The House of Exorcism [Region 2] - Classic Horror DVD - Perfect for Movie Nights & Halloween Collections

This exquisite Bava work makes it easily onto my list of very favorite films. It is too subtle, serious, and non-linear to ever be a popular film and it is obvious that Bava was not aiming for such status. He was making a film that he, as an artist, would like watching himself.This film has a foundation concept that is beautifully unfolded: All of the characters are doomed from the beginning. They are writhing in the inescapable grip of fate, but that fate is itself spun out of the desires, choices, and actions of the characters. The film has the feel of a beautifully colored ritualistic dream-like spinning of wheels that go nowhere but into ever deeper darkness. The activity of the characters is horrible, agonizing, and empty at once. And the master stroke here is the characterization of the Devil who presides over them. He is never hurried or concerned about his nightmarish task of gathering the characters into their doom. He is calmly busy and amused throughout. He has a certain vulgarity that is clearly only the actual vulgarity of the characters that imagine they are sophisticated and even romantically noble in their unquenchable desires. The Devil’s comically blasé progression through the story is only the emptiness of the frenzied mannequin characters.Many viewers of this film get frustrated with the story line that is like a knot they can’t untangle, as though untangling it would clarify the film for them. But that is to miss the mark here. The story-knot can in fact be untied with patient repeated watching of the film, but doing so doesn’t clarify anything because that is not the essence of the film. The apparent mess of the story line is the mess of their lives which have been hopelessly warped by their desires, choices, and actions and the thick romantic veneer that seals them into doom (wonderfully voiced by the score). This film feels at first like a shapeless dream, but it is a vision more real than the waking consciousness of the characters that can’t wake up from themselves. “I’m afraid it’s all too late, my friend.”I would like to note also that this film contains some of the most masterful use of color that Bava ever employed. The moment of the death’s head in a wedding shawl of green and white is fabulous.I’m not trying to sell the film any more than it tries to sell itself. It is what it is. Take it or leave it. I take it and treasure it.The House of Exorcism is not even worth talking about except as a criminal act of commercial philistinism.