Possession (1981, Fr./W. Ger.)

Polish director Andrzej Zulawski's experimental, avant-garde work and cult film was a very surrealistic, haunting and bizarre occult horror film, about the themes of love, identity, paranoia, madness and fidelity. The symbolically-told story was about a West Berlin couple that slowly descended into psychosis as they went through the unraveling of a self-destructive and disintegrating romance and marriage (on the brink of a messy divorce). There were many grotesque, allegorical or metaphorical results that were produced as a result, including elements of "body horror." The theme of doubles or doppelgangers was a prominent feature (as a way for the protagonists to create new and ideal personas of each other), as was the Cold War's Berlin wall - a division or separation metaphor.

Zulawski's notorious and controversial film was banned in the UK and its release in the US was delayed for two years, due to its highly-publicized miscarriage-birthing scene in a subway station, and its equally-horrific scene of the female lead having carnal sex with a tentacled creature of her psychotic creation. It was released in a heavily-edited 81 minute American version that was derived from the original 127 minute long cut. The film's tagline asked: "Is it desire? Or violation? Devotion? Or bondage? Your hidden fears will be aroused. POSSESSION Inhuman ecstasy fulfilled." Another tagline described the plot: "She created a monster...as her secret lover!"

It had elements similar to many other films, such as: Polanski's Repulsion (1965), Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), David Cronenberg's The Brood (1979), James Polakof's Demon Rage (1982), Sidney J. Furie's The Entity (1982), Lars von Trier's Antichrist (2009), and Amat Escalante's The Untamed (2016, Mex.) (aka La Región Salvaje).

• the dramatic film was set in the 1980s Cold War-era, as Secret Service spy Mark (Sam Neill) - involved in espionage - returned to his home in West Berlin after a secretive, work-related absence for his Cold War agents-handlers; he and his young French femme wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani, French Cesar Award-winning actress), a ballet instructor, lived in a brick apartment complex with windows that faced towards the Wall
• the two were experiencing a very strained relationship and a disintegrating marriage, as evidenced in the first scene, when Mark arrived home, and she informed him of a problem in her feelings for him; Mark demanded to know what the problem was: "You can’t just say you don’t know"; the tormented, erratic, and sexually-psychotic Anna admitted to the controlling, possessive, and sometimes abusive Mark that she wanted a divorce; holding on to her own secrets, she claimed it wasn't due to having another lover or having an affair
• Mark and Anna both had frequent arguments, shouting matches, and physical beatings of each other; in a scene of separation in a cafe, they were seated next to each other on different sides of a pillar covered by mirrors; she thought about their conflicts: "Maybe this is something all couples go through"
• reluctantly, Mark agreed to move out of their apartment and leave custody of their young son Bob (Michael Hogben) to Anna; during their separation, Mark went on a drinking binge; after some time, Mark returned to the apartment to find to his horror that Bob was being unattended and neglected; when Anna came home, Mark insisted on staying in the apartment to insure Bob's safety

Disturbed Anna (Isabelle Adjani)

A Disintegrating Marriage Between Anna and Mark

Heinrich (Heinz Bennent) - Anna's Lover

• Anna fled from the apartment in the middle of the night, and then received a phone call from Anna's self-possessed, pseudo-intellectual lover Heinrich (Heinz Bennent), a self-help New Age guru on the East side of the Berlin Wall; Heinrich described how Anna was with him
• the next day, Mark met Helen (Adjani in a dual look-alike or doppelganger role) - his idealized version of Anna; she was a nurturing, innocent, kind, peaceful, green-eyed schoolteacher who tutored the couple's young son Bob [Note: Helen was the perfect replacement doppelganger for Mark after Anna was threatening to break up with him due to her affair with Heinrich]
• Mark also confronted Heinrich (who claimed he hadn't seen Anna for awhile - it appeared that they had broken up?) and the two fought together and Mark was beaten up; Mark transferred his beating to Anna, causing her to again flee; during a struggle in their kitchen, Anna suicidally cut her neck with an electric knife, and Mark matched her by slicing into his forearm with the implement as an act of self-mutilation
• Mark hired a private Detective named Emmanuel (Carl Duering) who discovered that Anna was renting a second apartment-residence, a sparse, mostly empty and run-down unit with peeling wallpaper on the Sebastianstrasse; during the investigator's visit, he caught a glimpse of a strange, bizarre and tentacled creature in her bathroom-bedroom, and was lethally and brutally attacked in the neck with a broken bottle wielded by Anna
• later, when the Detective's homosexual lover Zimmermann (Shaun Lawton) also visited Anna's derelict apartment, he discovered his partner's body, and a tentacled, undulating fleshy creature oozing on the bed, as Anna told him: "He's very tired. He made love to me all night. He is still unfinished, you know." Zimmermann was also attacked and shot and killed with his own gun by a seemingly-possessed Anna

