Spanish director Amando de Ossorio (RIP) is famous for his living dead templar horror films that began with "Tombs of the Blind Dead" in 1971. This film, "The Possessed" (1975), is a cash-in of William Friedkin's "The Exorcist" (1973) and a very bad one. It has a creepy looking teenage girl cursed by some witch or wannabe and then she naturally creates horror around her while her parents and authorities start to investigate a priest about exorcism, Satan and so on..There's nothing special or original in the plot, nor in the whole film either.
The film has two pretty scary looking actors and I mean the witch and the lead girl who both have the face required to play in this kind of Satanic tale. The old witch make-up is also convincing and these little things are almost the only positive things that can be said about this slow and tired piece of Spanish film.
The protagonist priest is the only one that has even a little depth in him as we get to learn something about his past. This is nice and gives also some potential to criticise some more or less hypocritic things that can be related to being a priest and denying one's human feelings and needs. But nothing is used so ambitiously, the priest only gets to develop slightly higher than the other characters but nothing else.
The special and horror effects are also very bad and few. There's no gore or on-screen carnage as usually in these films, only some very badly acted scenes of demonic violence and one rather pointless (off screen) castration commited by a devil. The atmosphere is only very rarely anything interesting, and practically always involves either the girl or the witch and their faces. One laughably bad "horror scene" is straightly from "The Exorcist" (among many other elements in the film) and has equally bad "trick effect" as Italian Joe D'Amato's exploitation sickie "Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals" from 1977.
The English dubbing is awful as well as some of the dialogue. The dialogue thinks the audience is very stupid and so every "important" thought of a character is said and spoken out so that nothing is left to the imagination, like "How the hell you have my voice?" as an example of this hilarious stupidity!
"The Possessed" is a very bad and uninteresting piece of horror film and definitely among the worst examples of "rip offs" in general. Only the very few things mentioned make this to the 2/10 level which means that I won't ever return to this film again but will keep on watching other films by the director who definitely is capable for more.
The film has two pretty scary looking actors and I mean the witch and the lead girl who both have the face required to play in this kind of Satanic tale. The old witch make-up is also convincing and these little things are almost the only positive things that can be said about this slow and tired piece of Spanish film.
The protagonist priest is the only one that has even a little depth in him as we get to learn something about his past. This is nice and gives also some potential to criticise some more or less hypocritic things that can be related to being a priest and denying one's human feelings and needs. But nothing is used so ambitiously, the priest only gets to develop slightly higher than the other characters but nothing else.
The special and horror effects are also very bad and few. There's no gore or on-screen carnage as usually in these films, only some very badly acted scenes of demonic violence and one rather pointless (off screen) castration commited by a devil. The atmosphere is only very rarely anything interesting, and practically always involves either the girl or the witch and their faces. One laughably bad "horror scene" is straightly from "The Exorcist" (among many other elements in the film) and has equally bad "trick effect" as Italian Joe D'Amato's exploitation sickie "Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals" from 1977.
The English dubbing is awful as well as some of the dialogue. The dialogue thinks the audience is very stupid and so every "important" thought of a character is said and spoken out so that nothing is left to the imagination, like "How the hell you have my voice?" as an example of this hilarious stupidity!
"The Possessed" is a very bad and uninteresting piece of horror film and definitely among the worst examples of "rip offs" in general. Only the very few things mentioned make this to the 2/10 level which means that I won't ever return to this film again but will keep on watching other films by the director who definitely is capable for more.