| Lisa and the Devil | |
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Lisa and the Devil |
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| Directed by | Mario Bava |
| Produced by | Alfredo Leone |
| Written by | Mario Bava Alfredo Leone |
| Starring | Telly Savalas Elke Sommer Sylva Koscina Alessio Orano |
| Music by | Carlo Savina |
| Cinematography | Cecilio Paniagua |
| Editing by | Carlo Reali |
| Running time | 92 min |
| Country | Italy Spain West Germany |
| Language | Italian |
Lisa and the Devil (Italian title: Lisa e il diavolo) is a 1972 Italian horror film directed by Mario Bava. The film has developed a cult following among fans of European horror, it is particularly praised by fans of Mario Bava. Like most of Bava's films Lisa and the Devil possesses inventively stylish direction and evokes an atmosphere of bizarre and eerie, yet surreal beauty. The film is said to have been one of Bava's personal favorite works, though the director would not live to see the film released as he had made it. Difficulty finding a distributor for the film forced it to be drastically altered. It was originally released in 1975 in the United States under the title House of Exorcism, an alternate cut of the film that removed much of the original film's content in favor of new footage shot specifically for the US version of the film, as well as an entirely new script. Years after director Bava's death the original version of the film emerged again and is now available on DVD.
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Tourist Lisa Rainer (Elke Sommer) wanders away from her tour group in Toledo and encounters a man called Leandro (Telly Savalas) who resembles the portrait of the devil in a fresco she has just seen. When she is unable to find the tour group again, she takes refuge in a crumbling mansion owned by a blind Countess (Alida Valli), where Leandro is the butler. The Countess's son (Alessio Orano) is drawn to Lisa because of her physical resemblance to his dead lover. As people begin to die off at the villa at the hands of a mysterious killer, Lisa finds herself in a surrealistic nightmare from which she cannot escape.
In the late 1960s, a string of flops resulted in Mario Bava losing his coveted American distribution deal with American International Pictures and sent the director's career into a downward spiral, that ended with the success of his 1971 film Twitch of the Death Nerve. As such, Bava entered into the production of Lisa and the Devil with renewed confidence in his freedom to produce films without much studio interference.
Film producer Alfredo Leone, who had worked with Bava on his previous film Baron Blood, gave Bava free rein on the making of Lisa and the Devil and allowed Bava to produce a film that was very much non-commercial fare with its surrealistic tone and dreamlike direction. Unfortunately, when it was released in Italy, the film was a commercial flop. Furthermore, when Leone took the movie to the Cannes Film Festival, US film distributors turned down offers to release the film in the US.
In a desperate attempt to get the film released in the US, Leone convinced a very reluctant Mario Bava that they should revamp the entire film as an Exorcist clone, in order to cash in on the popularity of that film, complete with new footage being shot of an exorcism involving Elke Sommer and Robert Alda, who was cast as a priest in the new footage. The film itself was then heavily cut, removing over twenty minutes of footage (including the film's ending) and having the remaining footage edited into the new footage as an extended flashback sequence that Sommer's character tells Alda's character.
Leone clashed with Bava over the new footage shot of Alda and Sommer; Leone wanted profanity and strong sexuality in the new footage, something Bava refused to do. At first he would set up the scenes and then leave the set so that Leone could direct the actors; later he tried to convince Elke Sommer not to act in these scenes, and eventually he left the film altogether. As such, the finished film's direction was credited to Mickey Lion.
House of Exorcism was released in the United States in 1975, where it was a critical and commercial flop. Leone's plan to try and exploit the popularity of The Exorcist backfired, as many critics and viewers denounced the film as a blatant rip-off of The Exorcist.
Ironically though, the re-editing of Lisa and the Devil as House of the Exorcism would cause the film to gain cult status amongst horror fans as far as being a "lost classic". As Lisa and the Devil was commercially unavailable (and for a time, thought to be truly lost forever until an intact print of the film resurfaced in the late 1990s), the film's reputation grew amongst fans and critics as one of Mario Bava's best films.
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