Originally developed by producer Martin Poll and his production company, Haworth Productions, Poll abandoned the project shortly after filming began, due to creative differences with actress Shirley MacLaine. Following Poll's departure, British producer Lew Grade of ITC Entertainment overtook the project. Principal photography took place in New York City and London during the winter of 1971, on a budget of $1.5 million.
The Possession of Joel Delaney was released theatrically in the United States by Paramount Pictures in May 1972, and subsequently entered competition at the 22nd Berlin International Film Festival. It received a theatrical release in the United Kingdom shortly after, in August 1972. The film received mixed reviews from critics, though its theme of possession subsequently resulted in parallels being drawn by critics to The Exorcist, released a year later.[8]
In the intervening years, the film has been the subject of film criticism surrounding its themes of social inequality, as well as familial relationships and incest.
Plot
Norah Benson is an upperclass Manhattan divorcee living with her two children, Carrie and Peter. Her ex-husband, Ted, an esteemed physician, has recently remarried. One night, Norah, accompanied by her younger brother, Joel Delaney, attends a party held by her psychologist friend, Erika Lorenz. In contrast to Norah's elitism, Joel has a more bohemian view of the world, and has recently returned to New York after an extended visit to Tangier. Despite their differences, the siblings remain close, bonded by the suicide of their socialite mother that occurred when Joel was still a child; Norah, a young adult at the time, became Joel's guardian.
Two days after Erika's party, Joel fails to arrive at a dinner Norah has planned at her house. Concerned, Norah goes to Joel's apartment in the East Village, where she witnesses him being escorted by police to the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital. She is disturbed to learn that Joel attacked the building's superintendent. In Joel's apartment, Norah finds a large switchblade knife, and notices an esoteric hand symbol painted on the wall. Norah is met by Joel's former girlfriend, Sherry, who comments on Joel's "dark side." Norah learns that the apartment previously belonged to a man named Tonio Pérez, the superintendent's son.
Unable to recall the events that landed him in the hospital, Joel is convinced by Norah to lie to the doctors and claim he was under the influence of hallucinogens. He is discharged on the provision that he meet with a psychiatrist; Norah arranges for him to see Erika, who has known Joel most of his life. During their sessions, Joel recounts to Erika his close friendship with Tonio. Meanwhile, Norah, having welcomed Joel to stay with her, observes increasingly odd behavior: He first asks Norah inappropriate questions about her sex life, and later, at his birthday party, exhibits manic behavior, culminating in a series of crude insults to Norah's Puerto Rican maid, Veronica, which he relays in Spanish.
The following day, Norah visits Sherry's apartment to return an earring she left behind at the party. Upon entering, she finds Sherry's decapitated corpse lying in her bed, and her severed head hanging from a houseplant. Police interview Norah, and remark that Sherry's murder resembles serial killings that occurred the summer before in Spanish Harlem, which received little publicity because the victims were all Hispanic females. Detectives presume the perpetrator to be Tonio, who has been missing for several months, but his family and friends refuse to cooperate with authorities.
With Veronica's help, Norah meets Don Pedro, a Santería practitioner in Harlem who agrees to help her. He arranges a ceremony to banish Tonio's spirit, which he believes has possessed Joel's body. In attendance is Tonio's grief-stricken mother, who admits to Norah that Tonio was in fact a murderer, and that when his father discovered Tonio's crimes, he murdered Tonio himself and disposed of his remains. Don concludes the ceremony as unsuccessful due to Norah's agnosticism toward the supernatural.
Norah returns home to find Joel screaming hysterically in Spanish. Frightened for the children's safety, she brings them to the family's beachfront vacation home in Long Island, while Erika promises to help Joel. The next morning, after returning from a walk on the beach, Norah finds Erika's severed head in the kitchen, and Joel standing nearby with his switchblade. Now uniformly possessed by Tonio, Joel torments and taunts Norah and the children.
When Ted arrives at the house with the police, Joel forces Peter to strip and dance naked on a table. He then forces Carrie to eat dog food, cutting her on the neck when she resists. An enraged Norah tries to stop him, but Joel brutally beats her before kissing her passionately. The children run out of the house, and Joel is fatally shot by the police as he tries to pursue them. As Joel dies in Norah's arms, her behavior suddenly becomes emotionally distant. She then picks up Joel's switchblade and brandishes it menacingly at the police.
