it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Lisa and the Devil was a film directed by Mario Bava, it had a limited cinema release in 1973 but was soon withdrawn by producer Alfredo Leone as he did not know how to market this strange, lyrical film. It sat on the shelf for a couple of years with no distributer interested in picking it up, so Leone decided to attempt to make some money back on his investment. Two years later he returned with one of the participants from the first film, Elke Sommer - along with Robert Alda and Carmen Silva, neither of whom appeared in Lisa and the Devil at all – and, with Bava's assistance, directed a batch of new, completely unrelated material. He then merged these new scenes in with parts from the original film. The resultant movie became known as The House of Exorcism. Like some other Italian films from the time like L'anticristo it clearly was designed to cash in on the success of The Exorcist, as it is basically a rip off of this film in many ways. Lisa and the Devil, on the other hand, had nothing to do with demonic possession and its story is completely unrelated.The biggest single problem with The House of Exorcism is that if you are already familiar with Lisa and the Devil it's very difficult disassociating the scenes from that movie from their original intent. It simply just makes you want to see them again in their original context. When I watch The House of Exorcism, it's the new bits that interest me; the stuff from Lisa is just simply distracting. The contrast in tone between the two sections of film is massive, where the stuff from Lisa is beautiful and fairly subtle; House of Exorcism is relentlessly coarse and goes for shock value. It's pretty much an exploitation movie and the sequences from Lisa and the Devil do not fit into its tone and story-line well at all. In fairness, it may work a lot better – maybe even quite well – if you have never seen the original film but I suspect most people going into this already have and that's essentially the problem.The new material is set mainly in a hospital where Lisa (Elke Sommer) is confined after being possessed by the Devil. A priest (Robert Alda) tries to exorcise her. The new scenes are typified by Sommer barking out obscenities at Alda. There's lots of green vomit, a vision of a beautiful naked woman and…frogs. The new stuff's not that bad really and would have no doubt have made an entertaining schlockfest if it had constituted the full movie. But, as it is, the majority of the run-time is made up of re-used material from Lisa and the Devil, which is distracting and useless if you have seen the original already. Nowadays, with the original film readily available, The House of Exorcism has become no more than a curiosity piece. Fun to watch for the added possession material but as a whole it doesn't work anymore.

