The Possession of Joel Delaney
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The Possession of Joel Delaney is a 1972 horror film starring Shirley MacLaine and Perry King, and directed by Waris Hussein. Because it was released during the early seventies and deals with possession, many reviewers compare it to The Exorcist, some favorably.
One of the more controversial elements of the film is its ending. Joel Delaney (King) has tracked Norah Benson (MacLaine) and her two children to their beach house, and holds them at knifepoint. He puts on music and orders them all to dance. Then, noticing that Benson's son Peter (David Elliott) has broken a sweat from the dancing, he orders the boy to strip. Peter does so. The next several shots show a thirteen year old boy dancing and walking about the room naked (there is no full frontal nudity though). In the March 5, 2004 issue of Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King wrote about the film and that particular scene, claiming that today it would earn the film an NC-17 rating. The VHS tape was released uncensored in 1998. The new Region 1 DVD reflects an altered version.
[edit] External links
The Possession of Joel Delaney at the Internet Movie Database
