For those hording toilet paper

I finished up Lisa and Devil after almost completing it Sunday. It was getting late and I was tired. Dracula ’31 was Monday night, and I was able to watch a little more of it before the fatigue of the work day accosted me. I did finish it as Tuesday fled into Wednesday. Savalas is so much fun in his part as the “butler”, Leandro. Elke Sommers might be the heroine of the picture trying to find her way out of the maze of madness currently usurping her life, but Savalas is the star; I don't think that is ever the question. Alessio Orano as the barely-together Maximilian is one of those outwardly theatrical characters with little subtlety. His face cries out nuthouse and he so excitably conjures agreement from the three outsiders (well, counting the chauffeur; Sommers’ treatment as an outsider could or could not be the case). When he brings cake to the corpse of his supposed fiancé, that dispels any notion that he’s normal. Espartaco Santoni as the always-popping-up-to-freak-out Sommers is a spectre that returns time and again because his death was a catalyst in the eventual domino-effect-murders that come after it. Santoni’s Carlo was involved with Maximilian’s lover (who looks damn near identical to Sommers…coincidence?), which got his ass killed. Carlo was Maximilian’s stepfather and Alida Valli’s countess’ husband. Then you have the estranged married couple, Frances Lehar (Eduardo Fajardo) and Sophia (Sylvia Koscina), and the chauffeur, George (Gabrielle Tinti) that comes between them. Basically I look at this as a replay of events, murders mostly by Maximilian and a cane, resulting from the threat of Sommers’ Lisa leaving the premises. Max doesn’t want her to go because of her amazing resemblance to his “lost love”. He can’t lose her again, so those who might pose that kind of threat are to suffer the consequences. In a stunning, sudden murder has Sophia just driving over her husband forwards and backwards, over and over, as if living out the fantasy so long harvesting in her. Sophia never recovers from the discovery of George dead. And Lisa is in the middle of it all. She eventually embraces Max after seeing his mother, the countess, hanging over the beaten body of Sophia. Then there’s Savalas in the background preparing the bodies piling up at the residence. While he seems like just a bystander who allows the violence to accumulate, I always felt that Lisa was a toy manipulated by the devil, allowed to believe that she was just some tourist swept up in the hysteria of a family come unglued. With Carlos always turning up, however, I think it is pretty obvious Lisa is being led along like a puppet. Savalas always has that devious wink in his performance…I never felt like he didn’t know exactly what was going on, about to happen, or would conclude. His ending the film and disappointing Lisa who thought she had gotten away puts it all into perspective. Lisa has been deceived…she never was Lisa to begin with.

I have to say that Sommers may maintain this look of total bafflement, she has a really sexy body that is romantically photographed by Bava to portrait her without exploitatively covering every inch. The wretched House of Exorcism, an abomination of the artistry that went into Lisa and the Devil had one feature in it that somewhat made slogging through it salvageable...Sommers had actually been filmed nude on screen. Bava wasn't fond of that and I read that he urged her not to agree to have more of her body on screen in a schlocky Exorcist rip-off. Because Sommers was stunning naked, HoE might be at least worth a one-off. I think she's treated swimmingly in Bava's film from how her body is lensed, even if the scene was disturbing...Max subdues her with a knock-out agent that renders her incapacitated, and he attempts to force himself on her, deterred by the skeletal corpse of his fiancé lying right next to her!