Lisa and the Devil/The House of Exorcism
This morning, as I had predicted, I woke up in the grip of a full-blown cold. That said, I still managed to haul my carcass down to the post office to pick up my delivery of Lisa and the Devil/The House of Exorcism (R2 Italy), which, for some reason, required my signature.I finally got to see this Mario Bava curiosity in both forms - the original version, Lisa and the Devil, which Bava shot in 1972, and the mangled version, The House of Exorcism, which contains additional footage added in by producer Alfredo Leone a number of years later - and I found it quite enjoyable, but definitely not the classic some have proclaimed it to be.
Lisa and the Devil starts out promisingly enough, with some wonderfully creepy scenes in which our protagonist, Lisa (Elke Sommer), finds herself lost in a maze-like, deserted city, and is accosted by a menacing Telly Savalas (yes, Kojak himself, even armed with the trademark lollipop that he would later use in that very show). However, after Lisa arrives at the mansion in which much of the film takes place, the pace slackens and it gets bogged down too many mundane "bump in the night" horror elements. It's beautifully photographed, though, and with a great Carlo Savina score.
The House of Exorcism, meanwhile, is an Exorcist rip-off of the worst possible order. Interspersed throughout are various additional scenes which show Lisa writhing around in a hospital bed spewing green slime from her mouth and wittering on about cunts and whores, while the drippy Father Michael (Robert Alda) wrings his hands and stammers various prayers. A handful of sex scenes have also been thrown in, seemingly at random. Beat that! This film is worth seeing more for curiosity than anything else, since it completely destroys Bava's narrative and makes the whole thing virtually incomprehensible. No wonder he had his name removed from the credits (the director is now listed as "Mickey Lion" - I wonder if he's any relation to Mickey Mouse).
Overall ratings:
Lisa and the Devil: 7/10
The House of Exorcism: 5/10
The quality of both transfers leaves a lot to be desired, by the way. Although anamorphic, they are extremely lacking in detail and look extremely blocky, with a jagged, stair-stepping effect on every edge. It looks like a bad scaling job (I wonder if they were converted from the now out-of-print non-anamorphic American DVDs) and is very distracting. This is a shame after the excellent job Raro Video did on The Perfume of the Lady in Black.
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