Legendary actor Harrison Ford’s storied filmography includes eighty five acting credits. Do you know how many of those eighty five performances came from horror films? Two. For the sake of comparison, he’ll be playing Indiana Jones for the FIFTH time this week! One of these horror rarities came in 2000’s What Lies Beneath starring Ford opposite Michelle Pfeiffer and directed by Robert Zemeckis. The other? A made for TV, The Exorcist inspired 1977 film called The Possessed. The last film Ford would make before Star Wars, which would of course turn him into one of the world’s biggest movie stars that very same year.
Available on DVD, The Possessed isn’t terribly difficult to locate for a forty something year old TV movie. The quality is a little shaky and grainy but it only serves to add to the whole “church with carpets haunted by cigarette smoke” vibe the film has going for it. The story takes place in an all girls high school where there have been strange occurrences involving people randomly catching on fire and the doors around them slamming shut when anyone tries to assist. A disgraced ex-priest (James Farentino) is brought in to help investigate the situation as there appears to be no worldly explanation for the events. Meanwhile, a member of the school continues to show signs of demonic possession.
The Possessed was written off at the time by some as an Exorcist “ripoff” and that’s understandable considering the vast similarities. But watching it in the present day, similarities or not, I found that entire Exorcist aura to be a welcome one. Movies still rip off The Exorcist to this day, but rarely are they able to match even the atmosphere of the film. The Possessed manages to pull that off. It also asks a very original question: What if the evil of possession is real but the Church actually has no answer for it? No bible passages or Holy Water. No weapons whatsoever.
The movie opens with Farentino’s character, Kevin (who is very much comparable to The Exorcist’s Father Karras), as a Priest who’s not a very good Priest. He crashes his car while drinking and dies. But he’s brought back to life with a purpose: fighting evil. Very much like Constantine, only this guy is completely clueless as to what he’s going to do from one moment to the next. He believes evil is real but insists that every case is different and he won’t know what to do until he finds it. So, he kind of just wanders the school halls, asking questions and lingering around like Jay and Silent Bob in front of the Quick Stop but less Clerks and more Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. This is a compliment. It makes the character mysterious and far more interesting than your usual horror movie Priest.
Kevin’s investigation and awkward questioning is how we stumble across Harrison Ford’s character, Paul Winjam, a charismatic ladies man and Biology teacher at the school. Too much of a ladies man. He’s not only slept with the head woman at the school, Ellen (Claudette Nevins), but he’s also sleeping with one of his young students, played by Ann Dusenberry (who was up for the role of Laurie Strode in Halloween at one point; Halloween alum PJ Soles has a small role here as one of the students). Ford’s role is short lived in the film but his character does end up being quite pivotal to the story. He has several monologues where he’s either using fake spiders to invoke fear in his students or being a convincing and sleazy womanizer. Even at this early point in his career, and even though he’s playing a character far sleazier than the ones that made him famous, Ford’s charisma is very much evident, his charm and natural ability shining through.
The charm of The Possessed lies in its mood and Omen-esque atmosphere but this is definitely no well oiled Richard Donner type machine. Jagged edits and awkward conversations sometimes have you wondering if you missed an important piece of information along the way. You likely didn’t. It’s all very straight forward and heading toward a face off between (dun dun dun) the possessed and our non-Priest, Kevin. It’s just awkwardly put together.
The setting of our final face off is pretty darn rad, however. The entire school catches fire and our possessed character walks room to room freeing each girl from their locked dorm. This alone provides some really creepy imagery and is one of the many moments that made me glad I watched. They all convene in the indoor pool area as Kevin walks out to greet the afflicted. It’s nice not to have our typical and tired “The power of Christ compels you” scene play out but alas, they had no idea what to replace that with. Kevin kind of just walks up and grabs the possessed villain and has no idea what to do next. But her response saves the day, as a bunch of really cool and weird things follow. It’s about as unsettling as a TV movie trying to do The Exorcist can be. To top it all off, there’s small stunts using real fire and someone throwing up nails and liquids of unknown origin, Evil Dead style. All around, it’s a weird, fun time.
The Possessed wraps up with absolutely no attempt to explain itself on a myriad of things that were happening and I was left almost impressed by how little it cared to try. These are the things you can learn to live with and even appreciate about a movie with a balmy hour and sixteen minute run time and the ambiance of other horror classics it never had the budget to truly replicate. Not to mention a dashing young Harrison Ford taking part in a semi-gnarly genre death scene.
I absolutely find myself recommending The Possessed to ’70s horror buffs desperate for a piece of content from the time period. I’d also recommend it to Exorcist fans looking for even just a taste of the spirit of the original film. The Possessed isn’t in the same league as some of the horror movies it will remind you of but for a couple fleeting moments has the same sense of impending danger. The kind that makes you question where you purchased it from… and if maybe the VHS tape itself was haunted.
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