THE POSSESSED (1975)
aka LA ENDEMONIADA, DEMON WITCH CHILD
Article 2187 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-12-2007
Posting Date: 8-8-2007
Directed by Amanda de Ossorio
Featuring Julian Mateos, Marian Salgado, Fernando Sancho

The spirit of an old hag who was the head of a witch’s coven possesses a young girl and gets her to do horrible things.

Though I haven’t covered any of them yet, I quite like what I’ve seen of Amando de Ossorio’s Blind Dead movies. I like them well enough that I’m somewhat surprised that I’ve been singularly unimpressed by his movies that aren’t part of that series. In the case of this one, I’m sure that the horrendous dubbing is partly responsible. The fact that the movie is mostly just a lazy rip-off of THE EXORCIST doesn’t help matters any, and it’s further hurt by a musical score that I can only describe as rinky-dink; it’s one of those scores that distracts you from the movie by making you wonder when they’re going to feature that goofy tuning-the-timpani Boooiiinnnngggg! sound again. The fact that there’s something simply not scary about a little girl in old woman makeup attacking people and that the pace is deathly slow at times also work against it. It’s at its worst when it’s borrowing too much from THE EXORCIST (especially when it bends over backward to fit in a subplot about the priest’s ex-girlfriend), but it’s probably at its best when it engages in some horror that is fairly edgy.; at least two children are killed during the course of the movie, and what the girl does to her mother’s boyfriend is certainly shocking enough. Again, the movie would probably be better subtitled and appropriately letterboxed, but I suspect that it would still be on the weak side.