“Rich people don’t beg.”
A laughing psycho advises a distraught mother on social etiquette while holding a switchblade to her pre-teen daughter’s throat. He then forces the girl to eat dogfood while making her brother dance naked on the coffee table. All in front of a flagon of policemen watching helpless through the window.
Like the eponymous victim/villain, ‘The Possession of Joel Delaney’ is an A-list 70s Hollywood screambuster that doesn’t play nice. Instead, director Waris Hussein revels in dirtying the big-budget gloss with genuinely shocking taboo-breaking beats.
Unfortunately, incest, child torture and systemic racism aren’t as socially acceptable these days. The very knuckle-shredding satirical elements elevating the movie above standard hokum have also consigned it to relative obsurity and semi-notorious cult classicdom.
The film opens with adult brother and sister Norah Benson (Shirley MacLaine) and Joel Delaney (Perry King) giggling like children in an elevator surrounded by prissy peers and elders. Their semi-incestuous relationship is off-kilter from the start – they appear as feckless toyboy and preening cougar to frowning onlookers at an upper class Manhattan party.
They themselves are both oblivious and uncaring – their wealth, privilege and chic beauty ensure the normal rules of polite society don’t apply. When Joel is arrested for assault and hospitalised on mental health grounds, naive Norah is the only one surprised.
His increasingly erratic behaviour (speaking Spanish, abusing staff, decapitating girlfriends) is a cut above everyday obnoxiousness, so she searches for answers as to how the apple of her eye is falling so badly. Her investigation into the murky underworld of poor people leads to the discovery he is possessed by the spirit of a dead ethnic serial killer. The most obvious explanation – Joel Delaney is an arsehole – just won’t do.
This is where Shirley MacLaine’s star power really takes over. As the bubble-wrapped-bitch-heroine she is a joy to watch, whether it be pushing plebs out of the way in a hospital reception, fawning over her feckless brother or condescending her Puerto Rican maid-slave. Her behaviour elicits both eye-rolling embarrassment and anger at the entitlement.
MacLaine’s sugar-coated presence also allows the audience to be lulled into a false sense of security. While the early stages of Joel’s escalation grate psychological nerves (a birthday party becomes particularly fraught), it is the discovery of a naked body sans head that pushes the movie into uncharted waters. Her reaction to the corpse’s naked buttocks teeters from horror into orgasmic sexual arousal.
We’re not in Kansas anymore.
Such is the bite of this satirical sting in the tale. Demonic possession may excuse the vile behaviour of the rich, white and powerful ‘victims’ but cannot condone them. They are pretty damn appalling on a good day and this family was corrupt before any supernatural shenanigans began.
As Joel says in a brief moment of clarity – his sister is the type of woman he slept with travelling, remaining unchanged no matter the experience. She is a very white collar monster indeed.
By subverting convention, ‘Delaney’ is a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing movie that has its cake and shits it too. While ticking standard skin-jump horror boxes – a severed head on a kitchen shelf lands a punch – a devious patchouli-scented social critique lurks beneath. There is raw anger at the inequalities between rich and poor, urban racism (a bonkers seance becomes a comedic poke at the cliched ‘scary immigrant’ narrative) and the lack of empathy in society.
Occultism may have been the zeitgeist of the early 70s as flower power darkened post-Manson, but it is dark satire that powers the movie. That savage humour leads to a genuinely disturbing climax that is still jaw-dropping and places the movie firmly within the category of ‘wouldn’t-be-made-today’. Those final minutes display the same gruelling and shockingly realistic psychological torment that Michael Haneke tapped into with ‘Funny Games’ (1997) some twenty-six years later.
This delight in salacious taboo-tickling was an anomaly in director Waris Hussein’s career. He is mostly remembered for UK TV work that featured early Dr Who and prestigious BBC historical dramas. It is a pity he didn’t pursue further off-road tracks, as ‘Delaney’ displays an enjoyably sick verve. It proves once again that horror, like the blackest comedy, hides behind a genre mask to cut far sharper and deeper than ‘straight’ cinema would dare.
After all, what would be the point of cult movies if everyone got the joke?
The Possesson of Joel Delaney (1972) (r/t: 105 mins)
(Shirley MacLaine, Perry King) (d. Waris Hussein)
“If you believe, no explanation is necessary. If you don’t believe, no explanation is possible.“
Hove Press 