Alida Valli Movies

This Italian horror outing is made even more horrible by the fact that the first two thirds were originally a complete feature, Lisa and the Devil by Mario Bava and the last third was tacked on later to capitalize on the continued popularity of The Exorcist by producer Alfredo Leone thereby nearly obliterating the spooky tone created in Bava's original. Innocent, voluptuous Lisa's travails begin when she sees a wax mannequin in her own image. She then sees a sinister fellow, whom she knows is the devil, hanging around nearby and runs for her life. Unfortunately, she ends up hiding in the mansion of a typical creepshow psycho family who prefer spending their evenings making love to everything and every one that moves, or doesn't move in the case of one necrophiliac. If that weren't creepy enough, Lisa gets a luck at the butler and realizes that he is old Satan himself. Surprise! Soon she finds herself possessed and doing the things that post Exorcist demonized movie stars are expected to including the obligatory projectile vomiting (this time it's frogs rather than pea soup), lasciviousness and a few levitation exercises until the brave exorcist arrives to cure her. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

When Macgregor (Peter Cushing) announces that he is no longer going to appear in horror films, but wants to work in romances, two screenwriters are sent to his eerie house to try to persuade the ghoulish man to keep doing horror films. They are not above dotting his house and the surrounding landscape with corpses of murdered people in order to drive their point home. At some point, the producer of the film steps in from outside the frame and takes charge of this film about films, firing everyone in the process. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

A malevolent man terrorizes his mother and a young, poverty-stricken girl when he finds himself excluded from his father's will. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

In this chiller from Italian director Mario Bava, Elke Sommer stars as Lisa, a young tourist who keeps running into a strange bald man who carries around a mannequin. The bald man is Leandre (Telly Savalas), the butler at the estate of a blind Countess (Alida Valli) and her slightly off-kilter son Max (Alessio Orano). In a bizarre turn of events, Lisa kills a man in self-defense and winds up hitching a ride with Frances Lehaf, his wife Sophia (Sylva Koscina), and her chauffeur/lover George. Car troubles land them at the Countess' estate where Lisa is plagued by strange dreams and visions of the man she killed. More troubling for Lisa is that both the dead man and Max appear to know her. Meanwhile, the other guests begin to die: George is murdered by an unseen assailant, Sophia runs over her husband with the car, and then is dispatched herself by a killer who is revealed to be Max. Lisa awakens in Leandre's room full of dummies and runs off through the house. She encounters Max, who shows her the skeletal remains of Eleanor, the lover he killed for having an affair with his stepfather. Max believes that Lisa is Eleanor reincarnated. After an odd sex scene, he is confronted by his mother whom he winds up stabbing to death. Moments later, she reappears and the shock sends Max falling to his own death. Lisa awakens in the house, which now appears to have been abandoned for decades. She boards an airplane to head home, but in a chilling climax, she discovers the plane devoid of all passengers...except for a few old friends including the diabolical Leandre. ~ Patrick Legare, All Movie Guide

Originally produced for Italian television, Bernardo Bertolucci's The Spider's Stratagem (La Strategia del Ragno) can be regarded as a cinematic tone poem. Adapted from a Jorge Luis Borges short story, the film stars Giulio Brogi as a young Italian who returns to his ancestral home -- the place where his anti-fascist father was assassinated, a long-ago incident that still disturbs the populace. Cold-shouldered by everyone in town, the young man tries to find out why everyone is so hostile towards him; after all, was not his father a hero of the people? In some (but not all) ways, The Spider's Stratagem is a precursor to Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, delineating the correlation between sex and political ideology. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Also released as Valley of the Swords, this lugubrious US/Spanish co-production features the usual mid-1960s "tax shelter" international cast. Broderick Crawford plays a despotic 10th century Spanish king who, in cahoots with the invading Moors, has banished handsome Castilian nobleman Spartaco Santoni. With the surreptitious aid of Crawford's daughter Teresa Velasquez, Santoni assembles an army to march against the Moors. In keeping with the 13th century epic poem from which this film was derived ("El Poema de Fernan Gonzales") Santoni's path is smoothed by the celestial intervention of patron saints Milan and Santiago. Among the big names picking up a few tax-free dollars in The Castilian are Cesar Romero, Linda Darnell, Alida Valli and Fernando Rey. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Eddie Albert guest stars in this episode, playing--of all things--a middle-aged American farmer with a foreign-accented wife. But this is Combat, not Green Acres: Albert's character, a WW1 veteran named Phil, has been living in France with his French-born wife Marie (played by Alida Valli of The Third Man fame) ever since the Armistice. Unhinged by the ceaseless gunfire of WW2, Phil begins to imagine that he is still fighting The Great War--and so he dons his old uniform, marches into the countryside, and captures Sgt. Saunders (Vince Morrow), whom he believes to be a "Heinie" spy! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The happy thieves in this international effort are Rex Harrision and Rita Hayworth, both specialists in swiping rare art objects. Their plan to pilfer a priceless Goya involves creating a public diversion at a nearby bullring. Oh, we forgot to tell you: the film was made on location in Madrid, the better for the stars to avoid stiff taxes. Though both seem too old for this sort of fluff, Harrison and Hayworth make the most of the comic opportunities afforded them by the script. Produced by Hayworth's then-husband James Hill, Happy Thieves was based on a novel by Richard Condon, who later turned out such efforts as The Manchurian Candidate and Prizzi's Honor. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Disorder was a French/Italian co-production, released as Le Desordre in France and Il Disordine in Italy (somebody was in a rut). This leisurely paced modern fable stars Renato Salvatore as a poor young man, struggling to pay for his mother's medical bills. Virtually everyone whom Salvatore approaches for help fails him: An industrialist reneges on a promise, a well-to-do friend laughs in his face, and a priest is defrocked before he can do any good. When the young man is finally able to raise the necessary money, he discovers that the ex-priest has sold all his possessions in order to help Salvatore's mother. Thus it is the film's one Good Samaritan whose life ends up in "disorder." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide