Retrospective Film Review | Horror

Lisa and the Devil (1974) • 50 Years Later — Mario Bava’s beautifully baffling ghost story

Lost and alone in an ancient city, a tourist seeks refuge in an old mansion where she becomes ensnared in a web of deceit, depravity, and darkness…

Mario Bava’s Lisa and the Devil opens with what could well be a preamble to either a jet-set giallo or a supernatural horror. It turns out to be not quite both. Carlo Savina’s fantastic 1970s lounge music sets the mood over some seemingly incongruous and undeniably cheesy shots of the actor, Telly Savalas, and Tarot cards, with orchestral strings, twanging guitar, and the unmistakable vocals of Edda dell’Orso. The score remains integral throughout, holding an increasingly fractured narrative together with recurring cues offering continuity clues.

The first few scenes follow a familiar pattern, not unlike The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963), the director’s low-key Hitchcockian thriller that would later be recognised as his preface to the giallo as a genre… a smartly dressed blonde…