Lisa and the Devil

Actually, this movie was a gift, but i'm pretty sure it's dollar store, or at least Big Lots -- and, if you can still find a Big Lots, they are still among the finest places to pick up your cheapie videos. Anyway, Lisa and the Devil. Obvious why it was given to me. Anyway, this is one of those Italian spooky-house horror flicks. It's an entire genre unto itself -- abundantly false-eyelashed young woman is stranded in an Italian villa or palazzo or castel where various occult/paranormal/spooooky things go on. Promisingly, it's directed by Italian horror master Mario Bava, starring Telly Savalas as the Devil.

Sounds good, doesn't it? Well, it's not. Sure, Telly is loads of fun, alternately imperious and obsequious moving smoothy along the edges of camp -- although i don't understand why he's got the Kojak lollipop. And the decaying baroque palazzo setting is fantastic with cinematography that does it full justice and bodies turn up with a neat regularity.

But not a whole lot happens and what does happen is totally incoherent. Heroine Britt Ekland seems to be brain-dead, even by horror-movie Euro-bimbo standards. She is hypnotized by a music box that causes her to have lengthy, slow-motion dream sequences where she gets a perm and dresses up as Stevie Nicks. Signs, portents, inarticulateness, poorly dubbed dialogue. There's also standard hostile old beady-eyed countess, the mandatory leather-jacketed gigolo with freshly plucked unibrow, the regulation few random nymphos for the offing -- none of them interesting in the least. Even softcore necrophilia can't save Lisa and the Devil. However, this does provide me with the opportunity to share this most awesome screencap with you...