House of Exorcism

Listen, it's okay to have a room dedicated to Exorcism, maybe even two, but a whole entire house? That's just greedy. Surely you live with other people who want to use that house and those rooms for their own purposes, who says it's up to you that the entirety of the home is to be dedicated solely to the act of Exorcism? Rude, quite frankly, you selfish twit. Why can't you just rent a hotel room like normal people who perform their nefarious acts out of the public eye.

Honestly, at first glance, there's a lot to enjoy from this box. Let's start with the director, the man, the myth, the legend...Mickey Lion. What a fantastic name. Not to be confused with Mikey Lion, who is the top hat-wearing leader of The San Diego based Desert Hearts Crew, who, biannually, throw the 70-hour nonstop Desert Hearts Festival with the mantra "House, Techno, & Love" as its tagline. No, Mickey Lion is a man so mysterious that he cannot be traced. Maybe he went into hiding after making this, I don't know, but god bless his parents for giving him such an awesome name.

I also like that this movie clearly is insinuating that it doesn't have your standard typical soundtrack, oh no, on the contrary, it instead employs only the Rodrigo Guitar Concerto. Only something so magnificent as the cinema classic "House of Exorcism" could be presented by something so beautiful, as whatever the Rodrigo Guitar Concerto is. I'm assuming it's one track played on guitar and looped throughout the film, because they only had about 8 bucks for the soundtrack budget.

"Incest, adultery & murder are all in an evening's pleasure for the devil"

Hey, looks like me and the Devil have a lot in common!

"The tale of a priests battle to exorcise the demon from a young woman's body. Night after night, the tormented souls of a blind countess, her husband, son and daughter in law are ruthlessly bound to re-enact the murderous events that took their lives over fifty years before, in an orgy of sin."

This film is indeed an orgy of sin. Just look at it for god sakes. Honestly though, this is one of the better sounding premises we've come across on this blog, isn't it? Like, this sounds like it could be somewhat entertaining in a B movie kind of way. But this box art? Whoo boy. Look at that strip of pink right across the greyness that encompasses the remainder of the box, because everyone knows pink and grey go together. And of course we are treated to the obligatory "random screencaps with no context thus making everything all the more confusing and befuddling" on the front. A man goblin sort of grinning somewhat uncomfortably at a woman and of course just a skull. Can't be a horror movie without the skull, am I right?

In fact, just to drive the point home, in case the skull and the plot synopsis on the back weren't enough, they've been kind enough to include the genre right on the box on the spine. "Supernatural Horror". Thank god. I thought I'd rented a romantic comedy. Good thing that was there, because my pathetic eyes could never have ascertained the fact that this was, in fact, a horror movie of some kind. Thanks guys, really owe you one.

The movie, from 1974, was originally entitled "Lisa & The Devil", which sounds more like a Simpsons segment from a Treehouse of Horror than it does an actual horror movie, and later re-released as "House of Exorcism." Frankly, I think we can all agree the second title is the far more decent one. As it turns out, the director was actually named Mario Bava, and he hailed from Italy. He actually died in 1980, but from what I've managed to read about him, he was apparently a pretty big deal and influenced many other filmmakers such as John Carpenter, Dario Argento, Roger Corman and Scorsese to name a few. I think of all of these, Corman and Argento make the most sense. Scorsese, on the other hand, is just somewhat confusing.

But enough my man Mickey Lion, let's get back to the film at hand. In what may be one of the single funniest things I've ever seen written in regards to a films reception, on Wikipedia, Italian film critic & historian Roberto Curti described the films first screening, at the Cannes Festival of 1973, as just "disastrous." No other context is given. No reason. Just flat out disastrous. I love it. And, when asked about the film in 1976, and perhaps this gives us an answer as to why he's called Mickey Lion under his directing credit, Bava simply stated that the film was not his, and that, quote, "even though it bears my signature, it is the same situation, too long to explain, of a cuckolded father who finds himself with a child that is not his own, and with his name, and cannot do anything about it."

Dude roasted himself like 50 years before I could. Touche, sir.

All in all, this is a rather tame cover in comparison to some of the others I've featured here, and there isn't nearly as much to say about it either in regards to the box art or the film. Really, I think Bava kinda said it all himself. Took the wind out of my sails, quite frankly. I mean, how can I make fun of a guy who not hated his own film and disowned it, but then was told by his own doctor, a few days before he died of a sudden massive heart attack, that he was in "perfect health". Dude literally forced himself to drop dead to escape this legacy. That's hardcore. I can't make fun of that.

Wikipedia had a quote from someone who described this film as "confusing but essential viewing for the serious horror fan". I like to consider myself a serious horror fan, but I think I'm willing to admit that just viewing the box art of this was enough for me.