Highly Overrated But Still Good

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Tourist Lisa Reiner (Elke Sommer) is on holiday in Spain when she falls victim to demonic possession. A concerned priest, Father Michael (Robert Alda) attempts to exorcise the evil being.The House of Exorcism is Mario Bava's commercial flop Lisa and The Devil re-edited with new Exorcist-style footage by a producer desperate to recoup some of his investment. Many regard this new version as a travesty, a work of art butchered in the name of money (indeed, The House of Exorcism was a financial success). I, on the other hand, think that both versions stink: Lisa and The Devil is a dull, languorous ghost story that makes very little sense and House of Exorcism is a dull, languorous Exorcist rip-off that also makes very little sense.If pushed to choose, I would actually give the edge to The House of Exorcism for being a couple of minutes shorter, having more gratuitous nudity (including full frontal from Carmen Silva, who tries to tempt the priest), and for getting Elke Sommer to puke up a rubber frog.

Although one might understand producer Alfred Leone's concern at having bankrolled a film nobody wanted to distribute, i.e. Mario Bava's LISA AND THE DEVIL (1973) – one is more likely to empathize with the latter's unenviable plight of having to defile his own "masterpiece" by inserting lots of ludicrous (and ludicrously irrelevant) footage in the hopes of turning it into a marketable commodity (albeit shot by Leone himself and Bava's own son Lamberto and credited to one "Mickey Lion" on U.S. prints)! Diabolism in cinema had hit a peak with the artistic and commercial success of William Friedkin's THE EXORCIST (1973) and both Hollywood and European film-makers were quick to jump on the bandwagon: from Jesus Franco's EXORCISM and LORNA THE EXORCIST to Ovidio G. Assonitis' BEYOND THE DOOR (1974) to Alberto De Martino's THE ANTICHRIST (all 1974)! Due to the tenuous devilish connection in Bava's original version (but, then, Telly Savalas' inherently comic persona there simply makes no sense vis-a'-vis his would-be unholy influence on Lisa in the reworking!), the chance for Leone to add his own product to the mix must have seemed too good to pass by. Needless to say, this necessitated that additional scenes be shot featuring a demonically-possessed protagonist (which star Elke Sommer reportedly shot for free!), a cleric literally picked off the streets of Toledo who just happens to be adept at exorcism (a visibly distraught Robert Alda) and the resulting gravity-defying shenanigans at the hospital (witnessed by Leone's own daughter Kathy, whose role as Sommer's travelling companion was consequently enlarged). Apart from all this, a few erotic or violent sequences are far more graphically rendered in this version, while even Carlo Savina's previously lyrical music score has been punched up by ominously percussive beats over the opening credits… Even though I do not quite rank LISA in the top-tier of the director's works myself, the desecration done to it by this travesty is still too great to overlook or forgive: incidentally, I had twice previously watched it in English, but this latest viewing came by way of the Italian-language 'original' culled off "You Tube" and, for what it is worth, it does play better this way…meaning that the obligatory profanities spouted by Sommer at the befuddled Alda are even funnier now! To be fair to it, none of the various EXORCIST copycats that I have come across treated the possession theme with the requisite seriousness and spirituality, preferring to indulge in rotating heads, levitations and copious vomit-spewing. While, as already intimated, THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM does include some of these (Sommer even throws up live frogs!), its 'backstory' – that is, the footage pertaining to LISA AND THE DEVIL and which the leading lady insists has already happened and is happening again, whatever that is supposed to mean – has little bearing on Lisa's current condition…and how can she be strapped to a hospital bed while simultaneously living a nightmare at the villa?! For good measure, Alda is lamely shown – like Jason Miller's priest in the Friedkin film – to have issues with the Catholic faith that could jeopardize his 'mission' due to personal tragedy (cueing an entirely gratuitous full-frontal nude seduction by his conveniently much younger dead spouse!).Leone may have removed slow, uneventful passages from LISA (not that the substitutes were any good, and the change in tone between one setting and another is most jarring) but he also ruined a number of judicious edits: most notable are a cut from Alida Valli's face to an eerie fish sculpture that forms part of a fountain, and the dinner sequence in which Telly Savalas' own visage is reflected in the contents of a spilled wine bottle on the floor – now overlapping into a puddle of green vomit beside the hospital bed – only to return to this very point (highlighting Savalas' nervously apologetic reaction to his slip-up) at the next instalment of Lisa's 'recollections'! In the end, it is worth noting that, much as would again prove the case with Enzo G. Castellari's THE LAST SHARK (1981; deemed plagiaristic and refused distribution in the U.S. at the time of release) and JAWS III (1983), the climax of THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM would in return be ripped off by Hollywood for the no-less maligned (and, oddly enough, itself be subject to tinkering in the hope of salvaging it) EXORCIST II – THE HERETIC (1977)!

"Lisa and the Devil" (1972) was dumb. "The House of Exorcism" (1975) is even dumber, which is unfortunate because it had the potential to use the "Lisa and the Devil" footage to create an interesting story. Instead we merely get Elke Sommer as a woman possessed by . . . well, we don't know, but she sure uses a lot of profanity and vulgarity. Robert Alda is a priest who sees Sommer collapse and realizes that she is possessed. The new footage is intercut with scenes from "Lisa and the Devil," so we assume that the story will somehow intersect with Lisa's present possession. Unfortunately about three-quarters of the way through the film we realize that no such suturing will occur, and we have only Lisa screaming profanities, spitting green vomit and frogs, and Alda looking pained. "The House of Exorcism" also features gore and nudity that was cut from "Lisa and the Devil," as well as adding nudity to the Alda sequence, making this version much more explicit than Bava's original 1972 film.In the end, Alda realizes that he shouldn't be trying to exorcise the spirits that possess Lisa but must instead exorcise the house in which all the evil occurred. He does so and the movie ends. As a film cashing in on "The Exorcist" devil-cycle, "The House of Exorcism" is mildly interesting. For entertainment purposes it's pretty lousy--despite Bava's beautiful cinematography. (By the way, Bava had his name removed from this film and instead used the pseudonym Mickey Lion.)

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.