Goddamn Brownies

I'm not sure how many of you who read my blog share my taste in movies. I know a number of you are into horror, but some of the weirder offerings may be lost to some of you. This is why I have decided to periodically post a review of sorts on some, possibly, little know film or just something I think you should see. We'll start it all off with a little Italian 70s sexploitation.

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I'll start off by saying this is not a movie for everyone. I know the title, Malabimba - The Malicious Whore sounds innocent enough, but this is no kid's movie. Italian director Andrea Bianchi (credited here as Andrew White) is no stranger to the sleazy sexploitation genre, or to having completely awesome titles for his film, having already directed the 1975 giallo Strip Nude for Your Killer. With Malabimba Bianchi manages to take a borrowed plot, sex it up and make it oddly entertaining and even watchable.

A young girl known as Bimba is possessed after a séance is conducted within the castle in which she lives. This turns the normal happy sixteen year old into a sex hungry beast. She lives here with her recently widowed father, some assorted relatives and a nun caretaker. They are all shocked by the strange things the young girl is doing, and people end up dying. Aunt Nais cannot keep her hands of Bimba's father as she witnesses while spying on their trysts. Doctors cannot find anything wrong with the girl and things just get worse, so the nun agrees to take over caring for the girl.

That is the basic plot, though it is hard to express the trashiness in words. I guess you could just say it is The Exorcist with a ton of full frontal nudity, that is probably more accurate. The connections between the two films are very clear. Bimba even disrupts a party, though instead of urinating on the rug she reveals her naked body to the room full of people. There have been quite a few rip-offs of The Exorcist, sleaze or otherwise, but this one manages to keep a relatively good group of actors and production value.

Let's be honest. If you want to know anything at all about this film it is not the plot. I'll get right to the sleaze. There are extended scenes of sexual gratification of all types. If they were to be removed from the movie the 85 minute running time would probably drop to just over an hour. Even though there is a hardcore XXX version of the flick, where all of the sex scenes go to full penetration, this is sleazy enough and does not go too far off the scale. That is not to say some of the scenes are a little ridiculous. There is a scene where Bimba, a very attractive young actress named Katell Laennec in her only role, pleasures herself with a teddy bear and stabs a phallic candle in its crotch for all to see. Bimba also kills a bedridden relative while giving him some oral pleasure, a very interesting scene. All of you nun fans will not be disappointed when Bimba and her nun (played by Mariangela Giordano, who also is in a very similar film a few years later called La Bimba di Satana) have some "fun" together in which the demon is transferred. This is much like what happens with Regan and Father Karras, if they were lesbians of course.

This disc from Severin Films includes a theatrical trailer, some deleted scenes (which can be included back into the film) that look to be ripped from a VHS somwhere and a sixteen minute look back at the film with Giordano and cinematographer Franco Villa. This film holds up rather well as a sleazy demonic possession film and fans of Jess Franco or Joe D'Amato will not be disappointed.