The House of Exorcism (1975)
** (out of 4)
Mario Bava's dream project was LISA AND THE DEVIL, which many people think is his masterpiece. Unfortuantly, the film couldn't land a distributor so the producer was left with a large cash issue because the film simply wasn't going to make money. After the success of THE EXORCIST the producer, against Bava's wishes, decided to bring back some of the cast members and turn this into a rip-off.
I think a lot of people are afraid to say it fearing they're be attacked for not being "true" fans but I personally found LISA AND THE DEVIL to be rather slow and boring. Yes, it looked beautiful and had a terrific atmosphere but it's pretty easy to see why no one would want to distribute it. With that said, I can understand the producer doing whatever he had to in order to sell the film and I've read that this re-edited version went on to make millions across the globe so here's the perfect example of mainstream people wanting trash and not art.
The new scenes here are all rather silly and especially the dialogue, which tries desperately to match THE EXORCIST's profanity laced rants. I'm not going to lie, I found a lot of this trash talking to be rather funny. As you'd expect, there's also a lot of green puke going around and this here even manages to work in some frogs. Some added nudity was also placed in the film just to top off the exploitation. So, is THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM any good? Of course not but it remains an interesting bit of movie history due to the production history. The film is mildly entertaining due to how silly it is and you at least have to give the producer credit because the new footage mixes in quite well with the old.