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Product Description
Beyond the realm of human desire there is a darkness ... A horror film like no other, Possession is an intense, shocking experience that was banned in the UK as a video nasty. With its dark subject matter and high gore quotient, it's not for the faint hearted. With their marriage in pieces Anna and Mark's tense relationship has become a psychotic descent into screaming matches, violence and self-mutilation. Believing his wife's only lover is the sinister Heinrich, Mark is unaware of the demonic, tentacled creature that Anna has embarked on an affair with. The unhinged woman visits her monstrous lover in a deserted Berlin apartment and will stop at nothing to protect it. Written and directed by Andrzej Zulawski, Possession is a deeply unsettling experience, aided by the horrific effects of the great Carlo Rambaldi (Deep Red, Close Encounters, Alien). The film, though banned on video, was nominated for a BAFTA and the Palme d'Or and Adgani's astonishing performance earned her Best Actress awards at the Cannes Film Festival and the French Cesars. BONUS FEATURES include The Other Side Of The Wall (The Making Of Possession) & Interview with Andrzej Zulawski.
Product Description
United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), WIDESCREEN (1.66:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Anamorphic Widescreen, Cast/Crew Interview(s), Interactive Menu, Making Of, Photo Gallery, Scene Access, Uncut, SYNOPSIS: Usually misattributed to the horror genre, this challenging and highly unusual drama stars Isabelle Adjani as a young woman who forsakes her husband (Sam Neill) and her lover (Heinz Bennent) for a bizarre, tentacled creature that she keeps in a run-down Berlin apartment. In the beginning, her husband knows nothing about the monster and sincerely believes that his wife is insane. He has her tailed by private detectives, whom she kills and feeds to the creature. Still unaware of what has happened, the husband contends with the reserved and inadvertently seductive presence of his wife's look-alike (also played by Adjani), a schoolteacher who frequently comes to tutor his son while his wife is away. Though tempted by her quiet goodness and beauty, he is still passionately in love with his wife and even after he finds out about the murders, he stays by her side and helps her conceal her crimes. Filmed amidst the oppressive backdrop of the Berlin Wall by the expatriate Polish director Andrzej Zulawski (who was unable to work in his homeland after too many clashes with the authorities), the picture is so relentlessly intense and so deliberately esoteric, that most viewers would find it too hard to connect with. Still its symbolism, its unbridled and flashy directorial style, and the tour de force performance by Isabelle Adjani earned this unique tale a cult following in Europe. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: BAFTA Awards, Cannes Film Festival, Ceasar Awards, Fantasporto Awards, ...Possession (Uncut) (1981)
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
41 of 43 people found the following review helpful
By Doc Benway
Format:DVD
Possession is totally extraordinary.
Packed with symbolism it can be read on so many possible levels of interpretation it's bewildering.
Set in a European city (obviously Berlin during its partition) in an alienating mixture of ultra modern buildings and decaying grandeur, visually it evokes a sense of dislocation. The plot can't easily be summarised without foretelling too many of the surprises the film contains. Thematically, it seems to be a study of a marriage in the last phase of destruction, with Sam Neill returning from doing a mysterious job (spying?) and meeting his wife played by Isabelle Adjani, whose agitated reaction to his arrival only hints at the deep levels of disturbance she enacts as the film progresses.
What follows is a nightmarish and surreal two hours of startling images, bizarre acting and frequent bloodletting.
If you liked Antichrist you will be interested to see a lot of similar themes in Possession - misogyny, madness, faith, evil and lust permeate a fractured dreamscape with a sustained and unique oddness.
I was put in mind of J.G. Ballard, William Burroughs, Polanski, Cronenberg and David Lynch, but Zulawski's film is totally unique.
Possession was put on the banned list during the Video Nasties era, but don't come to it expecting anything like any of the more exploitation films I've seen off the DPP 39, Possession is as challenging an art-horror as I've ever seen.
Highly recommended.
