Lisa and the Devil - A Film by Mario Bava

Elke Sommer and Telly Savalas Star in Cult Horror Movie

Nov 3, 2009

Mario Bava's haunting masterpiece restored. Initially released in butchered form as part of The House of Exorcism, Lisa and the Devil is one of Bava's best films.

Unseen in its original form until 1983, Lisa and the Devil was hacked to pieces by producer Alfredo Leone who added new footage to cash in on the success of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973). The resulting farrago became The House of Exorcism, a notoriously awful production in need of an exorcism. Thankfully the devilish influence of Leone was removed by American network television who screened Lisa and the Devil as Mario Bava intended.

Lisa (Elke Sommer) is part of a group of tourists admiring a Fresco painting of the Devil carrying away the dead. She is led away from the crowd by the sound of music into the back alleys of the city and loses her way. Lisa enters an old antiquarian shop to ask for directions and meets Leandro (Telly Savalas) who is purchasing a life-sized dummy of middle-aged man.

Unsettled by Leandro, whose likeness is uncannily like the Devil in the Fresco painting, Lisa tries to find her way back to the square. Instead she encounters Leandro again in maze-like streets, then a man who shares a resemblance to the dummy he was carrying. As darkness falls she grows increasingly lost, until she hitches a lift in a chauffeur-driven car to a house in the country.

Leandro is employed at the mansion as a butler. The house is a home to a blind Contessa (Alida Valli) and her handsome son Maximillian (Alessio Orano). Lisa begins to remember being here before, many years ago as a woman called Elena. Maximillian has conversations with somebody who remains unseen. Then the killings start.

Cinematographer Cecilio Paniaqua and the haunting music by Carlo Savina contribute to the dream-like feel of Lisa and the Devil. Bava could do as he liked with this film and directed one of the eeriest films of his career. Alfredo Leone only re-cut the film after failing to pick up an American distributor at the Cannes Film Festival. That led to the debacle of The House of Exorcism. Sadly Bava died before Lisa and the Devil was finally restored.

Sommers makes an interesting heroine, while Savalas is as good as he has ever been, sucking on lollipops and waiting for his victims to fall. "Most things aren't that easy to mend," Leandro tells the chaffeur at one point. That is certainly true of the troubled production history of Lisa and the Devil, but mended it is and it is an extraordinary film.

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