MARIO BAVA'S TWISTED TALE KEEPS YOU GUESSING
★★★★★ (A Must-See)
Director: Mario Bava
1973
Full disclosure, I’m one of Mario Bava’s biggest fans. The Italian writer/director perfected paranoia, and his specialty—woman's intuition—is the foundation of one of my favorite Bava films: Lisa and the Devil, a morbid game of chess that leaves you questioning your own intelligence. It’s a perfect horror movie to watch with friends because you’ll all want to debate what happened long after it ends. I’m going to have to keep this review short as there’s very little I can say without giving away so many of the surprises that make this film a fun watch. Even deep-diving into its themes would ruin it for you.
After an opening sequence that reminds me of vintage James Bond films, we meet Lisa (Elke Sommer) as she gets off a bus to admire wall art on her tour through the ruins of an old Spanish town. She leaves her group and wanders into an antique shop where she sees Leandro (Telly Savalas) buying a large puppet. Lisa seems to know this man and he knows her, but she runs off before they can say anything. As she flees, she discovers that the cobblestone streets of the town have become a maze that she cannot escape, and this is when the plot is ignited.
After the sun sets, a car finally pulls up to the now frantic woman. The vehicle’s wealthy owner and his obnoxious young wife offer her a ride, but the group doesn’t get far on that foggy road before the engine suddenly stops them in front of a lonely mansion, where Leandro is the butler. Lisa and her group are welcomed to stay in this gloomy estate by a bitter widow and a young man who seems to know Lisa very well…but she doesn’t know him. You might think all your years of M. Night Shyamalan offerings have prepared you to sniff out a ridiculous twist, but just as you’ve unraveled Lisa’s mystery, the script pulls you off the road and over a cliff. The Girl Who Knew Too Much is Bava’s other great mindbender, and like that film, Lisa and the Devil focuses on an unreliable narrator/heroine and how women were so used to being gaslighted in those days, we couldn’t trust our own judgement. As a strange man tries to break into Lisa’s room, and she continues to see Leandro’s puppets around the house, everyone chides or ignores her. She’s the restless child at a party who is best left in the corner while the grown-ups talk—or rather, cheat, lie, and commit murder.
If Agatha Christie had huffed glue, she might have written something like Lisa and the Devil instead of And Then There Were None. It has the cake-layers of a murder mystery, but there’s a psychedelic edge thanks to Bava’s creative shots—he’s a man who did not run out of ideas. The colors are soft and minty, the visuals throw you around like you’re inside a bounce-house. And without even trying, Savalas owns the film as Leandro. The actor delivers his lines with arrogance, he savors every drop of fear from Lisa to the point where Sommer isn’t the star of the show anymore. Despite Leandro’s smile and lollipop, we would not like to meet him in a dark alley.
With everyone else preoccupied (and dying off), Lisa must work on her own to figure out who is in the secret room, who the coffin is for, and why everyone is behaving badly—she’s a fly getting wrapped tighter in the web, struggling just as much as the audience watching her. Lisa and the Devil is a unique classic, but it’s not for everyone. This is a movie for people who enjoy puzzles and don’t mind working for a payoff.
GENRES: Giallo, Psychological
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