Packed with symbolism it can be read on so many possible levels of interpretation it's bewildering.
Set in a European city (obviously Berlin during its partition) in an alienating mixture of ultra modern buildings and decaying grandeur, visually it evokes a sense of dislocation. The plot can't easily be summarised without foretelling too many of the surprises the film contains. Thematically, it seems to be a study of a marriage in the last phase of destruction, with Sam Neill returning from doing a mysterious job (spying?) and meeting his wife played by Isabelle Adjani, whose agitated reaction to his arrival only hints at the deep levels of disturbance she enacts as the film progresses.
What follows is a nightmarish and surreal two hours of startling images, bizarre acting and frequent bloodletting.
If you liked Antichrist you will be interested to see a lot of similar themes in Possession - misogyny, madness, faith, evil and lust permeate a fractured dreamscape with a sustained and unique oddness.
I was put in mind of J.G. Ballard, William Burroughs, Polanski, Cronenberg and David Lynch, but Zulawski's film is totally unique.
Possession was put on the banned list during the Video Nasties era, but don't come to it expecting anything like any of the more exploitation films I've seen off the DPP 39, Possession is as challenging an art-horror as I've ever seen.
Highly recommended.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
By Now Zoltan
Format:DVD
I'd love to know if David Lynch saw this film back in the early eighties and if so, what he made of it. I was struck by the amount of Lynchian tropes here - shifting identities, acting that veers from mannered to hysterical in an instant, disregard of narrative in favour of the symbolic, hell, even a pair of blue velvet curtains put in an appearance. As this was made in 1981, years before Blue Velvet and Lost Highway I figure it must have seeped into his subconscious somehow. I'm not complaining by the way, I love DLs films and I loved this, it looks amazing - brilliantly shot and hypnotic and it uses its Berlin setting wonderfully well. My only quibble - we could have lost some of the rambling, pretentious monologues and still retained the essential core weirdness of the film. Recommended (although not if you are seeking a gory horror - forget all that video nasty rubbish, the terror here is mainly of the cerebal variety)
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By Nelson Viper
Format:DVD
Anna, a sadistic ballet teacher is married, to Mark, a spy of some sort. They are having marital problems and boy are those problems bad!
Possession is a gory perverse mash up of doppelgangers, crazed camera work and ultra alienating characters, that culminates in Anna enjoying angst filled graphic congress with a squid/man/octopus-thing, whilst repeating the word "almost. Along the way there's a miscarriage in a subway, a bisexual who lives with his mum, some nasty business with an electric carving knife and a very violent shooting. It's hard to say what this movie is actually about, but loosely if The Brood was about the physical manifestation of the damage caused by the break up of a marriage, Possession is about the even worse mayhem inflicted on everyone when two very nasty dysfunctional people try to make a go of it.
Isabelle Adjani goes at her performance with a blank, numb, suppressed fury and Sam Neill alternates between a weird bemused indulgent empathy for his wife and a deep inner sickness.
Possession is a one off. Too OTT to qualify as an art-house movie, but not really a horror film either. There's a strong visual debt to 1970s Italian giallo horror thrillers and to an extent a thematic similarity to Cronenberg's body horror films.
Possession is by turns fascinating, ludicrous, and striking. It's a genuine oddity and a must for collectors the original Video Nasties.
Possession is a gory perverse mash up of doppelgangers, crazed camera work and ultra alienating characters, that culminates in Anna enjoying angst filled graphic congress with a squid/man/octopus-thing, whilst repeating the word "almost. Along the way there's a miscarriage in a subway, a bisexual who lives with his mum, some nasty business with an electric carving knife and a very violent shooting. It's hard to say what this movie is actually about, but loosely if The Brood was about the physical manifestation of the damage caused by the break up of a marriage, Possession is about the even worse mayhem inflicted on everyone when two very nasty dysfunctional people try to make a go of it.
Isabelle Adjani goes at her performance with a blank, numb, suppressed fury and Sam Neill alternates between a weird bemused indulgent empathy for his wife and a deep inner sickness.
