Customer Reviews

Lisa And The Devil [VHS]

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4 star:		(7)
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2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The new Double-DVD of Mario Bava's great LISA AND THE DEVIL and it's re-edited abomination version HOUSE OF EXORCISM is a must for euro-horror fans. Bava's original version of LISA is one of the best lyrical euro-horror films ever. The presentation here looks just like the old ELITE laserdisc which also suffered from some slight digital artifacting...nothing awful, but it isn't perfect. Everything about this move is great- the music, the style, just the general feel of it...it's also completely unconventional. Of course, than there's the re-edited HOUSE OF EXORCISM version which added new "exorcist" type scenes and rearranged the film to make it accessible to audiences in the mid-70's. It's bad, of course, but it's great to have both versions together to see exactly how the film was damaged by the re-edit....this DVD in a way is the euro-trash fan's version of the Criterion "Brazil" DVD! As far as extras go, the DVD unfortunately does not have 2 alternate scenes that were on the ELITE LD - one being an alternate extra gory scene of Silva Koscina's death and the other an alternate erotic scene between Elke and Orano. The DVD does contain the extra 'unfinished' softcore sex scene, though, so why the other 2 scenes were left off is strange and disappointing. Other extras include the uncompleted L&TD trailer (also on the LD) plus 2 trailers for HOE. There's a very minimal "photo/poster gallery" (lasts 23 seconds! ) and some minimal filmos and bios. The HOUSE OF EXORCISM has an audio track featuring Elke and producer Leone who explains how he butchered the film (although he doesn't word it that way!). All in all, it's a GREAT DVD from IMAGE - don't pass this one up!

In the liner notes of Lisa And The Devil/The House Of Exorcism Alfredo Leone ask Mario Bava that if Mario had carte blanche (a blank check), what movie would he make? His answer was this movie, Lisa And The Devil, which is Bava's most personal film.

Lisa (Elke Sommer) is a foreigner in a tourist group (it's never explained what country she's from, or what country they're visiting). While admiring a fresco of the devil (which looks amazingly like Telly Savalas), she hears music and is drawn to it, abandoning the tourist group in the process. This leads her to a man(Telly Savalas) carrying a life-sized dummy. Lisa recognizes him as the devil from the painting and from this moment on the viewer is taken for a nightmarish journey that's hard to tell which is actually real or a hallucination. Not that the end result is a mess, far from it; it is remarkable how Bava holds such a non-linear plot together so well where other filmakers before and since failed and it's easy to see why this is Bava's favorite film. The cast ensemble is excellent and so is the direction. It's definitely one of his best.

Unfortunately Leone couldn't find a distributor for this film. Seeing the success of The Exorcist, Leone had Bava reshoot some scenes that had Lisa "posessed" (spouting profanities, spewing pea soup, and so on). Bava balked at filming material he felt was blasphemous, so he walked and Leone finished filming the scenes, edited them into Lisa And The Devil, and called it The House Of Exorcism. The end result is really pathetic and an insult to Mario Bava's movie. There is an audio commentary with Leone and Elke Sommer which is enjoyable and provides some of the information in making Lisa And The Devil but mostly tries to justify the filming of The House Of Exorcism. In my opinion he fails.

The DVD special features include beside the commentary, a Mario Bava biography, Bava's and the cast filmographies, a theatrical trailer for Lisa and the Devil, two theatrical trailers for House Of Exorcism (whoopee), a deleted softcore sex scene between Silva Koscina and Gabriele Tinti, a photo and poster gallery, and liner notes by Bava scholar Tim Lucas. Too bad there wasn't an audio commentary by Tim Lucas on Lisa And The Devil; his knowledge is incredible and he's always interesting to listen to.

As bad as House Of Exocism is, I still recommend getting this DVD not only for comparison's sake but for the Leone/Sommer commentary. Otherwise, get the Lisa And The Devil DVD which is available seperately.

Mario Bava was one of the great filmmakers of his time. Revered and often imitated by illustrious contemporaries like Fellini and Visconti, his work has had long echoing reverberations through the films of David Lynch, Quentin Tarentino, and the entire body of hopelessly unimaginative slasher films that tried, and failed, to copy Bava's films. Yet he was largely dismissed and/or despised in his time. Lisa and the Devil is possibly his most brilliant, and easily his most personal film. It's also a sad example of the way this innovator was treated in his time. More a cinematic poem than traditional "movie", this is a surreal, stream of consciousness fantasy about a girl (Elke Sommer, who was never better) who may or may not be dead and a butler (Telly Savalas, sucking a lollipop) who may or may not be the devil. Lisa and the Devil is beautifully photographed in vibrant colour, violent, disturbing, and completely brilliant. Inventive sequences abound, encompassing concepts as broad as identity, memory vs. hallucination, necrophilia, past vs. present, reincarnation, etc...There's literally no limit to this film's depth and beauty. Unfortunately, its complete disregard for conventional narrative flow consigned it to a truly horrible fate, being butchered beyond recognition, having extra scenes added to make it seem like an Exorcist rip-off, it was finally released as House of Exorcism. If you see this version anywhere, you should not only avoid buying it, you should also destroy it. It's an atrocity and an insult to the memory of Mario Bava and this, possibly his greatest work.

