Watch The House of Exorcism For Free

Fantastic!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The first must-see film of the year.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

"Lisa and the Devil" is one of director Mario Bava's best films. It's extremely atmospheric, very scary and has an amazing artistry about it that you just don't expect from a horror film. Sadly, however, some dirt-bags decided to take Bava's excellent film and re-edit it into a new movie! So, they sloppily filmed some new scenes (complete with LOTS of nudity) and pasted it and the original picture together to make it an incoherent mess of a movie. It's terrible in most every way and I am pretty sure Bava must have been ticked about this. Fortunately, while this movie truly is terrible, it IS available on the DVD with "Lisa and the Devil" so you can compare the two and appreciate the original film. It's really an interesting experience and one you can do (at least in the USA) by streaming both versions of the movie.

This film just happened to be on one night and I felt like watching a horror film I had never seen before so I decided to give it a try. Granted, I am not overly fond of exorcism films and this movie clearly copies from The Exorcist movie; however, the film is also has a bit of a mystery film to it and the elements of other genres as well. Actually, it almost seems at times as if they were making two different films. One that is basically copying The Exorcist and another is more like one of those ambiguous haunted house tales like Web of the Spider and they met up and decided to slam the two films together and add Telly Savalas to both films to unify them. So, the movie is a bit of a mess as there are many questions left unanswered, but at the same time it does hook one into watching as one is not sure exactly where it is going. They clear up the strange mansion segment, but they really do not offer all that much insight as to why other things were occurring.The story has a tour group roaming the streets and checking out a mural. One of the group hears some music and follows it to a bizarre shop where two men are discussing a mannequin. The woman asks how much the box is playing the music and is told it is not for sale. She then gets a good look at one of the men who bears a striking resemblance to the devil that was in the mural she had seen earlier. She promptly leaves and the "devil" does something that cause her to collapse and act in a way that suggests that she is now possessed. A priest and a friend she has just met get her to a hospital where the friend promptly leaves and a character that seemed as if she was going to be important is never seen again. Meanwhile, the lady who is now essentially possessed is still roaming the streets, only the streets are very empty and she gets a ride with a quarreling couple and they end up at a strange house with a strange man and his mother and the butler who is the man at the shop, basically the devil. So we see the film on two fronts as the woman witnesses the strange happenings at the mansion and the priest fights to save her from her possession.The movie is a bit easier to watch thanks to the fact it is done on two fronts, but it also makes the film seem a bit of a mess. The friend looked like she would play an important role simply exits the film making her dialog and appearance in the film seem pointless. A scene with the priest also seems a bit strange and only in the film to show some nudity (granted it was some good nudity). The ending was a bit vague as it is one of those scenes that focus on something random and the camera freezes and you are like "huh?" Still, it does make you wonder where it is going with the two story arcs that are occurring, though one may feel disappointed at how they are finally connected. In the end, the movie is basically a combination of the very well known, The Exorcist and the lesser known film, Web of the Spider with Telly Savalas thrown in with his trademark sucker in tow.

