it is 2.30am now. before watching his i thought that "this movie is like the exorcist! COOL" well I ended up. "i wish i saw the room instead". this is a very very VERY boring movie with no redeeming quality. the story is so bad that a 10 year old can make up a much better one. just put some racism and pedophilia in a blender and thats it. I wonder how the guy who gave it a ten said "it is like the exorcist predecessor". this is not even a hack and slash movie. the exorcist is a million times better. this is plain ZERo.well not even close. it is also not "so bad it is awesome" movies. it is simply plain boring. there isn't even one cheap jump scare. this should not be classified in horror movies categories. even if you want to watch it like the room or troll 2 you won't find any enjoyment. the movie is about 90 minutes. until the last minutes there is NOTHING. just a worried women going here and there for more than 70 minutes!. this is not like those detective movies. also there is not even 1 single special effect. at least troll 2 HAD special effects. non here.it is just a 5 minute story stretched into 90 minutes. Warning. just skip this movie and watch anything else.

I recently just heard of this 70's cult-classic, and some were trying to compare it to or put it in the same realm as the 1973 masterpiece "The Exorcist." Let's be honest here...the ONLY thing that "The Possession of Joel Delaney" and "The Exorcist" have in common is that both do deal with the subject of possession. Other than that "Possession of Joel" does not even come close to an ink-ling of being in the same realm as "The Exorcist." However, this 70's horror flick is pretty good for low-budget and the topic it deals with. There are plenty of bizarre and freaky moments, and the slow mental collapse/possession of 'Joel' was amazingly portrayed by a very young Perry King! Shirley MacLaine also gives a very excellent performance as the somewhat weird and mentally troubled 'Norah'.But, the actor I had the most respect for, and thought truly had to go through a humiliating/horrifying experience, and handled it professionally (especially at his young age at the time) was David Elliot. He was the young 13 year old son of MacLaine and had to strip naked (exposing himself entirely) after the possessed Joel forced him to dance naked around the house to terrify him. That had to be embarrassing and I'm surprised they allowed it...but he handled the situation and that scene like a pro. This scene is also somewhat shocking and makes this film remembered among horror movie fans.Overall...again don't expect "The Exorcist", but it is frightening and the character development, filming locations, etc... are excellent! This is a must have for horror fans/collectors!

When watching this movie, I kept saying to myself-"Okay,this is it. It can't get any more bizarre than this". I was very,very wrong. It got weirder and weirder as it went along,each scene creeping me out and captivating me more and more. This movie is hands down horrifying. One scene that particularly sticks to my mind is the scene where our hero, Norah, is walking into her beach house with her children dragging behind her. She walks into the kitchen,and on top of the refrigerator is a severed head. Well, you may be saying, that's standard slasher movie junk! Wrong! The director made that scene special because the audience can see the head sitting there long before Norah does. What made the scene even more original was the fact that in the first couple of seconds we see the head, it is just sitting there comfortably, no horror music or anything attached to it. At first I thought, hmm, nice kitchen...then my eyes drifted to the head and I thought ,woah, is that a head?!? The horror movie music kicked in a second later, confirming my fear that yes, it was a head. And ritual scene where the Puerto Rican man became possessed was intense and nerve wracking. A very, very good, overlooked horror thriller.

This movie pushes an obvious agenda, and fails. It is supposed to be some kind of commentary on the conflict between traditional supernatural beliefs of immigrants and the cold superficial rationalism of urban secular America, and the gap between the upper and lower classes. But I didn't feel while watching it that the director had any real concern for these worthy subjects - he just wanted to scare the audience with cheap shocks and distasteful taboos, and those don't create a better horror movie than the usual run-of-the-mill slasher/exploitation. The reason why the horror movies of Cronenberg, Polanski, and Craven work so well is that their very-real sociological subtext is buried just under the surface - the director is one step ahead of the audience, and the audience feels disturbed and helpless but can't fathom why. Their movies don't feel the need to rub the audience's nose in it in every scene like this one does. In fact, it seems as if this movie is working from some master-list of taboo subjects to cover - so it can proudly put check marks next to incest, mental illness, drug abuse, classism, divorce, suicide, Latino stereotypes, child nudity, possibly homosexuality, and dog food consumption. Very much a product of its time - the early '70s, when better movies pushed the social boundaries to enhance rather than replace a strong storyline like this one does. The movie also just doesn't make sense. The sound is lousy, and the editing is simply bizarre - sometimes cross-cutting head shots of Shirley MacLaine with completely different facial expressions. There are unimportant scenes and subplots that don't belong in the movie, and many others that belong in it but inextricably aren't there (such as the entire backstory about Perry King's character - he seems to walk into the movie already half-crazy). Is there supposed to be an unexpressed incestuous relationship between Shirley MacLaine's character and her brother? Who cares? Are all the Puerto Ricans in NYC part of a creepy religious cult? Looks like it. With some of the most lazy direction I've ever seen in a big budget film, I really wonder whether the director wasn't on drugs or something. The one worthy scene in the movie is a "traditional" Puerto Rican exorcism with drums and dancing which forms a very different counterpoint to the Max Von Sydow scenes in "The Exorcist."