Lisa and the Devil starts with a group of tourists who are looking at ancient art in Toledo, Spain. One of the group, Lisa (Elke Sommer) wanders into a workshop and finds a man in there called Leandro (Telly Savalas) who is buying a dummy. She is spooked because he looks exactly like the devil in a portrait that she had seen earlier. She goes off by herself and she gets lost.
She meets another guy and he argues with her and falls down some steps and supposedly dies. She is confused and lost and she sees a car. She asks for help. The people in the car are a couple and they agree to give her a lift to her hotel. Unfortunately, their car breaks down in front of a house. By coincidence, Leandro works there as a butler. The house is owned by a blind Countess(Alida Valli) and her son Max. He invites Lisa and the couple to stay, even though his mother is not happy about it.
They are allowed to stay in cottages. Lisa is told that she is actually a woman called Elena, who was Max’s girlfriend and who was chased away by the Countess. Lisa has weird visions of herself kissing the man who she met earlier and who fell down the steps. He is actually Carlos, the husband of the Countess. People start to die around the place, including the couple who gave her a lift. Carlos is dead too. Lisa wants to leave but she can’t. Max takes her to a room and he shows her the body of his dead girlfriend. She is some sort of a ghost. Max tries to rape Lisa, but he can’t. He decides to kill his mother as she won’t get out of his way.
Lisa and the Devil is a 1974 horror film directed by Mario Bava. The film was first released in Spain as El diablo se lleva a los muertos (The Devil Takes the Dead) and stars Elke Sommer as a young tourist who loses her way in Toledo and spends the night at a villa belonging to a family of mysterious Spanish aristocrats.
After the popularity of the film The Exorcist, scenes were added by producer Alfredo Leone and Lamberto Bava which gave the film an exorcism theme and re-released it as The House of Exorcism (Italian: La casa dell’esorcismo) in the United States; this recasts the film as a clone of The Exorcist, with the main character possessed and recounting to the priest who is seeking to save her the story of how she became possessed.
Lisa and the Devil (1975)
Directed by: Mario Bava
Starring: Telly Savalas, Elke Sommer, Sylva Koscina, Alessio Orano, Alida Valli, Gabriele Tinti, Kathy Leone, Eduardo Fajardo as Francis, Franz von Treuberg, Espartaco Santoni
Screenplay by: Mario Bava, Alfredo Leone, Giorgio Maulini
Production Design by: José Gutiérrez Maesso
Cinematography by: Cecilio Paniagua
Film Editing by: Carlo Reali
Set Decoration by: Rafael Ferri
Art Direction by: Nedo Azzini
Music by: Carlo Savina
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Transeuropa
Release Date: April 2, 1975 (Italy)
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