Lisa and the Devil
Lisa and the Devil is a 1973 film from West Germany, Italy and Spain, directed by Mario Bava, running 95 minutes. reelscum files it under euro-gothic.
- Year
- 1973 · 1970s films
- Country
- West Germany · Italy · Spain
- Runtime
- 95 min
- Director
- Mario Bava
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- cult (41/100)
- Also known as
- House of Exorcism · The Devil in the House of Exorcism
Defined in the glossary: Euro-gothic
Bava's most personal film, and his strangest. Telly Savalas as the devil, holding a lollipop.
Mario Bava's dreamlike, uncommercial passion project, in which a tourist becomes lost and trapped in a decaying villa where the past replays and Telly Savalas, sucking a lollipop, presides as a manservant who may be the Devil himself. It makes little literal sense and works entirely as atmosphere.
Producers hated its lack of commercial hooks and later recut it with added exorcism footage as The House of Exorcism to cash in on the Exorcist boom. Bava's original is one of his most beautiful and haunting films.
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The cycle in depth
- Fantaterror: the Spanish horror boom, 1968 to 1976
Two cuts of every film, one for the censor in Madrid and one for the drive-in. Democracy killed the trick in two years.
On these lists
- Euro-gothic for the giallo graduate
The graduate course after the giallo: cobwebbed castles and a dead woman who will not stay buried, lit by Bava like nobody since.
Filed alongside
Maciste in Hell
A muscleman drops into a full gothic hell. Peplum crossbred with a haunted-castle picture, and it looks it.
The Shiver of the Vampires
Rollin with a fuzz-guitar band and a vampire who lives in the clock. His most fun.
Baron Blood
A resurrected torturer stalks his own castle. Bava on more commercial autopilot, still gorgeous.
Succubus
Franco's arthouse credentials, such as they are. Fritz Lang liked it.
A Virgin Among the Living Dead
Franco at his dreamiest. Distributors added zombies later without telling him.
The Grapes of Death
Rollin does an outbreak. A pesticide turns wine-country villagers into oozing killers.
Alucarda
The most hysterical nunsploitation film ever made. A convent, two possessed girls, and constant screaming.
Kill, Baby... Kill!
A ghost child with a white ball. Fellini and Scorsese both stole from it.
The Horrible Dr. Hichcock
Barbara Steele married to a necrophile surgeon, and Freda smuggling it past the 1962 censors on innuendo alone.
99 Women
Franco doing the formula early, with Mercedes McCambridge as the warden.
The Blood Spattered Bride
Spanish Carmilla adaptation with an unusually pointed anger about marriage.
Nightmare Castle
Barbara Steele twice over, one of them back from the grave, scored by a young Morricone.