One of Mario Bava's most hypnotic and weird horror films begins with Lisa, a tourist, becoming lost and disoriented after strange encounters with a man who resembles a mural of the devil she has seen with her group. The man is handling a lifesize mannequin of another man she had a weird encounter with who claimed he knew her. She accepts a ride with some odd people in an antique car that breaks down outside a mansion with even odder people inside including the butler who is the man she saw with the mannequin that resembles the devil in the mural. Once agreeing to spend the night she is subjected to madness, murder, necrophilia and nameless terror that propels her to flee the next morning only to encounter a group of children who say she is a ghost. Finally boarding the plane for home, she finds the other passengers to be the people she just encountered in her bizarre adventure only they are all now mannequins. The pilot is noneother than the butler/devil. Telly Savalas is perfect as this enigmatic stranger and Elke Sommer is fine as Lisa. Bava imbues this film with surreal atmosphere that plays out like a nightmare. His trademark flourishes with color and set design are vividly on display here. Truly strange story will keep you going from start to unbelievably weird finish. A truly unique film experience that demands repeat viewings. A cult classic by anyone's standards.

This is a marvelous DVD; the kind you wish they'd issue for many films, exhibiting the director's original vision and the butchery that was eventually released.

LISA AND THE DEVIL, as you surely know, is the "true" film and it is a marvel. A beautiful, haunting film that moves along with the pace of a dream and, indeed, the film itself is a dream of sorts. Much like David Lynch's LOST HIGHWAY, the viewer cannot discern reality from fantasy, and due to the beauty of the film, s/he does not want to. You simply enjoy the ride. Marvelous sets, superb direction, themes of incest, murder, and necrophilia reminiscent of PSYCHO make for possibly the best Bava film available.

HOUSE OF EXORCISM, on the other hand, is an abortion. A disgusting example of a butchered vision thrown together to feed to an audience hungry for films like THE EXORCIST. On its own, not even worth watching for the sake of comparison. What makes this two-fer disc worthwhile, though, is the commentary track on HOUSE... by producer Leone and Elke Sommer. Leone gives a marvelous account of both the filming of LISA... and the extra footage shot 18 months later for HOUSE... Leone himself basically says, "We did it for the money. We couldn't sell LISA..."

Well, buy this film for LISA AND DEVIL. You're not likely to find any other film like it. Hell is a nightmare. You wake up just to find it's beginning all over again.

On tour in Italy, Lisa Reiner first sees a fresco of the devil carrying away the dead. "The face of Satan expresses a quality that reflects the pleasure in evil," says the tour guide. The local villagers also believe that "only the power of the devil keeps the fresco from ruin." Later, Lisa encounters a bald man in a shop who resembles Satan in the fresco. She later sees him carrying and talking to a dummy he was examining in the shop.

It gets weirder. Lisa then encounters a living likeness of the dummy, a guy who kind of looks like Omar Sharif, who calls her Elena! She is very freaked out and flees. However, she is unable to find the main square. She fortunately gets a ride from Francis and Sophia Lehar in a nice classic car resembling a Model A or T. The car makes its way to a large desolate country mansion, where the butler is none other than the dummy-carrying stranger! Not only that, a sensitive young man sees her and also calls her Elena! What is going on here?

"The entire setting is right for a tall tale with a setting of gloom and tradition," says Sophia while at dinner. We have the right ingredients, a dark night, this house, it's all so spooky!" That about sums up the atmosphere for this movie, where things go from weird to weirder, with a murder that starts the ball of madness rolling.

Lisa And The Devil underwent quite a butchering under American hands, where much of the original was cut, with extra scenes with Robert Alda as Father Michael were added to become House Of Exorcism, which was the original title of Bava's film. Never fear--this is the original uncut version.

Also included after the movie are three scenes cut as they were thought to be too explicit for a "mainstream horror film": an explicit sex scene, the more gory parts of a murder, and a bedroom scene. Including these things in the final cut might have spiced things up just a wee bit.

