La bambola di Satana Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		1.5

La bambola di Satana Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 23, 2016

It’s always fun to listen to a commentary where even the (unseen) talking heads have a hard time coming up with anything really positive to say about the film they’re commenting on. That’s often the case with the amusing commentary track by David Del Valle and Derek Botelho on La bambola di Satana, a 1969 quasi-giallo that was evidently considered lost for quite some time, and which some folks (including the commentators) may feel really should have continued to be out of sight and therefore hopefully also out of mind. A rather static and often lumbering affair, La bambola di Satana has a number of typical giallo trappings, but it’s rather peculiarly bloodless (in every sense of that word) and never really works up much if any suspense. As Del Valle and Botelho mention, the film is full of sometimes disparate referents, including everything from the Corman Poe films to more of an Agatha Christie ambience, but that hodgepodge of influences never gels into anything very satisfactory.

A rather Corman-esque castle on a hill is surrounded by a weird purple miasma which is later hinted may be the effects of a rather large uranium deposit underneath the premises, a “MacGuffin” of sorts that propels the “plot” forward while also hilariously avoiding the question of what that amount of uranium in close quarters might have done to the health of the coterie of people staying at the castle. Elizabeth (Erna Schurer) is the ostensible heir to the castle, and is returning to the site of the edifice for the first time in many years, accompanied by her boyfriend Jack (Roland Carey). The castle is manned (and womanned) by a patently weird staff that includes butler Eduardo (Manlio Salvatori) and a kind of uptight secretary-housekeeper type named Carol (Lucia Bomez, credited as Lucie Bomez).

La bambola di Satana starts assembling what would seem to be some promising elements as soon as Elizabeth and Jack arrive at the castle, but it repeatedly wastes any ostensible intrigue in static, talky sequences (including a number of “family dinners”), as well as cutaways to some patently odd scenes at the local dining establishment (where some of the funniest dancing you’ve ever seen takes place). It’s obvious that supposed director Ferruccio Casapinta wants to hint at terror lurking around the corner, but he simply doesn’t know how to get there (that “supposed” delineation is due to the fact that Schurer is on record as stating the director, whose only credit is this, was clueless and that the AD actually did virtually all of the real directing for the film).

The film is almost maddeningly ham handed in some of its plot mechanics and especially its presentational style. Are we to assume that an underhanded villain (or villainess) is drugging hapless Elizabeth, something that leads to a series of kind of comic hallucinatory sequences that involve nudity? Or are we to assume that Elizabeth is as mentally unbalanced as the wheelchair bound woman she finds hidden away in a bedroom supposedly is? By the time the film actually gets around to utilizing one of the most tried and true tropes of giallo, the black gloved (and never clearly seen) killer, there are already too many questions and nowhere near enough answers.

Nothing really makes a whale of a lot of sense in La bambola di Satana, least of all an unintentionally hilarious climax that witnesses the gruesome death of a schemer, only to have another character arrive to rip off a rubber mask (Scooby Doo style) from the corpse to reveal another schemer. (This sequence offers what is perhaps my all time favorite reaction shot to someone getting horrifyingly impaled by a sharp object. Please refer to screenshot 19.) The whole “reason” behind what’s been going on is patently obvious from virtually the get go, and it’s frankly ludicrous the lengths to which this film goes to finally reveal all.

As Del Valle and Botelho admit in their often very amusing commentary, La bambola di Satana isn’t even bad enough to be “good”, a la the “best” of Ed Wood. This is one giallo that could have used the judicious pruning expertise of The Editor.

La bambola di Satana Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

La bambola di Satana is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.86:1. For a supposedly "lost" film, a great deal of this transfer looks quite good, though there is a bit of inconsistency with regard to both sharpness and grain structure that makes me wonder if this was perhaps cobbled together from different source elements. Contrast, for example, sharpness and grain between screenshots 7 and 11, two of the softer and grainier looking moments, with most of the others accompanying this review for some indication of the differences on display. In moments like those shown in these two screenshots, the grain structure assumes almost a crosshatched appearance at times. While a lot of the rest of the transfer is a good deal sharper and better defined, there's nothing approaching contemporary levels of clarity (not that there should be), and in fact some moments simply look out of focus (see screenshot 16). The palette is refreshingly vivid throughout the presentation, with reds and yellows especially impressive. Some of the dark scenes, especially those in the underground lair beneath the castle, offer only minimal shadow definition.

La bambola di Satana Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

La bambola di Satana features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track in the original Italian with optional English subtitles. There's very little to stretch one's sound system in this pretty talky and relatively effects-free soundtrack. Dialogue comes through just fine, and the film's score by Franco Potenza also sounds clear and problem free. Dynamic range is pretty restrained, especially by traditional giallo and/or horror standards, but fidelity is fine if not overly impressive.

La bambola di Satana Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Isolated Score and Effects Track is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0.


• Audio Commentary features David Del Valle and Derek Botelho.

La bambola di Satana Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I've watched La bambola di Satana twice now, once with the commentary track playing, and I'm still not sure what's going on. Maybe that's for the best, considering the bizarrely static feel that permeates the film a lot of the time. This is the very definition of a cult item, and it's an interesting and maybe even brave choice for Twilight Time to release, as I have to assume there's not a huge built in market for a title like this. Video quality is a little inconsistent, but audio is fine and the commentary quite enjoyable for those considering a purchase.