Fasten your seat belt Beelzebb! It's going to be a Bumpy Ride!
(THERE ARE SPOILERS) Said to be based on the only documented exorcism in modern time the movie "Possessed" in it's own crazy and mind blowing way shows it's audience just why exorcisms are so strongly avoided by the Catholic Church. They end up driving everyone involved in them out of their minds. The case of Father Willam Bowden, Timothy Dalton, is a perfect example in that when you play with fire, or in this case the Devil, you end up getting both burned and possibly committed.Father Bowden is troubled with an event that happened when he was a Chaplin on the Western Front for the US Army in WWII. On All Saints Day, November 1, 1944, Bowden freaked out and didn't come to the aid, in giving him the last rites, of a wounded comrade who was dying from a blast of lead he received from a German submachine gun. It's was moments later that Bowden himself was run trough with a bayonet that almost killed him.
Back in the states in Saint Louis MO. Father Bowden gets himself involved in a case of demonic possession that has little 11 year-old boy Robbie Mannheim, Jonahan Malen,doing things that defy scientific explanation. Making furniture move at will and levitating off his bed as well as pucking and relieving himself with so much bodily fluids that even a full grown elephant's stomach or bladder couldn't hold has his parents Mr. & Mrs. Mannheim,Michael Rhoades & Phyllis Lawson, very worried indeed. They think that their little Robbie is going insane.
It's only when Robbie attacked Reverend Eckardt, Richard Waugh, causing him to have 66 stitches in his right arm that it was decided to look into using the church, via a church sanctioned exorcism, to help the very troubled and disturbed young man.
At first being against the exorcism Archbishop Hume, Christopher Plummer, agrees to it if only that it's kept from the public and the Catholic Church involvement is totally covered up. It's then that Father Bowden and his assistant Father McBride,Henry Czerny, are given the go ahead to preform the act. It takes a while until both Fathers Bowden & McBride realize just how difficult this exorcism of little Robbie will be. The two Catholic priests have to go through at least three different exorcism's until they finally get the Devil, who's trying to take over Robbie's body and soul, to show himself. This all leads to the movies unbelievable and shocking climax where Father Bowden acts and looks like a man possessed not by the Holy Spirit but the Devil himself!
Timothy Dalton is without a doubt really enjoying his role as Father Bowden as he seem to be so into it that you don't for a moment feel that he's acting. The guy is so caught up in the role of the tormented, from his guilt feelings in WWII, Catholic Priest that he comes across even more deranged as well as possessed then the already off the wall Robbie ever was in the movie. Johathan Malen as Robbie actually does a far better job then even Linda Blair did as the possessed 12 year-old girl in the original "Exorcist". Without garish makeup and his head turning around in circles, which was far more comical then scary when Miss Blair did it, Malen was far more convincing as a child possessed by the Devil then Linda Bair ever was.
The movie "Possesed" also has Piper Laurie as Robbie's Aunt Hanna who's part in the young boys problems, demonic possession, is never really explained. Aunt Hanna seemed to have gotten Robbie into the occult science's, with things like playing with a wee-gee board, but died too soon, about ten minutes into the film, to really account for the wild and crazy things that happened after she left the scene. Or did Aunt Hanna from beyond the grave orchestrate everything that happened to both Robbie and Father Bowden after her sudden demise?
score 5/10
sol-kay 27 December 2007
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1788470/34998
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