Mario Bava is my personal favorite director of all times. And not just via photo-finish, but literally with miles ahead of my second favorite director, which is Lucio Fulci. Back when I started to develop an interest for Bava's work, in 2004 or so, I vividly remember that "Lisa and the Devil" was difficult to find, while "The House of Exorcism" was the more easily available version for purchase. Via an obscure French label, however, I found Bava's original masterpiece (in an awesome boxset together with "Baron Blood" and "Hatchet for the Honeymoon"), so I never bothered to search for the much hacked-up version that the great Bava dissociated himself from.

Now, since it's more than 15 years later and time for an urgent re-watch, I figured to give "The House of Exorcism" a shot. The story behind both film versions is actually a very sad and tragic one, especially if you're an avid admirer of Italy's most visionary director. With "Lisa and the Devil", Mario Bava finally received complete freedom - artistically as well as financially - to make the film he wanted to make, but for some incomprehensible reason, the critics and audiences weren't enthusiast. Shame, because the film truly remains a superbly atmospheric and fascinating piece of gothic horror. Producer, and former friend, Alfredo Leone understandably wanted to recuperate a part of his unsuccessful investment, and since "The Exorcist" rip-offs were trending massively at the time, Leone directed some additional footage and re-released the film. Suddenly, as a result of her encounters in the strange mansion, Lisa is possessed with the devil (who may or not be Telly Savalas in the flesh) and Robert Alda joins the cast as the priest charged with the exorcism.

"The House of Exorcism" is a rehash, pure and simple. The original footage of "Lisa and the Devil" is still brilliant, but less powerful and a lot more incoherent. The additional footage represents everything what Bava despises: unoriginal plot, stolen ideas, gratuitous nudity and unnecessary profanity. A clash of styles is what this is.

If you listen to Alfredo Leone's commentary on House of Exorcism, you'll understand, if not approve, of what Leone did to salvage his investment. His re-edit and added footage accomplished his goal. He avoided taking a huge loss on Lisa and The Devil. Business before art.

Bava of course did not approve of his master work being mutilated and that ultimately led to a split in their business relationship. Leone states in his commentary that his respect for Bava remained. According to Leone, Bava did not care for nudity and swearing and would not stay on the set when those new scenes were shot with Elke and Carmen Silva as the naked temptress incarnation of Elke. I always found this interesting about Bava. He would film the most horrendous violence and gore in perverse scenarios (mainly directed at women like most filmmakers) but balked at cursing and exposed female flesh.

The takeaway from this is that Lisa and The Devil was produced and exists independently and the commercial salvage job called House of Exorcism made money.

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.