Review of Malabimba

Malabimba (1979)
7/10
The Exorcist, Italian exploitation style!
12 April 2009
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!
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