Lisa and the Devil
(aka: La Casa dell'esorcismo)
(1972)
review by Red Velvet Kitchen

Upon approaching Mario Bava's 'Lisa and the Devil' with little knowledge of the man or his movies this simply looks routine, another Italian horror of the 1970's, championed with colourful language by the few that have seen it, derided as neither artistic nor atrocious enough by naysayers, and ignored by the other 99% of film followers out there. However, if you have heard of Lisa and The Devil, you may think a softly-glowing gem awaits, your interest stoked by fans of the movie who romanticise about this 'lost' Bava classic, gushing between breaths about the dark artistry before spinning out anecdotes about how Telly Savalas' inadvertent bid to quit smoking resulted in his character's mouth memorably spouting a red lollipop throughout. Or in the case of one Timothy Burton, ensure people KNOW that you have seen and gorged on this film by being quite obviously influenced by it in such films as Sleepy Hollow and especially Edward Scissorhands (at one moment in particular, the word 'homage' will suddenly turn Jekyll and Hyde-like into the expression 'Rip-Off Artist'.)

For those of you who know Black Sabbath from Black Sunday, all the hallmarks of obscure Italian Horror are here: The notorious dodgy older version, butchered with new inserts and a dumbed-down title (in this case, The House of Exorcism, which is bad, but not 'Unsane' bad), Alida Valli in an odd and matriarchal role, a perturbing appearance by a well-known actor, artwork featuring doll-like actresses frozen attractively with fear, and eerie yet hunky Italians with strange clothes that have huge collars. However, sit down and watch and within five or ten minutes you'll realize this really is quite different material from what may have been expected. The film opens with Lisa (played with permanent wide-eyed confusion and repulsion by Elke Sommer) stumbling around lost in an emptied, oppressive Spanish village, until she bumps into Leandro, the afore-mentioned lollipop-sucking butler who carries life-size dummies around with him most of the time, and looks oddly like the fresco of the Devil we saw five minutes ago. Well, a little later, Lisa finds herself sheltering in a large, creepy mansion for the night, a den of escalating horrors, beginning with such minor distractions as a spooky whirling ornament depicting Death amongst other gargoyle-like figurines, and eventually spiralling into impassioned murder, necrophilia, conspiracies, extreme nepotism and a use of colour so strikingly morbid you could swear it was the work of a Cenobite or two (Bava, for all his faults, was a marvellous alchemists, and how he manages to create such a desperately grave resonance with a flood of fluorescent red or green is blackly magical, as if Bava had dropped some precious jewels he stole from a decrepit tomb into the photographic process.)

Actually, that description isn't entirely accurate, the film doesn't so much spiral out of control as lethargically spasm from one moment to another, connected by the most tenuous of motives and reasoning. What matters though, are those moments and how they build up to form a kind of nightmare manifesto, each one slumping melodramatically before your eyes, trying with quiet desperation to crawl over your sensibilities like some unholy spider voiced by Christopher Walken. This could have been great if Bava had managed to tie each macabre minute into something resembling a plot, which featured something resembling characters, who spoke something resembling real dialogue (or in the least the creepy premonition-heavy evilspeak of horror legend). Lisa and The Devil is no clearer example though of Bava's complete lack of storytelling skills, the only compelling element of this film is the look, and the feeling these images conjure. Why bother with the trivia of emotion and getting under an audience's skin, when you can baffle and alarm so skilfully? This appears to be Bava's way of thinking, methodology which would make one Hell of a gothic art instalment, but unfortunately not a movie. The dream-gone-to-Hell quality, oddly emotional score from Carlos Savina, zooming fascination with the melodramatic, embossed-expressions acting, and so many other little wonders eventually add up to very little, because we're never actually there, smelling the corruption or walking through the frightening architecture. It's like watching an especially dazzling Penny Dreadful on a pier at midnight, or reading a ghoulish, sinister comic book (which the film feels like at times), it's filmmaking that, rather like Elke Sommer, potters around prettily, but never actually emotes, connects, chills or goes for the throat. Only that sense of placid, eerie beauty remains in my head, rather than what I would have wanted, which is the opposite of what a similarly confused character feels when she shrieks "I don't want to spend the rest of my life in this nightmare". Well, maybe not my lifetime, but an hour or two would have been special.

Having seen a few Bava films before, I feel this could be the litmus test: If you find your vacations in Bava Country inspirational and unconventionally beautiful, feel free to sprawl throughout the mausoleum stench of morbidity potently accompanied by the Evil Christmas Lights colour scheme. If you find his style more of a blindness than a vision though, I'd recommend staying at home. Newcomers on the other hand, get ready for one of those genuine love it, or have-it-mess-you-around-and-toss-you-outside-feeling-dissatisfied kind of films. So, is it beautiful or is it banal, has 'Lisa and the Devil' been lost (and quietly resurrected for that matter) for a good reason? To answer those two and a half questions, it's really a bit of both. Rewarding certainly, but my eyes were half dazzled, half sleepy throughout.