THE POSSESSION OF JOEL DELANEY

Long before the genre embraced copious bloodletting and the dubious joys of gratuitous viscera, horror -- the supernatural sub-genre in particular -- evoked dazzling heights of panic and terror through the fine art of suggestion and atmosphere, preferring mood over shock. And while there is certainly merit in the use of violence in the dark art, it is instructive to see the superb emotional effects that a well defined shadow can produce. This is especially true when looking at occult horror, where the frights stem from such philosophical and intellectual dimensions as religious faith, strains on personal relationships, and the ultimate mystery of death. The Possession of Joel Delaney is a wonderful example of a story substituting grue for tone. Produced before the seminal The Exorcist, which proved to be the most influential in a long line of films focusing on conservative battles between 'traditional' Christian Good vs. Evil, Possession was a solidly told story of urban occultism. Similar in vein to Polanski's superior Rosemary's Baby, this suggestive, slow moving creeper treats its supernatural elements seriously, bereft of the wink-wink mentality that ruins so many contemporary thrillers. The result is a believable study of possession in the midst of a crass modern landscape.

Cast against a similar privileged social environment as Polanski's film, Possession wisely anchors its exotic supernatural elements smack dab in the rat race grind. Terror comes to 'oh so polite' society -- a place where you're more likely to be snubbed by the cultural elite than harassed by demons. Norah Benson (Shirley MacLaine, in an uncharacteristic role) is a wealthy socialite with a rather typical life for someone of her financial status. Divorced, Norah raises her two children Carrie and Peter when she's not partying with the 'privileged. Beneath this typically urban crust is a secret - her disturbed brother Joel. When a violent encounter gets him to Bellevue, he can't recall the violent encounter or his own increasingly erratic behavior (a case book example of authentic possession and some types of mental illness). Norah finds herself looking after Joel when he is released under the supervision of his psychologist. True to genre template, Joel's attitudes and personality continues to mysteriously warp until he becomes threatening. When he begins speaking in an older Spanish man's voice, Norah discovers that the girl he was dating has been discovered beheaded. She asks a Harlem practitioner of Santeria Don Pedro for aid, who claims the boy has been possessed by a teen-age Puerto Rican murderer. The only hope? An exorcism of course!

The Possession of Joel Delaney opens a frightening Pandora's box of sinister implications. The script teases open the surface exterior of objective reality to point out the spiritual and dangerous possibilities lurking beneath the illusory crust of everyday perception. This attack against reality, and the suggestion that what is seeable is only partially 'true', concealing mysteries and threats unimagined by most of us, gives the movie its dark id uneven tone. We're snared in an atmosphere of horribly plausible occult forces and come to dread things that surface logic initially refutes. It is the well defined characters that lend the events emotional intensity, bringing the supernatural down to an intimate level of empathy. Ghosts and possessions, demons and occult forces -- none of these have the power to frighten or engage without believable characters and settings to lend them a context of familiarity. Like Romona Stewart's novel of the same name, the film integrates the spiritual wonders of its story into the context of everyday life, from the scathing depiction of social clashes and pain of disrupted normalcy to the troubled relationship between Norah and Joel. Director Michael Hordern treats Santeria (a form of Voodoo) as an authentic religion, capturing its mystical properties and exotic nature without demonizing it, making the entire story more interesting than your typical Christian rant.

Thanks to a distribution deal with Paramount, Legend Films presents this and a slew of other neglected cult classics on DVD for the first time. Possession is treated with admirable respect here, receiving a 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that sports wonderful picture clarity and detail. Featuring no grain or blemishes of note, the colors are vivid for the most part. Audio is in English Mono, with no discernible problems, as the dialogue and score are evenly distributed. In short, this is a professional presentation of a rare supernatural thriller.

Review by William Simmons