Best movie of this year hands down!

Film Perfection

Best movie ever!

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

By the late 60's, a series of commercial failures caused Mario Bava to lose his deal with American International Pictures, but the successes of Twitch of the Death Nerve and Baron Blood turned his fortunes around. Now, he was allowed to make movies without studio interference.Bava was allowed to create Lisa and the Devil as a non-commercial film, but it flopped in Italy and the U.S., where it would be retitled House of Exorcism with twenty minutes of the film cut and a new scene with Elke Sommer and Robert Alda would rip off The Exorcist. Producer Alfredo Leone wanted this new footage to have profanity and strong sexual content, which Bava refused to do. He even tried to get Sommer to not be in these scenes and dropped out of the film. The re-edited (that's being really fair to what is a hack job) version also flopped. For a much more in-depth telling of this story, please visit Groovy Doom.So what is Lisa and the Devil about? Well, Lisa is a tourist who wanders away from a guided group tour to explore an antique store where Leandro (Telly Savalas, who if you ever get the chance to visit Pittsburgh, is featured in an epic photo in the Hollywood Bowl area of the famed Arsenal Lanes bowling alley) is purchasing a dummy. She looks at the man - who looks just like a demon she saw in a fresco - and runs. She then meets a mustache wearing man who recognizes her, but she bumps him into falling down the stairs to his death (or maybe not).Lisa can't find her way back to her tour, so she follows a couple and their driver (who is secretly dating the wife), but they break down at a mansion where Leandro coincidentally (or maybe not) works as a butler for the blind Countess and her son Maximilian, who begs his mother to let them stay.The mustache man may (or maybe not) still be alive, as he stalks Lisa. There's also a mystery guest in the mansion who may be a prisoner and Lisa may (or maybe not) be Elena, Maximilian's long-lost lover. And oh yeah, the mustache guy is really Carlos, the Countesses second husband and Elena or Lisa (or maybe not) was sleeping with him.This next part needs some careful wordsmithing. Carlos - that's mustache man's name - is being prepared for burial by Leandro while still being alive. Lisa freaks out as he tries to take her away from the mansion, but he's killed by Maximilian, but then he's not even real, but the dummy Leandro bought at the start of the movie.If that made you say, "What the fuck?" then get ready. The young driver loverboy is killed while fixing the car, but Leandro offers to cover it all up if he can take care of the body. The husband demands that his wife leave with him, so she runs him over with the car. Then, she is murdered by Maximilian. Whew.Lisa is knocked out by all of this and Leandro dresses her like Elena. Turns out he is a demon indebted to the Countess and Maximilian and forced to help them play out their lives again and again and again, using dummies to represent each of them. As Lisa arrived and interrupted his shopping for new dummies, her real form must now become Elena. But wait? Isn't Lisa Elena? That's what Maximilian thinks, as he takes her to the secret room, where we learn that Elena's corpse and ghost are the mystery guest. He drugs Lisa and starts to rape her when the ghost laughs at him, causing him to stop and tell his mother what he has done: he killed Carlos for betraying his mother by sleeping with Elena, but imprisoned her rather than letting her get away. When his mother tells him the only next logical step is to kill Lisa, he kills her instead.He then finds every dead person all gathered at a table for dinner. His mother tries to kill him, so he jumped out a window and is impaled on a fence. Leandro appears behind the dead bodies.Lisa escapes, but not before she sees Leandro refuse to accept a doll of her. On an amazing 1960's plane, complete with spiral staircase, she discovers that the entire plane is empty, except for the pilot - Leandro. She collapses and becomes the dummy that he carries back to the house.Lisa and the Devil was Bava's dream project turned nightmare. The end result - which didn't play in wide release in the director's lifetime - is a waking dream of doom, dread and predestined death. I wouldn't recommend it if you're looking for a straight narrative, but it's a strong film for those seeking to explore and be mesmerized.

