Lisa and the Devil

Year of Release:  1973
Director:  Mario Bava
Screenplay:  Mario Bava and Alfred Leone
Starring:  Elke Sommer, Telly Savalas, Sylva Koscina, Alessio Orano, Alida Valli
Running Time:  95 minutes
Genre:  Horror, fantasy

Lisa Reiner (Sommer), an American tourist visiting Spain, sees a fresco in a church depicting a bald Devil hauling away human souls.  Wandering away from the tour group she winds up in a little antique store where she encounters a man named Leandro (Savalas), who looks identical to the Devil in the fresco. Unable to find her way back to the tour group, Lisa finds herself at a palatial villa owned by a strange young man (Orano) and his mother, a blind countess (Valli) and where Leandro appears to work as a butler.

This is only the beginning of Lisa's descent into a surreal nightmare.  This is a film with only the vaguest plot, and is kind of what you might come up with in a nightmare after reading too much Gothic horror stories and eating  a lot of very strong cheese.  Following the success of Baron Blood (1972), director Mario Bava was given a free hand to do whatever he wanted with this film.  The movie features some striking images, and it really is a beautiful film, full of offbeat camera angles, and it works if you see it as working with a kind of dream logic.  Elke Sommer walks through the film in a kind of sleepwalking daze, which actually works for the material.  Telly Savalas has a lot of presence, and is often quite sardonically funny as the mysterious Devil, whose fondness for lollipops was carried over to Savalas' most famous role in the TV show Kojak (1973-1978).  Following a disastrous premiere screening at the Cannes Film Market in 1973, the film was drastically re-edited and was further edited for its US release, with some additional exorcism scenes as well as additional nudity and gore, and was released under the title House of Exorcism, to cash in on the success of The Exorcist (1973).

Elke Sommers, Telly Savalas and Alida Valli in Lisa and the Devil   

The Monk

Year:  2011
Director:  Dominik Moll
Screenplay:  Dominik Moll and Anne-Louise Trividic, based on the novel The Monk:  A Romance by Matthew Gregory Lewis
Starring:  Vincent Cassel, Deborah Francois, Josephine Japy, Catherine Mouchet, Geraldine Chaplin
Running Time:  101 minutes
Genre:  Gothic, period drama, religion, thriller, romance, horror

This French film is an adaptation of the famous Gothic novel The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis, which was first published in 1796.  The story is set in a Spanish monastery in the 17th Century and concerns the deeply pious and moralistic Brother Ambrosio (Cassel), who was found abandoned at the monastery as a baby.  The power, eloquence and force of his sermons and the strength of his piety, which is deep even by the standards of the monks, have made Ambrosio famous and people come from miles around to hear him.  He is also merciless in his idea of morality and sin.  However, his ordered life is disrupted when he encounters a mysterious novice, Valerio (Francois), whose face is always concealed by a mask, and who appears to have a very strong interest in Ambrosio.  The monk also finds himself falling further into temptation when he meets the beautiful and virtuous Antonia (Japy).

Okay, judging by the poster and the marketing for the film, you would be forgiven for thinking that The Monk is a horror film, when it really isn't.  It is more of a religious drama dealing with temptation, guilt, sin and redemption.  It is a proper Gothic film so there are plenty of dark passages, illegitimate heirs to great fortunes, persecuted women in flowing gowns and a strong supernatural element, but none of it is really scary, although it is atmospheric and pretty creepy.  The film is slow and has quite a meandering storyline, and times goes off on complete tangents which have nothing to do with the main storyline, such as a sub-plot about a pregnant nun which has no real conclusion or real point.
However, I did like this film.  It is beautifully shot with some stunning locations.  It is one of those films where it feels like every frame you could pin on your wall, because the images are so stunning.  It has an interesting style, including a lot of old-fashioned tricks, such as irising in and out to open and close scenes.  In it's own way it is also genuinely hypnotic and if you allow yourself to get into the film's own rhythm, then there is a lot of pleasure to be had from it.
Vincent Cassel gives a spellbinding central performance as The Monk, making the character magnetic and charismatic, so that you can fully understand why he casts such a spell upon his listeners, and also making an, at times, pretty monsterous character engaging and weirdly sympathetic.  Next to Cassel, no-one else really stands a chance, but the rest of the cast do their best with fairly cliched characters.  However Deborah Francois does well, but Josephine Japy's Antonia is just too sickly sweet to be believable. 
It is worth seeing for the visuals and Cassel's performance and fans of gothic literature are sure to find it intriguing. 

Josephine Japy and Vincent Cassel in The Monk

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Year: 1962
Director: Robert Aldrich
Screenplay: Lukas Heller, based on the novel by Henry Farrell
Starring: Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono
Running Time: 132 minutes
Genre: Psychological thriller, horror, gothic, Hollywood

Summary: In 1917 "Baby" Jane Hudson (Julie Allred) is a huge child star in the world of vaudeville, performing to large, adoring crowds, and there is even a popular "Baby Jane" doll produced. In 1935 however, Blanche Hudson (Crawford), Jane's sister, is one of the wold's biggest movie stars while the adult "Baby" Jane (Davis) has been unable to transfer her childhood fame to adult hood and, after some unsuccessful attempts to break into film, now languishes in obscurity. Until one night, after a party, when the two sisters are involved ina car accident. In the early sixties, Blanche has been confined to a wheelchair since the accident and lives with her sister in a vast decaying Hollywood mansion. Jane, who is now an alcoholic and obsessed with her childhood glory days, is supposed to be looking after Blanche but her intense hatred of Blanche, and jealousy at her film success and continued popularity, causes Jane to keep her locked up inside the mansion and subject her to physical and psychological cruelty. As Jane becomes increasingly preoccupied with the idea of a showbiz comeback her treatment of Blanche worsens as she slides further into insanity.

Opinions: This film was a massive success in it's day and has been extremely influential. It spawned a small subgenre of movies in which elderly Hollwood actresses attempted to revive their careers by playing maniacs. By modern standards the film is prettty slow-moving, depending more on slow-burning suspense rather than gruesome shocks although the sight of Bette Davis with her face caked with make-up wearing baby-doll dresses is genuinely disturbing and the famous scene where she serves up a dead rat for her sister's lunch is still shocking. The main strength of the movie lies in the performances of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford who famously hated each other off-screen. There are rumours that Davis kicked Crawford in the head in one scene, requiring her to need stitches, and that Crawford hid weights in her clothes for a scene where Davis had to drag her along the floor. Also Crawford was apparently very angry that the film garnered Davis an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress instead of her, and she contacted the other Best Actress nominees and offered to collect their awards for them if they were unable to attend. Of course, the rumours are probably part of the reason why the film has now become something of a cult classic. In fact, whatever the reality of what happened behind the scenes, both actresses turn in great perfomances with Davis managing to elicit genuine sympathy for the monsterous Baby Jane, and her scenes with Victor Buono as a sleazy musician are very funny in a dark way. Of course, as is only right and proper with this kind of movie, there is plenty of hammy overacting and hysterical catfights. The movie is very well-made with lavish production design for the shadowy mansion and an impressive use of bizarre camera angles. On a deeper level it is an interesting look at the pain of life after fame. The main problem is that the movie is too long and could easily withstand the running time being reduced by about half an hour.
However it is worth checking out.