In his book Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film (2014), film scholar Tony Williams writes that The Possession of Joel Delaney is thematically preoccupied with the same "racial, economic, and class characteristics of I Walked With a Zombie (1943)," despite its depiction Puerto Rican Americans as "superstitious voodoo devotees."[9] Williams notes that the film's opening sequence at an upperclass party affirms this thematic exploration, observing that "intercut shots juxtapose affluent white guests with primitive voodoo masks placed in the demeaning position of trendy artefacts. A black man [in the scene] stands alone. His face exhibits ethnic alienation."[9]
Williams notes a similar social-racial suggestiveness through the film's cinematography, particularly "subtle, non-rhetorical camera movements" that occur during sequences between Norah and her maid, Veronica, which reveal the "oppressive nature of white power."[9] Film writer Charles Derry notes: "Even if The Possession of Joel Delaney grinds its ax rather obviously, the film works well both as a horror film and an allegory of modern class conflict."[10]
Familial relationships
Familial trauma and incestual desire are two themes explored in this film, particularly with regard to the movie's two lead characters -- Norah and her brother Joel.[11] Throughout the film, several peripheral characters observe that Norah and Joel play out an unusual brother/sister relationship, with some commenting that the two resemble a romantic couple.[12] Critic Tony Williams attests to Norah's sexual desire for Joel, as represented in the film's opening sequence, where she appears visibly jealous as Joel speaks with his ex-girlfriend.[12] Additionally, it has been noted that Norah, who partly raised Joel, keeps him in a "state of childish dependence," and suggests that the film's title holds a double meaning, alluding to the supernatural spirit possession of Joel, as well as the emotional possession of him by Norah.[13]
Williams believes that the film "handles family motifs far more successfully than the more publicized film from the following year, The Exorcist... it achieves an effective balance between supernatural motifs and material causes by never allowing the former to overwhelm the latter."[9]
Production
Development
Following a bidding war between major studios over the rights to Ramona Stewart's novel The Possession of Joel Delaney (1970),[14] the rights were sold to producer Martin Poll and his studio, Haworth Productions, who arranged to produce the film.[5]
Filming
Screen tests for The Possession of Joel Delaney began in December 1970.[15] Principal photography commenced on January 2, 1971, in New York City.[5] While exteriors were shot in New York, the bulk of the interior sequences were filmed in London.[5] Principal photography was completed in March 1971.[5]
Shortly after principal photography began, producer Martin Poll left the project due to creative disputes with actress Shirley MacLaine.[5] Following Poll's exit, British media proprietor Lew Grade and his company, ITC Entertainment, took over the production; MacLaine had recently made Desperate Characters (1971) and the short-lived series Shirley's World under Grade's supervision.[16] As a result, Poll had his name removed from the credits as producer.[1]Philip Rosenberg served as the film's production designer.[1]
Release
The film opened theatrically in the United States on May 24, 1972, in New York City and Los Angeles.[5] In addition to its standard cut, which consists primarily of spoken English with some Spanish, an exclusively Spanish-language version of the film was released concurrently in New York.[5] It was subsequently screened at the Berlin International Film Festival the week of June 23, 1972.[5] It was released in the United Kingdom approximately two months later, opening in London on August 18, 1972.[17]
Controversy and Censorship
Following its release, the film's climactic scene ignited critical outrage, due to explicit depiction of child torture and abuse. The scene in question involved the twelve-year-old actor, David Elliott. The scene required his character, Peter, to dance naked on a table in front of the possessed Joel.[18][19][20]
In a 2020 interview, Elliott revealed the bitter experience he faced during the film's production, which was the source of a lifelong trauma that required years of therapy. He claimed that the aforementioned table scene, which required him to be completely naked in front of his co-actors, had not been part of the original script when he accepted the role. Instead, it had been added by Hussein with a script rewrite, during the final two weeks of filming in a remote beach house located in Amagansett, Long Island. Elliott further revealed that a scene in which he was dragged by the possessed Joel holding a real switchblade was filmed using poor safety measures that could have resulted in permanent eye damage. Also, to make him cry for a scene in which Joel reveals the killing of his dog, Elliott was told by the filmmakers that his actual dog had been killed and was not certain whether he was going to leave the island alive. Based on these claims, the filming of these scenes likely involved child endangerment.[21] With reference to the table scene, even though Elliott's frontal nudity is not visible in the 1.85:1 theatrical aspect ratio, his genitals were visibly exposed in the VHS release, as it was in the open matte format.
