OOP DVD
While most people in American instantly recognize our comic heroes and their film adaptations, they probably wouldn’t recognize characters like Satanik, Diabolik, Kriminal or Dylan Dog. These names are quite popular in Italy though where fumetti or “comic strips” are huge. I won’t bother going into the history of fumetti but I’ll break down a bit on Satanik.
Satanik was an Italian anti-hero that wore a black body suit sporting a skeleton design on the front. The character was an obvious rip-off of an earlier Italian anti-hero named Kriminal, created by Max Bunker. In response to this to this “theft”, Max Bunker snatched the name “Satanik” and created a new anti-hero character…this is the Satanik we’ll be talking about in this review.
Her name is Dr. Marnie Bannister, played by the breathtaking Magda Konopka, and she’s hideously deformed. She’s so scarred, in fact, that people can barely look at her. When her friend, Professor Graves, summons Marnie to the laboratory she discovers that he’s almost perfected a formula he’d been working on that can restore damaged tissue! The only unfortunate side effect to this formula is the test subject’s increased aggression.
Marnie’s heard enough though and she suggests Graves try the new formula on a human test subject in order to see if it truly works. Naturally, Prof. Graves is hesitant about testing on human’s until they’ve been given the official “go ahead”. Marnie isn’t about to wait that long though and she shanks Prof. Graves in the gut with a scalpel and prepares herself a small batch of the formula and drinks it!
Not only does the formula heal Marnie’s hideous face but it turns her into a beautiful goddess with long legs, great tits and a brand new hairdo! Miraculous!
When the police arrive they quickly come to the conclusion that Marnie Bannister must be responsible for the murders. The question is, why? Why, would Marnie murder the Professor when they were supposedly good friends? Nobody is quite sure why it happened or where Marnie has gone to and the only lead they have is an old janitor claiming to have seen a beautiful woman leave. That certainly didn’t fit Miss Bannister’s description.
Meanwhile, Marnie decides to flaunt her stuff and scores a filthy rich diamond magnate named George Van Donan (Umberto Raho) in the process. While milking Van Donan for loot, she comes across a plot by a young woman dating one of Van Donan’s associates to hand everybody over to the police in exchange for money and a free ride to Geneva. After the cop’s raid and everybody is killed during a gun battle, Marnie makes her move on the young woman named Stella, murders her and assumes her identity.
Once in Geneva, she plans to relieve Stella’s bank account of its hefty burden. Before going anywhere though she’s confronted at the Airport by a gentleman and whisked off to meet Dodo La Roche (Luigi Montini), the brother of Stella’s late boyfriend.
Marnie slowly digs herself in deeper as she strikes up a relationship with Dodo and the cops, back in Spain, have now tracked her to Geneva. Inspector Trent (Julio Pena) is hot on Marnie’s tail and plans to bring her to justice.
This Italian/Spanish joint production was a wild ride! I enjoyed myself thoroughly as I’m a big fan of 60’s spy/crime cinema. Fans of Danger: Diabolik will probably dig this film though it’s nowhere near as cool.
Magda Konopka is simply ravishing in this film and I sat hypnotized during both striptease sequences. Magda turned in a wonderful physical performance as ugly and beautiful Marnie going from slumped and bitter to confident and graceful.
This release from Retromedia was fullscreen format and the transfer was simply hideous. There is a disclaimer in the beginning of this film that makes mention of this though so one can’t be too surprised about the quality. Those of you hoping for an uncut version of this may be a bit disappointed as well. The mono soundtrack was reasonable but did have its problems. Once again, the disclaimer warns you ahead of time so bitching about it is a moot point.
This release does offer an image gallery featuring some great fumetti covers of the original Satanik release but many of the images are blurred and shitty looking.
It’s a damn shame this has been the only release we’ve seen for this film and hopefully someday somebody tracks down a clean print and we’re able to get a better release featured in the original aspect ratio. I wonder if there was a Spanish or Italian audio soundtrack for this. At any rate, it’s all we’ve got and apparently it’s already out of print so if you come across this, scoop it up and enjoy it for what it is.
