Lisa and the Devil

Elke Sommer

 Mario Bava's Lisa and the Devil is an above average exploitation film from the Italian master. The film was made and released in Spain in 1973 as The Devil Takes the Dead but failed to find an international distributor. Producer Alfredo Leone then shot footage with actor Robert Alda as a priest in order to ride the coattails of The Exorcist. The results were released internationally under the title The House of Exorcism. Happily, the cut streaming on Tubi is the Bava cut. The stream does justice to the lustrous colors of Cecillo Paniagua's cinematography. This is a fairly brain dead film, but there are interesting layers to be found in the gorgeously ghastly mise en scène. 

Lisa and the Devil is a variation on the sick house subgenre of horror which spans from The Fall of the House of Usher to Hotel California. Elke Sommer stars as Lisa, a tourist who gets led astray to this film's house of horrors by the film's playful devil, Telly Savalas. Other interlopers are subsequently bumped off in the mansion presided by a blind matriarch played by Alida Valli. The plot, concocted by a phalanx of scriptwriters is a garbled mishmash of soap opera and Dostoyevsky. The performances are all dubbed. This was the second film in a row that Bava had done with Ms. Sommer and Leone after the rather dire Baron Blood. The dialogue is largely rot delivered spasmodically. I have never cottoned to Elke Sommer. She looks lovely, but is robotic in her bare competence. She seemed much more at ease at farce rather than horror. Alida Valli had been in more masterpieces than I can shake a stick at, but I think she is a stone faced bore. However, a stone face is perfect for a blind matriarch and Bava milks the most of her green eyes.

Alida Valli

Savalas was riding high on the success of the TV show Kojak after playing numerous psychos and villains through his career. Bava lets him coast off and toy with his image with trademark Kojak lollipop in hand. The numerous lollipops, reflections in cigarettes cases, wine spills, and mirrors attest to the playful nature of this film. Lisa and the Devil is a horror film than knowingly verges on burlesque. Still, there is some erudition and feeling on display in the way Bava's camera prowls the interior of the ridiculously rococo and rotting villa; certainly the byproducts of past productions. The manse is a house of the dead in which all who enter succumb. The green of Lisa's outfit is a symbol of her fertility. This is developed in a dream sequence triggered by a Day of the Dead music box. Lisa is transported to a green pastorale idyll which is presided over by a statue of Dionysus. Time's winged chariot comes for all though and Lisa is fated to join the rest of the house of the dead. Lisa and the Devil is no great shakes, but it director manages to extract beauty out of humble material.