The House of Exorcism (1976)

The Worst Film Ever

Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Okay, I like this film. It's one of my guilty pleasures. In 1984, I saw this in a cinema on Grand Street in NYC on a double bill with Terror in the Aisles. I liked House of Exorcism, but even as I watched it, I realized something was up. It seemed disconnected in some way. I read about Lisa and the Devil, and finally got to see it at the Film Forum in NYC in the 1990s. I liked it. But something was .... missing. Flash forward to 2017, and I watched both Lisa and the Devil and House of Exorcism in the same night. Cha...you know what? House of Exorcism is, in some ways, better. More entertaining. Definitely more commercial. It's got Robert Alda, more naked women, frog spewing, gutter language, and some creepy new footage. Go for it!

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.

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.

"Lisa and the Devil" (1972) was dumb. "The House of Exorcism" (1975) is even dumber, which is unfortunate because it had the potential to use the "Lisa and the Devil" footage to create an interesting story. Instead we merely get Elke Sommer as a woman possessed by . . . well, we don't know, but she sure uses a lot of profanity and vulgarity. Robert Alda is a priest who sees Sommer collapse and realizes that she is possessed. The new footage is intercut with scenes from "Lisa and the Devil," so we assume that the story will somehow intersect with Lisa's present possession. Unfortunately about three-quarters of the way through the film we realize that no such suturing will occur, and we have only Lisa screaming profanities, spitting green vomit and frogs, and Alda looking pained. "The House of Exorcism" also features gore and nudity that was cut from "Lisa and the Devil," as well as adding nudity to the Alda sequence, making this version much more explicit than Bava's original 1972 film.In the end, Alda realizes that he shouldn't be trying to exorcise the spirits that possess Lisa but must instead exorcise the house in which all the evil occurred. He does so and the movie ends. As a film cashing in on "The Exorcist" devil-cycle, "The House of Exorcism" is mildly interesting. For entertainment purposes it's pretty lousy--despite Bava's beautiful cinematography. (By the way, Bava had his name removed from this film and instead used the pseudonym Mickey Lion.)