The House of Exorcism

The House of Exorcism (1975)

** (out of 4)

Mario Bava's dream project was LISA AND THE DEVIL, which many people think is his masterpiece. Unfortuantly, the film couldn't land a distributor so the producer was left with a large cash issue because the film simply wasn't going to make money. After the success of THE EXORCIST the producer, against Bava's wishes, decided to bring back some of the cast members and turn this into a rip-off.

I think a lot of people are afraid to say it fearing they're be attacked for not being "true" fans but I personally found LISA AND THE DEVIL to be rather slow and boring. Yes, it looked beautiful and had a terrific atmosphere but it's pretty easy to see why no one would want to distribute it. With that said, I can understand the producer doing whatever he had to in order to sell the film and I've read that this re-edited version went on to make millions across the globe so here's the perfect example of mainstream people wanting trash and not art.

The new scenes here are all rather silly and especially the dialogue, which tries desperately to match THE EXORCIST's profanity laced rants. I'm not going to lie, I found a lot of this trash talking to be rather funny. As you'd expect, there's also a lot of green puke going around and this here even manages to work in some frogs. Some added nudity was also placed in the film just to top off the exploitation. So, is THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM any good? Of course not but it remains an interesting bit of movie history due to the production history. The film is mildly entertaining due to how silly it is and you at least have to give the producer credit because the new footage mixes in quite well with the old.

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.

"Lisa and the Devil" is one of director Mario Bava's best films. It's extremely atmospheric, very scary and has an amazing artistry about it that you just don't expect from a horror film. Sadly, however, some dirt-bags decided to take Bava's excellent film and re-edit it into a new movie! So, they sloppily filmed some new scenes (complete with LOTS of nudity) and pasted it and the original picture together to make it an incoherent mess of a movie. It's terrible in most every way and I am pretty sure Bava must have been ticked about this.

Fortunately, while this movie truly is terrible, it IS available on the DVD with "Lisa and the Devil" so you can compare the two and appreciate the original film. It's really an interesting experience and one you can do (at least in the USA) by streaming both versions of the movie.

This is the page for "House of Exorcism", but most people have confused this film with the Mario Bava masterpiece, "Lisa & the Devil", which explains the ridiculously high rating for this, "House of exorcism." When "Lisa & the Devil" was shown at film festivals in the early 70's, it was a critical success. Audiences responded well to that gorgeous, Gothic horror film. Unfortunately it was a bit ahead of it's time, and was considered too unusual, and not commercial enough for mass consumption. No distributor would buy it. So producer Alfredo Leone decided to edit 'Lisa', seemingly with a chainsaw, by removing just about half of the original film, and adding new scenes, which he filmed two years after the original product! It is important to note that Bava had little to do with these new, hideous additions, so technically "House of Exorcism" is not a Bava film. The original product is a slow, dreamy, classy production. A few minutes into the film, the viewer is jarred out of this dream world, as suddenly we see Lisa, (two years older, and with a very different haircut), begin to writhe on the ground, making guttural sounds and croaking epitaphs like "suck my co@k", etc. Subtle, huh? And the film continues like this, jumping back and forth between a beautiful, visual film, and a grade Z "Exorcist" rip-off. Leone was trying to incorporate these shock scenes, while keeping some semblance of a story intact. He failed miserably. When the choice was made to basically destroy "Lisa and the devil", Bava himself refused, saying that his film was too beautiful to cut. He was right, and it must have been quite sad for this artist to see all his work destroyed and flushed down the toilet. It was many years before the original "Lisa and the Devil" was seen again, re-surfacing on late night television. I had seen "lisa" long before i saw this new version, and it was downright disturbing to witness one of my favorite films "vandalised" in this way. Worth seeing only for curiosity sake. Otherwise avoid this insidious disaster like the plague.

The House of Exorcism (1973) is an interesting patch work film. After the disappointing attendance figures for LISA AND THE DEVIL, Producer Alfredo Leone re-shot and incorporated new footage into LISA AND THE DEVIL making the movie into an Exorcist knockoff. The ploy worked and Leone made his money back plus a profit. HOUSE OF EXORCISM is about a Bavarian woman named Lisa who's possessed by a restless spirit. The things that the spirit does and says puts Pazul/Linda Blair to shame.

The spirit has a very foul mouth and uses creative dialog to motivate the priest into helping her. The movie is nowhere near the classic as LISA AND THE DEVIL but it's quite entertaining. However, the two movies are very different and they don't match together very well. One of the better Exorcist wannabes.

Highly recommended for camp value.