Satanik isn't a hero, but it is based on an Italian comic book which was part of the fumetti neri (black comics) phase that Danger: Diabolik inspired (which is why Satanik is spelled that way).Marnie Bannister is a biologist and chemist who earned her Ph.D. at a young age. While a technically brilliant scientist, she is ridiculed by her peers because of her poor background the fact that her face is marked by tumors. She still lives at home, Cinderella-style, with two beautiful sisters, an alcoholic father and closed-minded mother - all of whom make fun of her appearance. Working along with the alchemist Masopust, she develops a drug that makes her beautiful. The side effect? It also makes her into a murderous criminal named Satanik, who uses her beauty and sex appeal to take advantage of men. The comic features plenty of horror characters, such as evil ghosts and a vampire named Baron Wurdalak.The movie, however, only concerns itself with Satanik's transformation from old woman to beautiful young woman, playing by Polish model Magda Konopka.If you're looking for this film to live up to Bava's Danger: Diabolik, I have bad news for you. There's no way that can happen. Sure, there are murders and jet-setting and fun music, but this movie crawls while Bava's runs, tumbles and pirouettes.Its director, Piero Vivarelli, is better known for the original Django. With the great poster art and source material, I guess I was just expecting more.

You've got to feel a little sorry for Marnie Bannister, a lab worker in Madrid, at the beginning of "Satanik." So hideously scarred--no, we never find out how she got that way--that she makes the Vina character in "Star Trek"'s "The Menagerie" episode look good, life certainly does not hold much promise for her. Until, that is, the day when she swallows an experimental cell rejuvenation serum, and morphs into a hotty that few men seem able to resist. Too bad that her homicidal tendencies don't change with her improved looks, however... "Satanik," I must say, is an interesting experience. A joint Italian/Spanish production, shot in Madrid and Geneva, it boasts some nice European settings and an engaging story. Lead actress Magda Konopka is as sexy as can be, particularly during two striptease scenes; it's difficult to believe that the scarred Marnie is played by the same woman (I'm assuming that she is). Perhaps the single best aspect of "Satanik," though, is its chic, jazzy score; what a terrific soundtrack CD this would make! Unfortunately, the Retromedia DVD presentation here is something of a mess. The full-screen image is quite grainy, and a good deal of the picture seems to be missing at times. The film has been horribly dubbed, as well; subtitles would have been infinitely preferable. The excellent reference book "DVD Delirium 2" claims that this "Satanik" DVD is an improvement over the VHS incarnation, but it still looked pretty crummy to me. And yet, as I said, the movie is pretty interesting, and briskly paced as it is, flies by pretty quickly. It's no Mario Bava picture, but still, I don't regret having rented this one out....

Dr. Marnie Bannister (Magda Konopka) is a horribly disfigured woman. When one of her colleagues discovers a rejuvenation formula, Marnie sees it as her opportunity to become beautiful. When she's denied the drug because of possible side effects, she kills her colleague to get what she wants. The drug works and she becomes beautiful. But the formula brings out the worst in her and it's not long before she's left a string of bodies behind her.Have you ever heard the expression "as exciting as watching paint dry"? That pretty much sums up Satanik. During the film, one of the characters utters the line, "Something so horrible, it's inconceivable." I wasn't sure if he was talking about something in movie or the movie itself. I'm really disappointed because I had high hopes for this one. Satanik had possibilities, but they're never realized. At every opportunity, the plot has Marnie do the dullest things imaginable. The writing is horrible. And part of the problem is Magda Konopka. She's not that appealing and cannot carry the film on her own.Another big problem with Satanik is the direction and editing. It's a mess. We see things and places that have no bearing on anything in the movie. The camera lingers on shots too long after the scene is over. I can't think of a single shot that would call anything but unoriginal. This group of filmmakers exhibits little in the way of imagination or talent.I may not be familiar with the Italian comic on which Satanik is supposedly based, but I'm sure it's got to be better than this.

There are a lot of misconceptions about this film due to various marketing facts. In a nutshell, Satanik (the title card in the film gives it as "Satanic") is the story of Dr. Marnie Bannister (Magda Konopka), who takes drastic measures to try to get rid of her disfiguring scars. She's pursued as a criminal, and the film is basically an extended cat and mouse game. The cats never get too close until the end, and the film also indulges in various modes that were somewhat stereotypical at the time, including nightclub scenes (some with go-go dancing), playboy/playgirl "romance" subplots (complete with a small amount of gratuitous nudity), and a slight travelogue feel. But at its heart, this is simply a crime/thriller with elements of the police procedural, mystery and sci-fi genres present and a heavy late 1960s/early 1970s vibe. Even though there is a very broad expanse of gray on the border between thrillers and horror films, calling Satanik horror is a stretch that results in breakage.It's not exactly easy to find the relevant background information, but the story seems to be taken from a couple different, perhaps interconnected, sources. In 1964, Italian comic book author Max Bunker (a pseudonym for Luciano Secchi) began a series that initially was called "Killing", although "Satanik" appears as a subtitle on some, if not all of the books, which eventually ran to at least 300 issues. The series, one of many Italian comics ostensibly influenced by or based on the 1911 French comic, Fantômas, featured a male protagonist who would dress up like a skeleton. Later, there was also a French photography-oriented fictional magazine based on Satanik. In that version, Satanik's lover, Dana, appears to have been more heavily emphasized--probably because it allowed sexy photographs of women.Italian director Piero Vivarelli, who later wrote a couple of the Emanuelle films, and producer/scriptwriter Eduardo Manzanos Brochero, took extreme liberties with their source material. There is no male protagonist, and no person dressing up like a skeleton to be found in the film. The consensus is that Satanik was made in the wake of Mario Bava's superb early 1968 film Diabolik (aka "Danger: Diabolik") as an attempt to cash in on its success and recapture its swanky vibe. The transformed Konopka bears some resemblance to Diabolik's Eva Kant (Marisa Mell), although unfortunately Satanik can't come near Diabolik in terms of visual excellence or plot momentum and suspense. Vivarelli and Brochero forgo Diabolik's trumping of James Bond for a grittier Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde theme (which again, might make some viewers think along the lines of horror, but that's the wrong genre to file Satanik under).There are a couple big flaws in Satanik. The first is that we never get to know any of these characters very well, including Dr. Bannister. What kind of doctor is she? What happened to her to disfigure her? There is also a significant lack of character building for the other principal roles--Inspector Trent (Julio Peña) and George Van Donan (Umberto Raho). Van Donan introduces us to a gangster subplot, but this is very inadequately developed. To make things worse, the pacing on a number of scenes is achingly slow--including scenes that we very well know how they'll end, like Dr. Bannister's early encounter with a fellow doctor doing regeneration research.But there are pluses, too. The overall atmosphere is good if you're into genre films of the era and locale. Konopka can come across as very beautiful. The music is enjoyable, fits the atmosphere well, and even the fact that Brochero didn't spring for a full 90 minutes of score ends up helping, because the final effect suggests various musical leitmotifs that we periodically revisit. Most importantly, the story is often suspenseful, despite the lack of fully fleshed-out exposition, and it is almost always interesting, even when it's a bit slow.Retromedia's DVD release of Satanik is unfortunately not in the correct aspect ratio, and like many of their releases, the print quality is a bit rough. There are a couple bad splices, and the color is not very vivid. Still, having a film like Satanik available on a less-than-perfect DVD is better than not having it at all. I'm sure it's not easy to track down pristine prints of these kinds of films, if indeed pristine prints exist. Retromedia is laudable for its efforts to re-release these lesser-known titles on modern media.