Help Me…I’m Possessed (aka The Possessed) is a 1976 horror/exploitation film directed by the Americanised Belgian director Charles Nitzet (Voodoo Heartbeat, The Ravager) and stars Bill Greer in his only acting role, Deedy Peters and Lynne Marter. The film remained in the cinematic wilderness for many years, having only a limited theatrical run in the 1970′s and only appearing on video in 1984.
In the American desert, a young couple have been brutally murdered and the local sheriff immediately suspects fishy goings-on at the castle-like sanitarium run by reclusive Dr Arthur Blackwood (Greer). Assuring the sheriff that his work there is entirely above board and consists of little more than helping disturbed individuals return to society, he does little to allay the police’s fears, not least when his loopy doll-hugging singing sister appears. Indeed, we soon learn that the doctor is perhaps not entirely qualified, housing a collection of chained up, scantily clad ladies, a Catweazle-alike prisoner and a hunchback in his basement, all at the mercy of his insane experiments, designed to rid them of madness. These ‘volunteers’ when not being whipped and brutalised suffer an even worse fate if they don’t behave or illicit positive results, being killed by snake, guillotine and being hacked up to fit the wrongly-sized coffins. The arrival of the doctor’s new wife (Peters) sees his plans begin to unravel as disappearing members of staff and her cranky husband arouse her suspicion. Worse still, when she uncovers his experiments she learns that the harnessed ‘evil’ extracted from the patients has manifest itself as something malevolent and hideous…
Written by both Peters and Greer (somewhat remarkably considering her later life as the girlfriend of David Soul and his as writer and producer of TV shambles Charles In Charge), Help Me, I’m Possessed! feels like an amalgam of Al Adamson’s films, slightly restrained HG Lewis fare and lunatic imprisonment films like Bloodsucking Freaks. The acting standards are all of the same unremarkable quality but are engaging and fun, particularly Greer who looks completely ill-fitting in the role, and all the better for it. Though the torture and blood-letting are tame in comparison to Lewis’ films, they are still brutal and heartless enough to raise a serious question mark over the film’s initial PG rating!
The title is somewhat misleading, there’s no possession in the film as such, only the mysterious evil presence which is represented by Lovecraftian red tentacle-like appendages wafting at the camera. Coming to a conclusion just before it starts to go around in circles once too often, perhaps the most arresting aspect of the film is the avant-garde electronic score, completely unnerving and genuinely excellent though the film does not name any composer, only an Al Bart in the sound department, who evidently did not go on to better things. Grimy and fun, Help Me, I’m Possessed has recently been released by Code Red in a double bill with Blind Dead director Armando de Ossorio’s Demon Witch Child, the connection being that they were both known as The Possessed in various releases.
Daz Lawrence
With thanks to criticonline and mondodigital for some of the pics
