6. Lisa And The Devil (1974)
Lisa is on a sight seeing trip and gets accidentally separated from the other tourists. A man with a moustache falls down the stairs for no discernible reason. She meets a strange man called Leandro (played by Telly Savalas) who reminds her of the Devil in a Fresco she had just seen. Obviously spooked out, Lisa joins a young couple in a car with a chauffeur. They agree to get her back to her hotel. However, the car breaks down conveniently in front of a mansion... Lisa finds out to her dismay that the mansion's butler appears to be creepy Leandro. The couple plead with Leandro to let them stay the night whilst the chauffeur, who is having an affair with the wife, fixes the car. Lisa tries to run away but is captured by an inhabitant of the mansion called Maximilian who is the son of the Countess who owns the place. Lisa agrees to stay in the mansion and here she meets Moustache Man from earlier who turns out to be Carlos, the Countess's second husband. There is a person they keep locked in a room for reasons that are not described. The castle inhabitants begin to insist that Lisa is in fact Elena - Maximillian's old girlfriend. Now things really begin to get bizarre. Apparently Elena was having an affair with Carlos. Now Carlos is attempting to flee with Lisa but Maximillian shoots him dead. Carlos' body is turned into a dummy and the shock of this makes Lisa faint. After the chauffeur fixes the car, he is killed by an unknown attacker. The husband of the couple tries to leave and insists his wife comes with him. The wife runs over him only to be killed by Maximillian. Things get even weirder. There are dummies of all the guests sitting around the table in the mansion. The castle is apparently cursed and Leandro is a demon. The mysterious person locked in the room is Elena's corpse. Lisa is drugged and raped by Maximillian. Elena appears to him in ghost form whilst he is committing this heinous deed. Overcome with guilt, he tells his mother about what he has done to Lisa and how he killed the other guests. The Countess tells him to kill Lisa but he kills her instead. Maximillian gets the shock of his life when he sees his victims sitting at the table waiting for him. He jumps out of the window and is impaled. Lisa wakes up the next day with the mansion in ruins. A dummy Maximillian begs her to stay. However Lisa manages to board a plane for out of Italy. A nasty and surreal shock awaits her in the plane. A film that exists in many forms and edits - including a version called House of Exorcism which was hastily assembled to tag on to The Exorcist's bandwagon. This cut of the film is a confusing mess and should be avoided. I have to say that when I sat down to Lisa and the Devil, I found it to be a very creepy film, mainly because of the dummies representing people and the plane finale. Both Telly Savalas and Elke Sommers turn in amazing performances as Leandro and Lisa respectively. Poor old Elke has a dreadful time of it in the film. As it is Mario Bava directing the film, it is of course very stylish and full of an atmospheric and bizarre dread. The reasoning and rationale behind the film's plot is very unclear - it is buried under a slew of haunting, dreamlike images. The film is at times very confusing and unsettling but the whole thing is redeemed by its sheer weirdness and Mario Bava's directorial skills. An exotic curio.