Malabimba is a good example about how to do a memorable film, with low budget, and stay present in the mind of the viewers. The idea is present the history of the girl (the only movie of the actress, I don't understand why), when has problems with a subtle entity... And she reacts in a very sexual manner. If you have a little money, and you want to react the Exorcist with low budget, but with dignity, the director choiced the best option. The eurotrash should return: when the people is tired of porn (is always the same, no doubt), if you present a good history with some spice, then the score is so better. I ask all the french, Italian and spanian directors: remember Bianchi, Franco, D'amato, Brass... This is the way.

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!

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!

I had the fortune or misfortune to catch this obscure movie on an art channel from Mexican television. It aired the somehow Cut version which I believe was cut by the channel directors. Anyways, it didn't impress me the first time. So I decided to track a DVD but I was unfortunate enough to find it so I went to an obscure market in Mèxico D.F. and found a VHS copy of "Malabimba" (which was labelled as "Sexually Possessed" or something like that)."The Exorcist" references are obvious but were taken into a disturbing direction. I won't say this is a rip-off of Friedklin's masterpiece but it's obviously inspired by. The plot could be similar to "The Entity" because a sex ghost (properfly named an Incubus) comes to terrorize a young "beautiful" woman. In "Malabimba" a ghost sex possesses a teenager and suddenly her behavior becomes "nasty". And I mean NASTY. She sexually liberates everyone on her way (even her grandfather!)and later kills them. My beef with "Malabimba" is that the plot is executed in a poorly manner. I mean, all the scenes are just excuses to perform hard core sex scenes. So there are creepy and dark moments in the movie but it's all about depravity.The "infamous" teddy bear masturbation scene is exactly what you think. Yes, a really dirty scene which may offend many people. So, after viewing the unrated or uncut version I recommend this one for fans of exploitation and depravity. But I think that this one would be more successful as a hard core sex movie with Horror references.