One horror film that was banned in the UK due to its “disturbing” scenes is finally available to stream – but viewers are warned not to watch the “gruesome” film.
Released in 1981, the psychological horror movie proved so controversial it was banned in both Britain and the US. Entitled Possession, it stars Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani as a married couple – one of whom is an international spy.
Mark returns to his wife Anna after an espionage mission, only to be told she wants a divorce – but Anna refuses to give a reason. Mark agrees to give custody of their son Bob over to his wife but is desperate to work out the real reason Anna left him, dedicating his life to figuring it out.
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What comes after are disturbing discoveries about each partner, with their relationship becoming violent – and in the end, Anna’s gruesome true obsession is revealed. Premiering at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival, the movie had to be quickly edited together to cut out its most disturbing scenes to allow it to be shown at mainstream cinemas.
(Image: Youtube)
Despite its poor performance at the box office, Adjani scooped a Best Actress award at Cannes for the film, and Possession was even nominated for the coveted Palme d’Or award, though it lost out to Man of Iron.
In the UK, the cult classic was branded a “video nasty”, slammed by press and religious organisations. It was fully banned in Britain and only the heavily edited release was allowed to be shown in the US, with over 40 minutes of content cut out. The 118 minute directors’ cut was only passed by the British Board of Film Classification in 1999.
Now it’s finally available to stream on Amazon Prime – and it’s left viewers haunted. One X user took to social media to share their thoughts about the film, penning: “Possession is an essential film for the horror fans. I have a lot of questions from my first watch that I think will be answered only in the multiple rewatches.”
(Image: Youtube)
Another echoed: “[Possession] paints everything in a beautiful shade of panic attack, it makes me sick and makes my stomach knot up every time I watch it. But in the end I feel like I come out of it a little healed each time? The chaos is therapeutic. I seriously never shut up about it.”
For actor Sam Neill, working with director Andrzej Żuławski proved difficult, and he confessed he “didn’t like him much”. Neill was asked to actually hit his co-star, and said being on set felt like a form of “abuse”.
Neill admitted: “What he saw as direction often was just downright bullying. But he had vision, he was a true cineaste. And they are rare… Żuławski asked more of you than you could possibly give. There were times when he would scream, bellow at [co-star Isabelle Adjani] right in her face. It was distressing to see.
(Image: Youtube)
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“You thought you yourself couldn’t be crazier than you were, but you were mistaken. You needed to triple that. Nowadays I doubt you’d get away with it. But with Żuławski, you would do whatever it was he wanted. And although that makes me sound like a classic victim of abuse, which in a sense I think we were, it was more than that.
“We had complete belief in him as an artist, and we wanted to make this thing, whatever it was. We really wanted to be in This Thing. We were making something bigger than ourselves.”
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
