Elke Sommer (Baron Blood) stars as Lisa, a young woman who finds herself lost in a large and imposing European city. Unable to find her way, she runs across a rich man (Eduardo Fajardo), his wife (Sylva Coscina) and their chauffeur (Gabriele Tinti). This unhappy trio (the wife, Sophia is having an affair with the chauffeur, George—and the husband knows it) offer Lisa a ride—which she willingly accepts. However, their car breaks down in front of a desolate old mansion—a house where a blind countess (Alida Valli) lives with her mentally disturbed son Max (Alessio Orano), and a manservant with a penchant for making mannequins who just may be Satan himself (Telly Savalas—who even sucks on a lollipop in this film).

During the night, Lisa will find herself trapped in a weird, dreamlike world while a series of vicious murders are committed around her. It seems that this isolated country house is haunted—not only by the ghosts of former tenants murdered in jealous rage, but also by a malignant madness itself.

Honestly, that’s about all there is to tell you about the plot. I suppose the narrative thrust of the film probably deals with the question ‘will Lisa survive?’ but frankly, it doesn’t really come across that way. Instead, Mario Bava has made a film that relies more on style and aesthetics than any kind of traditional narrative structure. Now, being a devoted fan of the Italian style of horror film, I’m well aware that the Italians often skimp on narrative in order to concentrate on creating a surreal, nightmarish atmosphere. However, not since Argento’s Inferno (a film that’s been known to confound more than a few people) have I ever seen a film that seems so devoid of any kind of traditional throughline. In fact, Lisa and the Devil makes Inferno look like a paint by the numbers kind of film.

However, the lack of a coherent narrative throughline isn’t necessarily a bad thing—provided that you’re a viewer with enough patience to accept that and soak up Bava’s stylish direction and revel in the ambiance and sense of menace he creates simply by moving the camera. Essentially, what it appears that Bava has done here is try to capture the Victorian style of horror novel on film—complete with its brooding atmosphere, odd pacing, and strange, almost dreamlike rhythms and imagery. It’s a noble effort, but the only problem is, the Victorian novels work as novels—mainly because we can get inside the heads of the mad characters or the terrified characters and gauge their mental reactions to the strange events transpiring around them. Film, on the other hand, is an action-oriented medium—any film that features shots of people thinking is doomed to fail because an audience can’t be privy to the internal monologues of the characters (unless, of course, you provide a voice-over, which isn’t something that happens here).

Excerpt from eOpinions.com located HERE