Limerculer A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

christopher-underwood Blasphemous declaration: I prefer watching this re-edit than the original Lisa and the Devil. Well, I am not going so far as to suggest this is a better made film, just that I have some difficulties with the constant (although very pretty) dreamlike structure of the original. This version clearly comes under the heading of 'exploitation' and can therefore be ignored because of the extremes of language, sexuality and blasphemy on display. I just happen to feel that the editing together is remarkable and adds a little sense to the picture. It may not be a pretty sight but there is real vigorous here and Elke Sommer desires a medal for going back and performing those remarkable scenes. I realise I am upsetting not only fans of the original but at the same time fans of the original Exorcist. So be it, in my opinion, the original is what Bava intended and always hoped to get made but being magnanimous was able to assist in creating an alternative movie, perhaps more able to gain an audience. There again, it seems, maybe not.

BA_Harrison 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.

Michael_Elliott 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.

Red-Barracuda 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.