If the love theme to the movie is familiar, it is Rodrigo's "Concierto of Aranjuez," the tune forming the highlight of Miles Davis's Sketches Of Spain. Of the performers, Telly Savalas comes off best as the lollipop-sucking Leandro the butler. Was this a prelude to Kojak, I wonder? This is his show all the way. Alessio Orani portrays Maximilian as a tortured soul, a sensitive young man living under the thrall of death. And yet another sinister role for Alida Valli (the Contessa), best known for coming out in Dario Argento's Suspiria and Inferno. Despite being pretty, neither Elke Sommer (Lisa) nor Sylvia Koscina (Sophia) shine bright, displaying a hollow, antiseptic beauty.

More a psychological, atmospheric thriller like Black Sunday, but not as good despite being in colour. It will take at least two or three viewings for the movie to make sense, and given time, one may like this better, but what a twist ending!

"lisa and the devil" is, beyond a doubt, mario bava's best film. i was a little apprehensive about even renting anything by bava as his name is often associated with lucio fulci's, an italian director unparalleled in making sick, gorehound excrement of no redeeming value whatsoever (except maybe as an example of what can go wrong in the horror genre), but i'm glad i took the chance and bought "lisa". like some kind of disjointed, mythical dream, "lisa" has of course no coherent plot or point at which we understand the events taking place even slightly, and yet the stunning surreality of it all simply made me gag the inner critic and love it on its own terms, as what it is, art. telly savalas gives a convincing and amusing performance as satan, ie 'the castle' servant and host, constantly dropping remarks like ("that woman looks like she's seen the devil!") and giving everyone that smartass kojak lollipop suave-pimp look of the man who knows what's up. there are some truly perverse scenes in this otherwise tongue in cheek film however, such as when a mysterious young man tries to make love to a guest while the skeleton of his former wife lies on the bed and mocks him silently, rendering him impotent. there may even be a philosophical element to this movie, in that bava is demonstrating through the absurd superficiality of the relationships in the film how ridiculously false our surface identities are, how social life is like a collection of flesh and blood mannequins akin to the ones kojak is running around creepily with the whole film. a piece of decadent art!

Lisa and the Devil is wonderful. Unlike a good 90 percent of the horror movies out there, its refreshingly original and imaginative with some startling, inspired moments of black humor. Mario Bava was a great visual stylist, and this is probably his best film.

Italian director Mario Bava (1914-1980) is one of the giants of the horror film genre. His films, no matter what the plot, always promised great style mixed with scenes of murder and mayhem. Bava's big break into the industry came with his 1960 black and white classic "Black Sunday" starring fan favorite Barbara Steele. This was only the beginning, as Bava churned out a series of gruesome shockers over the next seventeen years. Perhaps Mario's biggest contribution to the horror field was his 1972 picture "Twitch of the Death Nerve," also known as "Bay of Blood." It doesn't take too long to realize "Friday the 13th" shamelessly cribbed from Bava's bloodbath. The director's inventiveness goes far beyond hacking up a few unfortunate souls, however, as "Lisa and the Devil," a movie which first appeared on our shores in a radically altered form called "The House of Exorcism," shows. This movie is a wildly inventive jaunt into the inner recesses of the mind of a tortured woman. The Bava legacy continued with son Lamberto, one of the guiding lights behind "Demons," an instant cult favorite with gorehounds worldwide.

Tourist Lisa (Elke Sommer) finds herself in an increasing series of ultra horrific and bizarre circumstances after viewing a huge mural on the side of a building in an Italian town. After looking at the picture, she wonders off into the heart of the old city where she soon encounters a man (Telly Savalas) wearing a beret who exactly resembles the figure in the painting. Horrified at the similarities between this man and the painting, Lisa flees and wanders aimlessly until a husband and wife pick her up in their ancient automobile. The car breaks down near a dark, creepy looking estate where none other than the man Lisa saw earlier works as the butler/head servant. The family living at the home agrees to allow the stranded travelers access to the house in order to phone for assistance. It quickly becomes apparent that things are not what they seem inside the walls of this sprawling estate. Over a socially awkward dinner served on a table the size of a football field, weird activities take place. The family doesn't seem to get along all that well and there is some peculiar importance attached to a chocolate cake with sprinkles (!). Lisa eventually discovers that a family member delivers the cake to a locked bedroom upstairs, supposedly to a member of the family who permanently lives in this room.

