Lisa and the Devil Movie Review

Lisa and the Devil is a 1974 horror movie directed by Mario Bava and starring Elke Sommer, Telly Savalas and Sylva Koscina.

The movie starts with a group of tourists who are looking at ancient art in Toledo, Spain. One of the group, Lisa(Sommer) wanders into a workshop and finds a man in there called Leandro(Savalas)who is buying a dummy. She is spooked because he looks exactly like the devil in a portrait that she had seen earlier. She goes off by herself and she gets lost. She meets another guy and he argues with her and falls down some steps and supposedly dies. She is confused and lost and she sees a car. She asks for help. The people in the car are a couple and they agree to give her a lift to her hotel. Unfortunately, their car breaks down in front of a house. By coincidence, Leandro works there as a butler. The house is owned by a blind Countess(Alida Valli) and her son Max. He invites Lisa and the couple to stay, even though his mother is not happy about it.

They are allowed to stay in cottages. Lisa is told that she is actually a woman called Elena, who was Max's girlfriend and who was chased away by the Countess. Lisa has weird visions of herself kissing the man who she met earlier and who fell down the steps. He is actually Carlos, the husband of the Countess. People start to die around the place, including the couple who gave her a lift. Carlos is dead too. Lisa wants to leave but she can't. Max takes her to a room and he shows her the body of his dead girlfriend. She is some sort of a ghost. Max tries to rape Lisa, but he can't. He decides to kill his mother as she won't get out of his way.

He looks for Leandro. All of the dead bodies are seated at the table. Max is horrified and he stumbles and falls out of the window. He gets impaled on a spike. Leandro is the one who set up the corpses.
Lisa wakes up the next day and she finds that the house is in ruins. She wanders around and she discovers a group of children. They think that she is a ghost. She walks back to the square where she met Leandro. She s going to go home. She boards her plane but there is nobody else on it. There are just dead bodies. Leandro is flying the plane and he is taking her with him. She turns into a dummy and that's it.

This film was odd. It doesn't make a lot of sense in some parts. The story seemed a bit all over the place at times. I did like it, though, despite this. I liked the cast and the unusual feel of this one. The ending was a bit weird for me, but I can look past that. You can draw your own conclusions from it, I think. It is one to see if you are a Bava fan. I will give it a 6/10.