Possession is a one off. Too OTT to qualify as an art-house movie, but not really a horror film either. There's a strong visual debt to 1970s Italian giallo horror thrillers and to an extent a thematic similarity to Cronenberg's body horror films.
Possession is by turns fascinating, ludicrous, and striking. It's a genuine oddity and a must for collectors the original Video Nasties.
By Janis Livens
Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase
Possession is a strange art-house horror film starring Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill and a plenty of crazy. To explain what this film is about would take few hours but the simple version is: Isabelle Adjani plays a housewife that cheats on her husband with a tentacle creature. For those with some knowledge about Japanese pop-culture will immediately come to a conclusion that this is some kind of sick sex film. But it's really not anything like those Hentai things where school girls get off on tentacle creatures but more a deranged horror version of Kramer versus Kramer with plenty of gore, sex and glorious overacting. Possession is a strange and deranged trip into the bitter collapse of marriage, sexual deviancy and alien doppelgangers. If all of this sounds interesting to you and you want to experience something disturbing and unconventional, this is just the right film for you.
Despite the fact that this a recent DVD release, the print itself is fairly old. But unlike other people, this didn't bother me and added a lot to the feel of the film. Possession packs few extra features: 50 minute long making of documentary, 35 minute long interview with the director and photo gallery. For a single disc edition, it's more than enough and should provide some reasoning behind the madness of the film.
I highly recommend to buy Possession if you happen to like insane horror films. The very fact that this was a Video Nasty, should be a recommendation alone.
Despite the fact that this a recent DVD release, the print itself is fairly old. But unlike other people, this didn't bother me and added a lot to the feel of the film. Possession packs few extra features: 50 minute long making of documentary, 35 minute long interview with the director and photo gallery. For a single disc edition, it's more than enough and should provide some reasoning behind the madness of the film.
I highly recommend to buy Possession if you happen to like insane horror films. The very fact that this was a Video Nasty, should be a recommendation alone.
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4.2 out of 5 stars
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Nutty as a fruitcake
This is one of the nuttiest pieces of cinema I've ever seen. Is it well directed? Yes, it is. Is it well acted? Read more
Published 2 months ago by The Demon Pazuzu
1.0 out of 5 stars
And the point is
Err just watched this and the only reason i can see for it to be banned is the fact it wastes nearly 2 hours of your life. Read more
Published 4 months ago by LeopardPrince
4.0 out of 5 stars
Transfixed by the screen
It is hard to NOT watch this film, as Adjani's performance is incredible, but so is most everything else here. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Bob
5.0 out of 5 stars
...crikey....
Right people... This film is tremendous. I knew hardly anything about it before I watched it & it blew me away. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Ploot un Mache
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very strange film...
I like horror films. I rather enjoy 'video nasties' as they were called, though merely to laugh at what was considered the worst of the worst back in the day before internet access... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Mr. J. Gardner
1.0 out of 5 stars
poorly scripted, poorly acted, just plain poor!
I've watched a lot of films and I can honestly say that I've seen few films more painfully poor to watch than this one. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Apostasy Now
2.0 out of 5 stars
Art-house? That's offensive to art-house
Ever felt misunderstood? Because I enjoy films like the Bourne trilogy which my wife, who hates anything more violent than Tom and Jerry, can't stand to watch, she bought me this... Read more
Published on 18 Feb 2011 by Mixed Bag
2.0 out of 5 stars
Emperor's new clothes
I expect this review to be voted down as 'not useful' because it is critical of the film, but oh well, here goes... Read more
Published on 8 Nov 2010 by E. Granter
5.0 out of 5 stars
we told you so.
but no one was listening..
i used to watch this amazing black and apocalyptic horror comedy (that's surely what it really is? Read more
i used to watch this amazing black and apocalyptic horror comedy (that's surely what it really is? Read more
Published on 24 Oct 2010 by boz
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