Various Views and Forms Taken by the Fantasized Creature

• it was explained that from Anna's tortured, tormented and psychotic id, she had created an abominable, supernatural, wormy-tentacled, lizardy or octopus-shaped incubus creature (modeled by SFX master Carlo (E.T.) Rambaldi) and became possessed by it: ("I can't exist by myself because I'm afraid of myself, because I'm the maker of my own evil"): the monstrous being was kept - a projected creature of her own creation - for purposes of sexual fulfillment and protective consumption without masculine domination over her; she also kept dismembered body parts in the refrigerator
• in a harrowing, five-minute flashback sequence, Anna described an hysterically-screaming miscarriage-birthing sequence in a deserted, echoing subway tunnel; she writhed, convulsed and tossed a netted bag of groceries against the wall, and let the consequences of her unhappy marriage overtake her; during the horrifyingly orgasmic sequence, Anna vomited and oozed blood and whitish milky fluids from all of her orifices, creating a puddle of liquids under her knees; later, she described the experience: "What I miscarried there was sister Faith, and what was left is sister Chance. So I had to take care of my faith to protect it"

Anna's Birthing-Miscarriage in Subway Tunnel

• when Heinrich paid a visit to Anna in her second apartment, as he reacted with stunned shock and temporary blindness, he was beaten and bloodied by Anna, and was able to flee; on his way to meet up with Heinrich in a bar, Mark entered Anna's second apartment and also found body parts in her refrigerator, but the creature had disappeared
• in the bathroom stall of a restaurant/bar where Mark had met up with Heinrich, he expressed jealous rage by murdering his love-triangle rival, but staged it as a suicide; Mark also torched Anna's apartment, and fled on Heinrich's motorbike
• once Mark returned home, he arrived as Margit Gluckmeister (Margit Carstensen), one of Anna's friends, was dying from stab wounds as she emerged from the elevator; he dragged Margit's dead body into his apartment, and met up with Anna - and the two had sex in the kitchen; afterwards, he attempted to cover up Anna's crime of murder
• in the film's most infamous scene, Mark arrived and watched as a naked Anna had sexual intercourse with her monstrous and repulsive supernatural being in the missionary position; he was aghast at the sight of the abnormal coupling (as she was being possessed literally and figuratively), as she glanced up at him and gasped: "Almost, almost" [Note: She was referring to the fact that the creature was almost finished, as she declared later.]
• shortly later, Mark witnessed Heinrich's grieving mother suicidally poisoning herself and overdosing on pills
• outside Margit's apartment where police and other onlookers had gathered, Mark created a distraction in order to allow Anna to get away in a car, but he suffered gunshot wounds from police gunfire; seriously injured, Mark fled on Heinrich's motorbike, but crashed, and fled to Anna's second apartment to escape from the police, and from his handlers-employers and secret agents who were pursuing him (earlier, he had refused their final offer to be rehired after he had quit, due to family demands)
• in the film's deadly conclusion, Anna's gestating creature had transformed completely into Mark's duplicate or doppelganger; it was a manifestation of the end of her previous marriage to Mark, and a new beginning or transformation for the couple
• as Mark climbed to the top of the spiral staircase in her apartment building, he collapsed as both Anna and her doppelganger arrived; she expectantly told him: "I wanted to show it to you. It is finished now"; with blood streaming out of his mouth, Mark aimed his revolver at his duplicate and rejected this new version of himself; as he pulled the trigger to kill his doppelganger, there was a volley of police and agent gunfire from below; Anna was hit with multiple shots and her bloody body collapsed onto Mark, although the doppelganger was immune to the gunshots
• in the "love-in-death" finale, Anna struggled to pull herself closer to Mark for a final bloody kiss; lying atop the wounded Mark, Anna shot herself in the back with his gun, and then collapsed dead into his arms; the doppelganger came over to Mark and told him: "So hard to live with it, hey brother?"; shortly later, Mark jumped through the stairwell to his death on the floor many stories below, and the doppelganger fled through the roof's skylight

Mark Seriously Wounded at Top of Spiral Staircase	Anna Appeared with Mark's Doppelganger: "I wanted to show it to you"	Mark Aiming at His Own Doppelganger and Firing
Anna Collapsing onto Mark After Being Shot by Police	Final Kiss	Anna's Self-Inflicted Gunshot Death Atop Mark
Mark Listening to His Doppelganger	Mark and Anna Dying Together	Mark's Death From Fall

• in the enigmatic ending, the silhouette of the creature (as Mark's doppelganger) appeared at the frosted door of the apartment where Anna's doppelganger Helen was babysitting Bob; he threatened to enter, but the young boy warned: "Don't open! Don't open! Don't open! Don't open! Please don't open!..."
• the film concluded as he kept crying the same words; Bob ran up the stairs to the bathtub to escape and submerge himself face-down under the water with his clothes on (was he drowning himself?); at the door, Helen was frightened by flashing lights and the sound of airplanes, explosions, and sirens - was there some other external, pre-apocalyptic emergency or breakdown (perhaps due to the collapse of Cold War peace)?