Such a frustrating disappointment

Fantastic!

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Crappy film

first of all, let me say that i am reviewing the "house of exorcism"/Robert Alida version of this film. secondly, let me clarify my own beliefs. i am not a religious person. in fact, if anything i am Anti-religious. i am an agnostic who has been influenced by a secularized version of Buddhist philosophy. Buddhism is a philosophy for me, not a religion. however, the Buddhist concept of the "middle way" has made a great impression on me. (i take the concept of the "middle way" seriously, much more seriously than most people take their religions.) the "middle way" is neither "good" nor "evil." following the middle way might be conceptualized as treading a path BETWEEN good and evil. or, better yet, it could be seen as an ESCHEWAL of both good and evil, as a resolve to seek moderation with aesthetics and pragmatism (but NOT morality) as one's guides. i do not believe in any kind of morality PER SE. there are other ways to look at life apart from the "moral" view. one can look at life in aesthetic terms, a la Oscar Wilde. one could also look at life via the (essentially amoral) "pragmatic" viewpoint of john Dewey and Richard Rory. we have Oscar Wilde, john Dewey and Richard Rory (not to mention Derrida and Foucault and, of course, shakyamuni). we really don't need Jesus, moses, or Muhammad. third, i have never seen "the exorcist" and have no desire to do so. my interest is in films on the periphery, NOT on mainstream bourgeois cinema. "house of exorcism" may have been influenced by "the exorcist," but it should be judged as an entirely separate work of art and the elements it contains should not be viewed in relation to anything contained in the earlier film. now that that's out of the way, on to "house of exorcism." HOE could be read as a formulaic horror film, as a story of good against evil in which "good" emerges as triumphant. or it could be read against the grain as a story of evil against good in which evil wins out in the end, or in which at the very least the concepts of good and evil are discredited or called into question. the most sympathetic character in the film is Elinor, the young lady whose spirit inhabits the body of Lisa. Elinor is an essentially amoral (yet not unenlightened) woman. when she was alive she satisfied her lust, having sex in order to sate her physical urges instead of for reasons of love. her impotent husband was, shall we say....less than understanding of her needs, and ended up killing her. so Elinor has returned from the dead and is now (understandably) somewhat bitter. the specter of Elinor is a "truth teller." she tells the truth, or at least the truth AS SHE KNOWS IT, and the only truth that any of us know is the truth AS WE KNOW IT. she uses a kind of "streetlevel postmodern" speech, employing the "f bomb" and other "swear" words. (i would call them "aware" words, words of awareness and sensitivity meant to express strong emotions.) some people (inhibited prudes) may be offended by this language, but as far as i am concerned the point is that we SHOULDN'T be offended by this kind of speech or by ANY kind of speech. (if we insist upon "being offended," we should reserve that prerogative for ACTIONS, not for mere SPEECH ACTS.) the father asks Elinor where she comes from and she says "from far way, from incest and adultery." (which may be factually correct.) the priest is unsatisfied with this answer and she says that she came "from a c*nt." (brilliant. truer words have never been spoken.) at one point, the father labels Elinor as "evil." Elinor responds by saying that the priest and his church are evil. now i would part company with Elinor at this point. i don't think that the church is evil....just unnecessarily and, as such, counterproductive. as for labeling any person or spirit as "evil": the universe is a moral vacuum. "good" and "evil" are BOTH figments of the bourgeois imagination. but i can see why some people might find the church and its hypocrisy to be so distasteful that they are tempted to label them as "evil." the film ends with the priest performing an exorcism at the mansion where Elinor once lived. one could view this ritual as a "triumph," as an act sending Elinor's "evil" spirit back to "Hell." but from a pragmatist/methodologically rational point of view, i would see the exorcism as an empty ritual. Elinor lives on, or at least what she stands for survives. Elinor lives on as the symbol not of evil but rather of an amoral yet enlightened pragmatism........ p.s.--earlier in the film we see telly savalas (the "devil") sucking a lollipop. in the last scene, we see Robert Alida wielding an aspergillum (holy water dispenser)....which looks quite a bit like a lollipop. now, as far as i am concerned, the telly savalas character represents not "evil" but rather a kind of "pragmatism" (whether one views it as "enlightened" pragmatism, "unenlightened," or somewhere in between is up to you). in any case, the lollipop of telly savalas is much more powerful than any priest's holy water dispenser. ("who loves ya, baby?")

"Lisa and the Devil" (1972) was dumb. "The House of Exorcism" (1975) is even dumber, which is unfortunate because it had the potential to use the "Lisa and the Devil" footage to create an interesting story. Instead we merely get Elke Sommer as a woman possessed by . . . well, we don't know, but she sure uses a lot of profanity and vulgarity. Robert Alda is a priest who sees Sommer collapse and realizes that she is possessed. The new footage is intercut with scenes from "Lisa and the Devil," so we assume that the story will somehow intersect with Lisa's present possession. Unfortunately about three-quarters of the way through the film we realize that no such suturing will occur, and we have only Lisa screaming profanities, spitting green vomit and frogs, and Alda looking pained. "The House of Exorcism" also features gore and nudity that was cut from "Lisa and the Devil," as well as adding nudity to the Alda sequence, making this version much more explicit than Bava's original 1972 film.In the end, Alda realizes that he shouldn't be trying to exorcise the spirits that possess Lisa but must instead exorcise the house in which all the evil occurred. He does so and the movie ends. As a film cashing in on "The Exorcist" devil-cycle, "The House of Exorcism" is mildly interesting. For entertainment purposes it's pretty lousy--despite Bava's beautiful cinematography. (By the way, Bava had his name removed from this film and instead used the pseudonym Mickey Lion.)

The original Lisa and the Devil is lush and stylish but oddly pointless and dull story of the people who must to spend the night in the lush and stylish but dangerous Italian villa. Elke Sommer is the heroine, a tourist called Lisa, and Telly Savalas a Devil disguised as a butler. Later the new footage was added and the result is trashy and foul-mouthed La Casa dell'esorcismo (House of the exorcism), one of the many copies of the trashy and foul-mouthed plot less wonder The Exorcist. Lisa and the Devil is a movie worth of decent 6/10, House of the Exorcism (like the original The Exorcist) is garbage and only worth of lousy 2/10.

Okay, so I saw 'House Of Exorcism' the re-edited version of Mario Bava's 'Lisa And The Devil' with the added cash in footage. I've heard great things about the original version, but I haven't yet had an opportunity to view it so I'm sticking with this, the "unauthorized" cut. Bava must have had mixed feelings about it seeing as his name has been removed as director. I can understand why, because I'm a little ambivalent about it myself. This is in many ways a confusing mess of a movie, but overall enjoyable enough and holds the interest until the end. Elke Sommer, who had previously worked with Bava on the uneven 'Baron Blood', plays an American tourist apparently possessed by the Devil. While being exorcised by a priest (Robert Alda), we cut to a series of events involving her being picked up hitch hiking and taken to a mysterious mansion populated by various nuts, not least of which is Leandro, the mysterious lollipop sucking butler (yep, you guessed it, Telly Savalas). This footage (recycled from the original 'Lisa And The Devil') is either hallucination or flashbacks or both, and Leandro may or may not be the Devil. It's all very hard to tell. Frankly, you won't even care. Even so, I enjoyed this movie even if it was incoherent most of the time. It may not be genuine Bava but it's a lot of fun, and I must admit I preferred it to 'Baron Blood'. Take from that what you will.