first of all, let me say that i am reviewing the "house of exorcism"/Robert Alida version of this film. secondly, let me clarify my own beliefs. i am not a religious person. in fact, if anything i am Anti-religious. i am an agnostic who has been influenced by a secularized version of Buddhist philosophy. Buddhism is a philosophy for me, not a religion. however, the Buddhist concept of the "middle way" has made a great impression on me. (i take the concept of the "middle way" seriously, much more seriously than most people take their religions.) the "middle way" is neither "good" nor "evil." following the middle way might be conceptualized as treading a path BETWEEN good and evil. or, better yet, it could be seen as an ESCHEWAL of both good and evil, as a resolve to seek moderation with aesthetics and pragmatism (but NOT morality) as one's guides. i do not believe in any kind of morality PER SE. there are other ways to look at life apart from the "moral" view. one can look at life in aesthetic terms, a la Oscar Wilde. one could also look at life via the (essentially amoral) "pragmatic" viewpoint of john Dewey and Richard Rory. we have Oscar Wilde, john Dewey and Richard Rory (not to mention Derrida and Foucault and, of course, shakyamuni). we really don't need Jesus, moses, or Muhammad. third, i have never seen "the exorcist" and have no desire to do so. my interest is in films on the periphery, NOT on mainstream bourgeois cinema. "house of exorcism" may have been influenced by "the exorcist," but it should be judged as an entirely separate work of art and the elements it contains should not be viewed in relation to anything contained in the earlier film. now that that's out of the way, on to "house of exorcism." HOE could be read as a formulaic horror film, as a story of good against evil in which "good" emerges as triumphant. or it could be read against the grain as a story of evil against good in which evil wins out in the end, or in which at the very least the concepts of good and evil are discredited or called into question. the most sympathetic character in the film is Elinor, the young lady whose spirit inhabits the body of Lisa. Elinor is an essentially amoral (yet not unenlightened) woman. when she was alive she satisfied her lust, having sex in order to sate her physical urges instead of for reasons of love. her impotent husband was, shall we say....less than understanding of her needs, and ended up killing her. so Elinor has returned from the dead and is now (understandably) somewhat bitter. the specter of Elinor is a "truth teller." she tells the truth, or at least the truth AS SHE KNOWS IT, and the only truth that any of us know is the truth AS WE KNOW IT. she uses a kind of "streetlevel postmodern" speech, employing the "f bomb" and other "swear" words. (i would call them "aware" words, words of awareness and sensitivity meant to express strong emotions.) some people (inhibited prudes) may be offended by this language, but as far as i am concerned the point is that we SHOULDN'T be offended by this kind of speech or by ANY kind of speech. (if we insist upon "being offended," we should reserve that prerogative for ACTIONS, not for mere SPEECH ACTS.) the father asks Elinor where she comes from and she says "from far way, from incest and adultery." (which may be factually correct.) the priest is unsatisfied with this answer and she says that she came "from a c*nt." (brilliant. truer words have never been spoken.) at one point, the father labels Elinor as "evil." Elinor responds by saying that the priest and his church are evil. now i would part company with Elinor at this point. i don't think that the church is evil....just unnecessarily and, as such, counterproductive. as for labeling any person or spirit as "evil": the universe is a moral vacuum. "good" and "evil" are BOTH figments of the bourgeois imagination. but i can see why some people might find the church and its hypocrisy to be so distasteful that they are tempted to label them as "evil." the film ends with the priest performing an exorcism at the mansion where Elinor once lived. one could view this ritual as a "triumph," as an act sending Elinor's "evil" spirit back to "Hell." but from a pragmatist/methodologically rational point of view, i would see the exorcism as an empty ritual. Elinor lives on, or at least what she stands for survives. Elinor lives on as the symbol not of evil but rather of an amoral yet enlightened pragmatism........ p.s.--earlier in the film we see telly savalas (the "devil") sucking a lollipop. in the last scene, we see Robert Alida wielding an aspergillum (holy water dispenser)....which looks quite a bit like a lollipop. now, as far as i am concerned, the telly savalas character represents not "evil" but rather a kind of "pragmatism" (whether one views it as "enlightened" pragmatism, "unenlightened," or somewhere in between is up to you). in any case, the lollipop of telly savalas is much more powerful than any priest's holy water dispenser. ("who loves ya, baby?")

The original Lisa and the Devil is lush and stylish but oddly pointless and dull story of the people who must to spend the night in the lush and stylish but dangerous Italian villa. Elke Sommer is the heroine, a tourist called Lisa, and Telly Savalas a Devil disguised as a butler. Later the new footage was added and the result is trashy and foul-mouthed La Casa dell'esorcismo (House of the exorcism), one of the many copies of the trashy and foul-mouthed plot less wonder The Exorcist. Lisa and the Devil is a movie worth of decent 6/10, House of the Exorcism (like the original The Exorcist) is garbage and only worth of lousy 2/10.