Call me a philistine if you like, but I don't blame the producer for trying to salvage something from this incomprehensible mess by re-editing it with some exploitative new Exorcist-style footage. Mario Bava's original version is regarded by many as a classic of surreal, dreamlike horror, but I found it a crushing bore from start to finish.Elke Sommer stars as tourist Lisa Reiner, who, after becoming lost in a Spanish town, gets a lift from a couple passing by in their car. When the vehicle breaks down, the passengers accept the hospitality of a family in a nearby manor, while the driver tries to fix the damage. During the night Lisa has many strange encounters with the bizarre family and their even stranger butler (played by Telly Savalas, sucking on a lollipop, just like Kojak).Since I found the tedious story very hard to follow, I won't go into any more detail than that, other than to say that I think it was a ghost story. A long, drawn out, boring ghost story with a the occasional striking visual and some nice music. Oh, and a bloody silly ending!

This was my third time watching this most personal of Bava's works: whether it is due to the fact that the last two occasions proved problematic (the original Image Entertainment DVD experienced an audio glitch during playback that nearly blasted my TV speakers, while there were constant audio-related issues on the Italian-language track of the copy I acquired of the movie's Raro Video edition!) or the shadow that always loomed large over it in the shape of the execrable re-edit THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM (1975), I have never been really taken with the film as many others seem to be!! Truth be told, watching the featurette "EXORCISING LISA" soon after, I was sort of glad to realize that I was not quite alone in this – as both assistant director and the director's own son Lamberto Bava (who always felt the end result, even in its true incarnation, was impenetrable and somewhat unresolved!) and Bava scholar Alberto Pezzotta (suggesting that the time of Gothic Horror had passed and that, other than merely ethereal, it was elegiac and self-referential!) disclaim its masterpiece status!! Incidentally, though the script is attributed to the elder Bava and producer Alfred Leone on foreign prints (as a matter of fact, throughout my ongoing Bava centenary tribute, it has been a constant irritation to find English credits on Italian-language editions of his pictures!), it was actually penned by other hands – including Roberto Natale, who also puts in an appearance in the 25-minute doc!! Incidentally, while ostensibly an original, elements from it could be traced to several short stories dutifully namechecked during said featurette as well as Tim Lucas' audio commentary… Mind you, the movie is undeniably intriguing (in my review of the director's KILL, BABY…KILL! {1966}, also co-written by Natale and a film whose stature seems to grow with each viewing, I mention how LISA owes a debt to it in the desolate narrow streets/decaying villa settings and the general nightmarish vibe) and, yet, it comes off as strangely aloof: one does not really connect with any of the characters throughout…especially, as with A BAY OF BLOOD (1971), these largely seem to be on hand merely to ratchet up the 'body count' department (did we really need an additional love triangle to the mind-boggling quintet – taking into consideration that Elke Sommer here undertakes a dual role – already involved?!). The score by Carlo Savina (with generous but effective sprinklings of Joaquin Rodrigo's famous "Concierto De Aranjuez") is a major asset, as is the bemused presence of Telly Savalas (obviously assuming the latter half of the titular parts, scheming and manipulating the various figures around – in both their human form and lookalike mannequins – as if they were pieces on an invisible chess board…while under the guise of an overworked and, seminally, lollipop-sucking butler!). The rest of the cast, however, are only so-so: Alessio Orano is, fatally, unsympathetic as an impotent necrophile(!); Alida Valli, on the other hand, is imposing as ever playing his aristocratic and over-protective blind mother; and Espartaco Santoni is decidedly baffling as the latter's husband and the former's rival for love of his own spouse Sommer (his comings and goings, sometimes literally from death to life, eventually grew irritating!); while Sylva Koscina, Eduardo Fajardo and Gabriele Tinti, as already intimated, are at once underused and downright redundant! Typical of Bava, too, the movie's look cannot be faulted (despite having a Spanish d.p., with a penchant for shooting in soft-focus, forced on him), effortlessly moving between the modern-day 'bookends' and the period milieu of its central narrative.By the way, given that I am going through the director's filmography in a non-linear fashion, it becomes interesting to note parallels between efforts that one would probably overlook if they were to be viewed chronologically; recently, for instance, I picked up on how SHOCK (1977) is pretty much a reworking of THE WHIP AND THE BODY (1963) and even HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON (1970) in its depiction of a deranged protagonist coming to terms with a crime that had been all but blocked out of its consciousness. Having just re-acquainted myself with the latter prior to my screening LISA, which I took as Bava's most Buñuelian work (in view of its leading man's affinity with the latter's Archibaldo De La Cruz), here we have an ending – the Devil adopting modern means of transportation – which recalls the Surrealist maestro's slyly abrupt way of concluding his SIMON OF THE DESERT (1965)! Since both Bava films were actually shot in Spain, could it be that the cultured yet self-effacing Italian was drawn to checking out the oeuvre of the country's most celebrated celluloid son at some point during their making? That said, Lucas claims the device – along with the film's inherent oneiric tone – was actually a direct allusion to Roger Vadim's "Carmilla" adaptation: different strokes for different folks, I guess! The audio commentary did sometimes go overboard in trying to match the poetic quality of the picture: the last rose of the season plucked by Orano for Sommer at one point apparently stood for Bava's own last gasp at making an international name for himself – if you say so, Tim…but, then, I was grateful to learn that Bava appreciated the work of Georges Franju and, indeed, it had never occurred to me before that he recruited two ladies from his films, i.e. Valli (from EYES WITHOUT A FACE {1960} – her mannered death scene being even incorporated in the finale here) and Koscina (from JUDEX {1963}), for LISA! In the end, while not quite among the director's greatest, the film under review is still vastly preferable to its bastardization THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM…which, regrettably, will follow presently in my (41-strong but by-now inevitably winding down) Bava marathon.