Film critic Roger Ebert heavily criticised this and similar scenes as "in nauseatingly bad taste."[19] He also criticised the film's director, asserting, "Filmmakers should have enough imagination and enterprise to scare us without resulting to cheap tricks. Hitchcock can, and does. But Waris Hussein, who directed this film, is so bankrupt of imagination that he actually descends to a scene where the little boy is forced to disrobe and eat dog food."[19] (Actually, it is Norah's daughter whose face is shoved into a bowl of Ken-L Ration, not her son.) In addition, Paul D. Zimmerman, critic for Newsweek, characterized the controversial scene as "cruel, tasteless, and debased as to create nausea instead of fear."[22] And in 2004, thirty-two years after the film's release, Stephen King maintained that this particular scene alone would have cost the film an NC-17 rating had it been released a decade or two later.[23]
In the United Kingdom, the film was originally cut in order to receive an adults-only X certificate; all cuts were waived upon re-submission for DVD release in 2007.[24]
Home media
Paramount Home Entertainment released The Possession of Joel Delaney on VHS in 1991.[25] The film remained unreleased in other formats until June 2008, when Paramount issued it for the first time on DVD in conjunction with Legend Films.[26] In August 2021, the Australian company Via Vision Entertainment announced they would be releasing the film for the first time on Blu-ray through their Imprint films series on November 24, 2021;[27] this release was slightly edited from the theatrical version.[28] In January 2025, Vinegar Syndrome announced they were preparing an Ultra HD Blu-ray edition of the film, uncut and newly remastered under license from Paramount, for release the following month. This marked the film's North American debut on both HD and 4K formats.[29]
Reception
Box office
In her biography of Shirley MacLaine, writer Patricia Erens noted that The Possession of Joel Delaney was a box-office disappointment for Paramount Pictures.[30]
Critical response
The Possession of Joel Delaney received mixed to negative reviews from film critics, with some noting its social commentary on class issues and MacLaine's performance as strengths, though some felt it portrayed negative stereotypes of Puerto Rican Americans.[31]Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times criticized the film, saying "badly put together, with little feeling for suspense, and the final scenes in the beach house are in nauseatingly bad taste" and gave two out of four stars.[19] Candice Russell of the Miami Herald felt the screenplay was underdeveloped, despite the film's "keen performances, Hussein's crisp direction, and clean, often-eerie photography. The fault here lies with the screenplay, and not with its execution."[32]Sight and Sound criticized the film, saying "grim and gratuitously nasty voodoo drama"[33]Paul D. Zimmerman of the Newsweek criticized the final scenes as "...cruel, tasteless, and debased as to create nausea instead of fear."[22]
Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times gave the film a favorable review, praising director Hussein's use of film locations and "perceptive and subtle" cultural observations, summarizing it as "a unique and provocative film, harrowing and at times grisly, that demands a great deal of the viewer's imagination."[34] Wanda Hale of The New York Daily News praised the acting in the film, noting that MacLaine's role "tests [her] dramatic ability, and she gives a remarkably fine performance," and also commented favorably on the film's depiction of class disparity among New York residents.[35]Variety also praised MacLaine's performance as "riveting."[36]
British film critic Derek Malcolm compared the film's gratuitousness to that of Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs (1971), in that it "sits up and begs for trouble. It treats of violence and ultimately rubs our noses in it. I've no doubt at all that many will think it meretricious garbage. I've also no doubt at all that it is the most powerful piece of filmmaking Hussein has yet shown us."[37] Malcolm wrote favorably of the film's social commentary, which noted as "chillingly achieved in [its] better moments... [The film] deserves to be noticed in a different context to that in which it will undoubtedly be advertised."[37]
The Time Out Film Guide review was critical of the film, noting: "There is some slick racial moralizing (rich white New Yorkers shouldn't be beastly to their less privileged neighbors). But stir in some mumbo-jumbo in which shrieking Puerto Ricans try to exorcize the devil, and a climax in which MacLaine and her children are tortured at knife-point by the spirit of racial vengeance, and what you come away with is an alarmist message saying 'Keep New York White'."[38]TV Guide also gave the film an unfavorable review, deeming it "bad taste, overwrought, and claptrap."[39]
↑ Poll left the project during principal photography due to creative differences with Shirley MacLaine, after which Lew Grade signed on to produce the film. Because of this, Poll had his name removed from the project, and the credits list no producer.[1]
Derry, Charles (2009). Dark Dreams 2.0: A Psychological History of the Modern Horror Film from the 1950s to the 21st Century. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN978-0-786-45695-6.
Erens, Patricia (1978). The Films of Shirley MacLaine. South Brunswick, New Jersey: A. S. Barnes. ISBN978-0-498-01993-7.
Frank, Alan (1982). The Horror Film Handbook. Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes & Noble Books. ISBN9780--389-20260-8.
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