LISA AND THE DEVIL is accompanied by Tim Lucas’ commentary recorded for the 2007 Anchor Bay DVD release while HOUSE OF EXORCISM is accompanied by producer Alfredo Leone’s commentary (with additional participation from Elke Sommer) recorded for the 2000 Image Entertainment release (Image released HOUSE OF EXORCISM and LISA AND THE DEVIL separately, but the commentary track was only included on their dual-layer double feature version). Alan Jones contributes brand new introductions to both versions of the film, describing LISA as one of Bava’s “most subtle and waking dream” and HOUSE OF EXORCISM as being about Robert Alda trying to save Lisa who is “vomiting frogs and expletives in a Spanish hospital”. He describes Bava’s influences as Kraft-Ebbing’s PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS, H.P. Lovecraft, and Dostoyevsky’s THE POSSESSED. He also mentions that superstitious Bava felt Alida Valli appearing on-set in a purple gown was a bad omen. He says that Bava’s sister was a nun so he refused to direct the swearing scenes.

The documentary “The Exorcism of Lisa” is ported over from the Italian Raro 2-disc DVD, as are the unfinished LISA AND THE DEVIL trailer and the deleted scene (a raggedly edited version of the sex scene between Sylva Koscina and Gabriele Tinti featuring some more explicit angles) – both of which were in turn ported over from the Image DVD, including the prefatory text screens – and British Scotia-Barber HOUSE OF EXORCISM trailers. The documentary features commentary by biographer Alberto Pezzotta (who tells us that the LISA AND THE DEVIL version was not released in Italy until 2004) erroneously suggesting that the LISA version was made for TV because of its less explicit takes; he is aware of Leone’s involvement in HOUSE OF EXORCISM but seems unaware that the softer takes were Bava’s preference and that Lamberto Bava and Leone shot them. Pezzotta does make the intriguing suggestion that the film was influenced by Pierre Klossowski’s “The Baphomet”. Bava’s son Lamberto (and his son Roy) and screenwriter Roberto Natale set the story straight about producer Alfredo Leone’s involvement in the reediting and reshooting. Roy Bava also points out the uncredited contribution of make-up and effects Fabrizio Sforza (who would later work on a number of Lamberto Bava films before moving onto loftier projects for Bernardo Bertolucci, Francis Ford Coppola, Anthony Minghella, and the like). Lamberto Bava remarks that the concept of “exorcism” was more important to Catholic Americans (like Leone) than to Italians, and jokes that Leone’s harder outtake of the Sylva Koscina/Gabriele Tinti sex scene was intended for the Japanese market.

An illustrated booklet is also included with a wonderful essay on the film by Stephen Thrower, as well as an exclusive English translation of a 1976 Italian interview with Bava (in which he describes HOUSE OF EXORCISM as being “like the situation whereby a cuckolded man is found to have a son that is not his but has his name but there is nothing he can do about it”). Discs 2 and 3 feature the two version of the film and all of the extras in standard definition PAL.

Eric Cotenas