the DVD release.

This is a fun combination of sex, sleaze and genuine horror combined with considerable flair by director Andrea Bianchi. What more could you want?

7 comments:

Nigel M said...

Hi, the version I have has the hardcore inserts intact.

My review, as yet unposted managed to boil the film down to two sentences :) hehe.

I think without the hardcore segments that perk the film up a bit I wouldnt be in such a rush to watch it again.

Out of interest, is it filmed in the same castle as Lickerish Quartet? I had a feeling it was but couldnt be sure without watching again and I am in no hurry to watch again without a fastforward to the money shot and a box of kleenex at hand (I can't believe I just wrote that!!!!)

venoms5 said...

I've been putting off buying this one for a long time now, but considering how sleazy and nasty Bianchi's other movies are, I might be inclined to fork over the $20 for the disc. Nice review as usual, D!

dfordoom said...

Nigel, it could be filmed in the same castle as Lickerish Quartet. I must confess I probably wasn't concentrating on the architecture as much as I should have been!

dfordoom said...

venoms5, I haven't seen any of Bianchi's other movies, but after this one I'm prepared to give them a go. Any particular recommendations?

venoms5 said...

CRY OF A PROSTITUTE (1974) and BURIAL GROUND aka NIGHTS OF TERROR from 1981. Both of those are sleaze in the extreme. The former is an Italian crime movie starring Henry Silva and Barbara Bouchet. The latter is an Italian zombie movie. If you get a hold of a copy of CRY OF A PROSTITUTE, make sure it's the uncut version.

dfordoom said...

venoms5, It looks like the only available version of Cry of a Prostitute (from Televista) is fullscreen and heavily cut, alas.

venoms5 said...

I have the non English friendly Italian Flamingo DVD as well as a fansubbed edition for the dialog scenes that were cut from the US version. The fansubbed edition uses the complete Italian version with the English dub track.

This site here carries the fansubbed edition. It's listed as GUNS OF THE BIGSHOTS.

http://www.trash-online.com/main2.htm

I've bought a handful of discs from this site myself, D. Also, I reviewed CRY OF A PROSTITUTE last year I think if you're curious to see what it looks like.