Well, there are two releases of Satan's Baby Doll, the first released by Severin, a region 1 NTSC DVD, while the other titled Dr Porno Und Dein Satanszombie (Orgasmo de Satana) released by X-rated Kult, a region 2 PAL DVD. Severin's running time is 73 minutes while the X-Rated Kult is at 86, which is 13 minutes longer. What is in those 13 minutes? Well, essentially the R2 version is the XXX cut.

  The two box covers alone are quite different as you can see. The Severin release is more artistic (I think that's a Boris painting?). The X-Rated Kult box comes off more as a porno than a sexy horror film. The back cover shows all the scenes that were cut from the regular release (which is really only 2 scenes), but splatters them on the box cover (screen shots comparisons - Severin on the left, X-rated Kult on the right). 

In any event, the films differ from the moment you press play on on either of them. The opening shots of the Severin version begins with the woman lying down, apparently deceased, with folks lying around, candles organized in a religious ceremonial fashion. The womans arms crossed. The X-Rated version starts out with two women in a heated moment of kissing and touching nude while standing up. This apparently is one of them women who has now died and so we are left, next, with the scene of the woman lying dead. I dont know why this scene was left out of the Severin release, but it gives some logic to the scene (logic here being a relative term).

Severin is in Italian with English subtitles, while the X-rated release is only in Italian and German audio, no subtitles. But its really not too much of a hinderance as there is not much in terms of dialogue. Most of it spoken in the beginning just for the set up of the film, but ultimately there are lots of moans and groams, both of pain and pleasure. The Severin release is far cleaner and brighter than the X-rated release. Its a nice example of how much work Severin puts into their releases and one can really see how well they are able to clean up the film, brighten it to its best potential. I don't think anyone else could have done a better job.

There is not much of a story to the film. A woman (Mary) dies, presumably for having her lesbian affair. This all takes place in a Cathedral-like castle somewhere in Europe. Beneath the Cathedral are some catacombs, and there is a mummified woman there. A nun finds herself becoming possessed by this mummified presence and it turns her into a sexual lunatic.

Meanwhile, the caretaker of the house is on his own trip altogether, shooting up to fill his nighttime boredom. It does not look like any of these people get along, nor do they try to get in each other's way.

A film like this is not set out to tell a great story, but to shock and titilate you, so don't expect anything of an interesting story, but minimally, something that is held together by the smallest of threads.

The first night the nun is "possessed", she plays with herself in bed, while a handicapped man in a wheelchair looks through the doors to watch her. You could see in his by the way the scene is designed, he is full of imagination and wonder as she masturbates. This scenes is cut by a little compared to the X-rated version. 

It is in these scenes that you hear the theme play on and on, over and over. The music reminds me something of a Riz Ortolani theme, but only a clip of it, that repeats itself until you are actually sick of it. I mean, it is used to exhaustion, so much in fact that you hear the track cut itself off to repeat itself.

The seemingly muted groundskeeper/gardner, is writing in painful agony on the catacomb floors in what appears to be a possession of sorts. His grunts and facial expressions are not enough to tell you whats happening. In fact, there are a lot of close ups of everyone's eyes, which are particularly funny, probably unintentional. But when they are shown close-up, it looks like just reaction shots where the director says "Look left, now look right, now look left again...look up, look down...look right". Something like that, because thats what it looks like they are doing.

The young woman in the castle is Miria, who hears her mother call her which leads her down to the tomb. When she gets there, she sees her "mother" who was calling her alive and well. Meanwhile the groundskeeper still writhes in agony with a chicken in the room. When she awakes from this trance, she screams and the head of the house comes to see what the trouble is. He comforts her and shows her that she is in fact dead and mummified.

The next scene is a doctor examining Miria's physical health with her short off. This is peculiar practice, but he is the doctor and he knows best. The doctor as it turns out is former lover of Mary, the dead woman in the tombs. But even he starts to hallucinate, and is then betrayed by his visions. Its not really clear whether he was a former lover, or he imagined loving her in his own mind, and nothing of a reality. 

I hope I am not spoiling these turn of events for you.

 As people die and things get heated up, so do the hallucinations and trance inductions all from this dead woman on the table in the tombs. In this big place, and few characters, there is little to do other than drugs and sex. So people are more or less left to their own vices.

There are two scenes in particular that you will see the biggest difference. The scene in which the wheel-chair dude (sorry, i am not very good with names) with the rolling eyes is down in the tombs and is suddenly met with Mary, the nun who he saw masturbating. She kneels in front of him getting ready to satisfy him. The Severin release we see her go down on him, and then cut, she is standing up nude.

In the X-rated Kult release, we see her kneeling in front of him and proceed to give him a full-on blowjob. What is different from this film and others is that these are not "inserts" shots with porno stand-ins, but rather we see the actress in the film actually performing felatio. And as we see later, she also seduces the heroin-addicted caretaker and suck him off and then get on top of him.

The quality of the pornographic scenes are somewhat of a lesser quality, even on the X-rated kult version. That is to say, you can already see the grain of the film in the transfer, and once the cut scene enters, you can notice a further degradation of quality. I am not sure why Severin decided to cut these scenes out of their edition or if they felt should not be there, or they could not get a good enough copy.

The reviewers over at IMDB all suggest that this film is either a remake or revamping of Malabimba - The Malilcious Whore, both Italian horror sleaze films released by Severin (probably intentionally on the same date). One reviewer says the film was intentionally made as a porn and not to have inserts put in for later release. This film wins over Malabimba in the sex content if you buy the X-rated Kult version. Save for the opening scene, which should have been there in the US release, at least to apply some of the content of the story, the Severin release is better looking and focuses more on the story. The X-rated version is nice to see the hardcore additions, but the scenes are rather lengthy. At some point you almost forget there is a movie happening.

In sum, Satan's Baby Doll is a very entertaining bit of Italian sleazy horror that can be fun if your expectations are not high on the artistic merit side. It is great to see some of these unsung underground classics be revived into the digital realm, cleaned up for both viewing and historical value. The films pacing is slow and dry throughout most of the film, even though people are dying and getting off somewhere. The acting is on par with most films of this kind and so I have no complaints there. The script is a little light as much of the dialogue is useless to keep the story interesting. The characters really don't seem to care about each other nor do they get involved in each other's lives, but only if it's an inconvenience to their own selfish ends. Malabimba is a much spicier film, even if its a similar story, I found the movement through the film have better momentum.

Any additional comments or opinions about the films mentioned are welcome to post in our forum here.

The X-rated Kult version (which is the name of the company, not just something I named it), can be bought at either xploitedcinema.com (where I bought mine) or diabolikdvd.com. The Severin release can be got at either of those places or Amazon, DD, HKFlix or TLA. All help to support the site.Thanks!