Lisa and the Devil 1973

During a tour of Toledo, Lisa Reiner encounters a fresco that depicts the Devil carrying off the dead. When a faint, otherworldly melody drifts through the air, she follows it into a small shop, where a music box sits crowned with turning figurines. The shop owner explains that the box belongs to Leandro, a man who bears a striking resemblance to the Devil painted in the fresco. The moment is unsettling, and Lisa quickly exits in a sense of unease, only to become hopelessly lost in the labyrinth of streets.

A short while later, she crosses paths with Leandro again, who guides her through a narrow arch and up a stairway into a shadowy, uncertain world. At the top, she is faced by Carlos, a figure who mirrors Leandro’s mustachioed dummy and whom he greets as Elena’s revenant. He proclaims that he has returned for her, and in her distress, Lisa lashes out, pushing him away. The sudden fall down the stairs leaves Carlos dead, and Lisa, shaken to her core, cries out for help as night begins to fall.

As darkness thickens, Lisa finds herself hitchhiking with a curious trio—Francis Lehar, Sophia Lehar, and their loyal chauffeur George. A car breakdown forces them to seek shelter at a quiet villa where Leandro appears as the servant to a blind countess and her son, Maximilian. The household agrees to let the travelers stay in a nearby cottage on the estate while repairs are underway, a choice that will pull Lisa deeper into a net of peril and illusion.

Inside the villa, the mood of the night grows tense. Sophia and George share a private moment, while Francis bathes and Lisa wrestles with the unsettling presence of Carlos, who seems to be creeping closer to her. Maximilian, with a charm that veils something darker, hints at a past romance with Lisa and insinuates that she already saw Leandro carrying a certain Carlos dummy. The tension thickens as the group sits down to dinner with the countess and her son, and Maximilian departs briefly to deliver a dessert to an upstairs room where an unseen detainee lies. He speaks of Carlos’s return and vows never to let him come between them again, even burning a photograph of Elena that resembles Lisa.

Visions haunt Lisa—the image of Elena with Carlos, followed by a surreal scene in which she kisses Maximilian, who then morphs into Carlos. Outside, Francis berates Sophia for her affair, while Sophia discovers the body of George, who has been stabbed and left in the repaired car. Maximilian and Leandro urge Francis to leave the corpse untouched and depart from the scene without involving the police.

Maximilian promises Lisa that he will never abandon her, but the tension in the house grows deadly. The countess interrupts and scolds her son, while Lisa wanders away and encounters Carlos again. Carlos urges patience as he spies on Leandro, and Lisa witnesses Leandro entering the estate’s chapel, seemingly arranging Carlos’s body in a coffin. Before she can process what she has seen, Carlos reappears outside again, and she flees into the villa’s interior, discovering a bedroom full of lifelike dummies that blur the line between the living and the dead. The shock triggers a faint.

Francis attempts to coerce Sophia into leaving with him in the car, but Sophia defies him by running him over and returning to the villa. In the dimly lit room filled with dummies, Sophia witnesses Maximilian bludgeon Carlos to death as Carlos fights to revive Lisa. Maximilian then pursues and murders Sophia, escalating the carnage. In the chapel, the countess reveals the truth about Carlos: he was her husband, Maximilian’s stepfather, whose affair with Elena had a long shadow over the family.

Leandro reappears, reviving Lisa and taking her measurements, bluntly informing her that Carlos is dead. Lisa then discovers the countess examining Sophia’s corpse and flees to Maximilian, who confines Elena’s remains to a hidden room. Elena, now reduced to a skeleton, represents the deep corrosion beneath the villa’s beauty. In a brutal turn, Maximilian knocks Lisa unconscious and rapes her, but their macabre moment is interrupted by the ghoulish laughter of Elena’s spirit.

The countess offers to shield Maximilian from consequences if he will disavow or even kill Lisa, but Maximilian responds with fatal violence, stabbing the countess to death. Later, he encounters the lifeless forms of his victims and the undead countess’s approaching figure, only to be frightened into stepping backward and tumbling from a window to his own death. Leandro appears in the aftermath, while the countess collapses in a limp, doll-like stillness.

Lisa awakens in the villa’s ruined rooms and tentatively confronts a Maximilian dummy that seems to plead with her to stay. Haunted, she boards a plane, hoping for a fresh start, but discovers that the other passengers are the villa’s corpses and the pilot is Leandro, a silent observer to her final breakdown. As the plane descends into nightmare, Lisa collapses, and the world around her dissolves into an eerie transformation: the living turn to dummies, and Elena’s symbolic presence lingers as Lisa’s fate is sealed in a final, haunting image.