Meanwhile, the man and wife who helped Lisa clash over the wife's infidelity, a behavior that will soon have ghastly consequences in this house of horrors. As for Savalas, he acts the part of butler but also seems a more important figure than his position merits. He spends most of his time wandering around the house startling Lisa, or fiddling around with his human figures made out of wax. Even worse, our hapless heroine witnesses Savalas stuffing a corpse in a coffin in one of the rooms on the estate. This corpse just happens to be a mysterious man Lisa encountered in the town shortly after seeing the painting. He continues to reappear to her in the house and on the grounds of the estate, often seeming to change in age between each encounter. The horrors of the family eventually rise to the surface with the result that Lisa emerges from her dream state and decides to fly back home. But wait! Bava played with your mind for over an hour and he isn't about to let you go this easily. Is Lisa truly free of her nightmare or is she about to enter an even deeper dimension of terror?

On the surface, the film makes little sense. But what appears to be a random mish mash of bizarre scenes actually does assume somewhat of a structure if you pay attention to the first five minutes of the movie. It is my opinion that the bizarre painting Lisa sees on a trip to Italy provides the viewer with a possible key to deciphering this weird movie. I propose that Sommer's character undergoes a sort of hypnotic interaction with this painting that somehow transports her back in time, a process which then helps explain the following sequences. The movie is a dream or break with reality in the mind of Sommer's character, nothing more or nothing less, and therefore must assume a fractured, nonsensical tone. Isn't it slightly odd that Lisa doesn't have a boyfriend or husband, or if she does he is not with her on this trip? That might explain the mysterious male that seems to have some bizarre link with her character. Perhaps everything we see is part of Lisa's unconscious taking on corporeal form. Whatever is going on, I think it is important we remember that we are seeing events from the perspective of this confused woman and are thus dependent on her cracked perceptions. How can we know what is going on when Lisa herself has little idea of the weirdness swirling about her? I truly enjoyed the film and appreciated Bava's attempts to do something different.

I also liked the performances. Savalas intrigues as the butler/devil, an ominous figure always looming in the background happily tormenting Lisa. Sommer is also a lot of fun to watch as she bumbles from one grim situation to another, even going so far as to shed her clothes in one scene (bless her soul!). The other performers are lesser talents, something we should expect and accept with Italian horror. The DVD recognizes the utter wackiness of this film with a plethora of extras well worth watching. I usually turn up my nose at movies that seek to confuse the audience, but I really enjoyed this one. I can't wait to see the hacked up "House of Exorcism" so I can compare the two. Enjoy.

"The House of Exorcism" has a long and tortured history. Starring Telly Savalas and Elke Sommer, it was originally made as "Lisa and the Devil," a psychologically challenging horror film by Italian giallo master Mario Bava. Producer Alfredo Leone (under his directorial alias Mickey Lion) removed huge swaths of the original, completely re-edited the film, and shot new (much more graphic) footage of Sommer with Robert Alda as a priest, which it was thought would improve the film's box office revenue in light of the success of "The Exorcist." The film bombed.

Watching "The House of Exorcism" is like a traumatizing bipolar nightmare. It is clearly two entirely different efforts forced together in unholy celluloid matrimony. The film begins with Elke (as Lisa Reiner) on a European tour, where she sees a scary fresco featuring the devil. She is drawn into a shop where Telly (as Leandro) possesses her while wearing a beret. It's a very creepy and effective beginning to the film, but is quickly ruined by the shift to the sanitarium where Lisa unleashes profanity and vomit on priest Robert Alda and some extreme scenery chewing erupts on both sides of the restraints ("Who are you, you infernal demon!?!") In a nod to commercialism that Bava refused to contribute to, the film amps up the eros with a return of Alda's former strumpet as temptation from the Devil. To say that this doesn't fit the atmosphere so painstakingly crafted by Bava in the original is an understatement.

Back in the creepy and brilliantly atmospheric home of Maximilian (Alessio Orano) and his mother, the blind Contessa (Alida Valli,) Max covets Lisa due to her resemblance to his dead love. This part of the movie is really, really creepy, and the scene involving the skeleton in particular really grossed me out. Confusing violence and murders begin, but not all is as it seems. There are plenty of unnatural mannequin hijinks, body double diversions, and Telly talking to himself nonstop, providing some backstory that doesn't fit this version of the movie well at all. Note also Telly's near-constant use of a lollipop, which he used in real life to help him quit smoking; it would become his trademark on "Kojak" very shortly after this was released. After some truly Oedipal violence, and some more exorcism nonsense from Alda and Sommer, the film comes to an uneasy conclusion. It couldn't come a minute too soon.

The film is like night and day. The original Bava footage is that of a stylish and reserved film full of mental horror, genuine suspense, and subtlety. The added exorcism footage that was spliced in, on the other hand, is profane, gross, derivative junk (Robert Alda even gets to battle flying snakes) that does nothing but ruin the work of a genuine master of the art. While it can be difficult to find, look for a copy of "Lisa and the Devil" in its original form and watch the film the way Mario Bava envisioned it.