first of all, let me say that i am reviewing the "house of exorcism"/Robert Alida version of this film. secondly, let me clarify my own beliefs. i am not a religious person. in fact, if anything i am Anti-religious. i am an agnostic who has been influenced by a secularized version of Buddhist philosophy. Buddhism is a philosophy for me, not a religion. however, the Buddhist concept of the "middle way" has made a great impression on me. (i take the concept of the "middle way" seriously, much more seriously than most people take their religions.) the "middle way" is neither "good" nor "evil." following the middle way might be conceptualized as treading a path BETWEEN good and evil. or, better yet, it could be seen as an ESCHEWAL of both good and evil, as a resolve to seek moderation with aesthetics and pragmatism (but NOT morality) as one's guides. i do not believe in any kind of morality PER SE. there are other ways to look at life apart from the "moral" view. one can look at life in aesthetic terms, a la Oscar Wilde. one could also look at life via the (essentially amoral) "pragmatic" viewpoint of john Dewey and Richard Rory. we have Oscar Wilde, john Dewey and Richard Rory (not to mention Derrida and Foucault and, of course, shakyamuni). we really don't need Jesus, moses, or Muhammad. third, i have never seen "the exorcist" and have no desire to do so. my interest is in films on the periphery, NOT on mainstream bourgeois cinema. "house of exorcism" may have been influenced by "the exorcist," but it should be judged as an entirely separate work of art and the elements it contains should not be viewed in relation to anything contained in the earlier film. now that that's out of the way, on to "house of exorcism." HOE could be read as a formulaic horror film, as a story of good against evil in which "good" emerges as triumphant. or it could be read against the grain as a story of evil against good in which evil wins out in the end, or in which at the very least the concepts of good and evil are discredited or called into question. the most sympathetic character in the film is Elinor, the young lady whose spirit inhabits the body of Lisa. Elinor is an essentially amoral (yet not unenlightened) woman. when she was alive she satisfied her lust, having sex in order to sate her physical urges instead of for reasons of love. her impotent husband was, shall we say....less than understanding of her needs, and ended up killing her. so Elinor has returned from the dead and is now (understandably) somewhat bitter. the specter of Elinor is a "truth teller." she tells the truth, or at least the truth AS SHE KNOWS IT, and the only truth that any of us know is the truth AS WE KNOW IT. she uses a kind of "streetlevel postmodern" speech, employing the "f bomb" and other "swear" words. (i would call them "aware" words, words of awareness and sensitivity meant to express strong emotions.) some people (inhibited prudes) may be offended by this language, but as far as i am concerned the point is that we SHOULDN'T be offended by this kind of speech or by ANY kind of speech. (if we insist upon "being offended," we should reserve that prerogative for ACTIONS, not for mere SPEECH ACTS.) the father asks Elinor where she comes from and she says "from far way, from incest and adultery." (which may be factually correct.) the priest is unsatisfied with this answer and she says that she came "from a c*nt." (brilliant. truer words have never been spoken.) at one point, the father labels Elinor as "evil." Elinor responds by saying that the priest and his church are evil. now i would part company with Elinor at this point. i don't think that the church is evil....just unnecessarily and, as such, counterproductive. as for labeling any person or spirit as "evil": the universe is a moral vacuum. "good" and "evil" are BOTH figments of the bourgeois imagination. but i can see why some people might find the church and its hypocrisy to be so distasteful that they are tempted to label them as "evil." the film ends with the priest performing an exorcism at the mansion where Elinor once lived. one could view this ritual as a "triumph," as an act sending Elinor's "evil" spirit back to "Hell." but from a pragmatist/methodologically rational point of view, i would see the exorcism as an empty ritual. Elinor lives on, or at least what she stands for survives. Elinor lives on as the symbol not of evil but rather of an amoral yet enlightened pragmatism........ p.s.--earlier in the film we see telly savalas (the "devil") sucking a lollipop. in the last scene, we see Robert Alida wielding an aspergillum (holy water dispenser)....which looks quite a bit like a lollipop. now, as far as i am concerned, the telly savalas character represents not "evil" but rather a kind of "pragmatism" (whether one views it as "enlightened" pragmatism, "unenlightened," or somewhere in between is up to you). in any case, the lollipop of telly savalas is much more powerful than any priest's holy water dispenser. ("who loves ya, baby?")

The original Lisa and the Devil is lush and stylish but oddly pointless and dull story of the people who must to spend the night in the lush and stylish but dangerous Italian villa. Elke Sommer is the heroine, a tourist called Lisa, and Telly Savalas a Devil disguised as a butler. Later the new footage was added and the result is trashy and foul-mouthed La Casa dell'esorcismo (House of the exorcism), one of the many copies of the trashy and foul-mouthed plot less wonder The Exorcist. Lisa and the Devil is a movie worth of decent 6/10, House of the Exorcism (like the original The Exorcist) is garbage and only worth of lousy 2/10.

House of Exorcism (1972) is a film we noticed circulating the underground film circuit lately so we had to snag a copy for ourselves. This 93 minute tape actually bears a lot in common with The Exorcist and has many memorable moments. Telly Savalas plays a lollipop-sucking demon (seriously) who aids in trapping a group of people in a "house of evil." Incest, rape, murder and wax dummies seem to be the main focus of this film and there is actually extra footage added to our particular copy (mostly a house-cleansing nearest the end). All in all, this film was not that exciting. This film was originally released as "Lisa and the Devil," it was re-edited in 1975 and renamed to House of Exorcism with Robert Alda as a priest (and believe us, without those particular scenes, the movie would have sucked).