I agree with one of the reviewers that said that the narrative of this film wasn't terribly important--and is subject to many possible interpretations. It's one of those films where the plot, believe it or not, isn't all that important--and this aspect makes "Lisa and the Devil" a lot like another good horror film, "Suspiria"--and that's putting the film in very good company.Elke Sommer is on vacation. Soon after seeing a mega-creepy fresco from the Middle Ages with a demonic creature that looks like Telly Savalas, she sees the real life Savalas! A bit later, when she is traveling, she gets stranded and seeks shelter in a mansion. Take a guess who the butler is--yep, Telly again! Who exactly he is during the film is pretty vague--and I kind of like that. All around him, horrible and grisly things keep occurring--and time and again you wonder when poor Elke will be killed--especially when everyone else but her and Telly seem to die. I say 'seem' because it's all rather vague...and weird...and creepy--very, very creepy.While I think the horror films of Mario Bava vary tremendously in quality, this one impressed me. His direction was great---very, very artistic. And, very beautiful. In fact, in a nude scene late in the film, you don't feel it's the least bit gratuitous--it's more like a lovely work of art--even if some of it also involves a weird necrophilic murderer! Really...you just have to see this one.By the way, this film flopped at the box office and some sleazy jerks re-edited the film and added some scenes to make an entirely new film. "House of Exorcism" was made of the film in order to cash in on the success of "The Exorcist" and is widely regarded as a terrible film. Well, if you get the DVD for "Lisa and the Devil", BOTH films are included so you can see both versions and make your own decision. That's pretty cool and as I write this I am watching "House of Exorcism".UPDATE: Apparently there is no separate page for both films--just one for "Lisa and the Devil"--so my review for the bastardized re- working is included here: An obvious difference you soon notice is that a different person dubbed Sommer's voice. Also, the very nice but repetitious song that repeats throughout the movie is used less often--making the film seem a bit quieter and not quite as artistic. In fact, Bava did not direct these new scenes--and the new portions lack the artistic quality of the rest of the film. In fact, the film is, at times, pretty incomprehensible as it cuts back between old footage and new. And, unlike the original film, the nudity is very gratuitous (and more explicit) and doesn't make much sense (such as when Elke becomes a black lady!). All in all, a terrible film--one which unfortunately harmed the reputation of "Lisa and the Devil". I'd give this one a 3--and that's being generous.UPDATE: Since I originally posted this review, IMDb has now created a separate page for "House of Exorcism" and it gets its just desserts as a terrible film and "Lisa and the Devil" avoids this distinction.