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11 scary, goofy and just plain revolting movie possessions
You want to know what really ruins your day? Being taken over by some cosmic entity who wants to ride you like a rent-a-car and doesn't even have the courtesy to obey the rules of the road. We're devoting the 22nd of our 31 specials for the 31 days of Halloween to the possessed, and to those creatures who couldn't care less about the damage they were doing and always left their unwilling hosts all the worse for wear.
Don't forget to check back tomorrow for the most kick-ass Buffy the Vampire Slayer moments.
The Exorcist (1973)
The demon Pazuzu (honestly, that's his name, though you don't find this out until the sequel) takes over little Regan and immediately ruins pea soup for an entire generation of moviegoers. Levitating beds and rotating heads ensue.
The Exorcist III: Legion (1990)
The Gemini Killer (Brad Dourif) inhabits the institutionalized body of the first film's Father Karras (Jason Miller). The poor Father just can't catch a break, can he?
Abby (1974)
The quickie blaxploitation follow-up to the original The Exorcist is about a young marriage counselor who gets possessed by Eshu, the Nigerian god of sexuality. These days he would just send her an email and ask her for her banking information.
Freaky Friday (1976)
And then you have those cases where possession is a tit-for-tat, as in this tale about a mother and daughter who switch bodies for a while, defining the very kind of situation for which the word "ewwwww" was invented. The original starred Barbara Harris and a young Jodie Foster, but if you can accuse the 2003 Jamie Lee Curtis / Lindsay Lohan version of "ruining" it, you really need to lighten up.
The Manitou (1978)
Con man Tony Curtis tries to help an old girlfriend whose possession by a 400-year-old Native American entity takes the form of a fetus growing on the back of her neck. One of those really, really, really, really awful movies that just becomes funnier and funnier the more attention is paid: never more so than in a scene where Curtis temporarily stymies the entity by throwing a typewriter at it. That'll learn 'im.
The Hidden (1987)
An alien slug takes over a succession of human beings, forcing them into crime sprees that include reckless driving and random killing. An interval where it takes over a pre-Babylon 5 Claudia Christian suggests that it just might be related to the alien slugs who appear in the next entry.
Candy Stripers (2006)
Another bunch of wacky alien slugs take over the female staff of a small-town hospital, forcing them to wear tighter clothing and sluttier makeup while preying on any males in their vicinity. Oh, you wacky alien slugs: what you get up to in the course of any given weekend. The screenwriters had no idea what candy stripers do, and treat them like qualified nurses who just happen to be dressed up like popsicle sticks.
The Puppet Masters (1994)
Yet another invasion of mind-controlling alien slugs. These ones are creatures out of the novel by Robert A. Heinlein who get up to all sorts of mischief riding around on the backs of human necks. Donald Sutherland leads the forces of the humans fighting them, which is odd, since he acts like he's ruled by alien slugs even at the best of times.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Ceti Eels, still another species of wacky alien slugs, take over Paul Winfield and Walter Koenig at the behest of Ricardo Montalban. Winfield has to turn a phaser on himself in order to avoid murdering Capt. Kirk. For reasons that still escape us more than a quarter of a century later, Koenig only has to scream loudly and fall to his knees to drive his passenger back out the same ear it used to get in.
Ghostbusters (1984)
Poor Louis Tully (Rick Moranis) cannot get his beautiful neighbor, Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver), to give him the time of the day until they're both possessed by servants of the ancient goddess Zuul and forced to copulate. Poor Tully will not remember it afterward. Dana, on the other hand, is probably relieved.
Howard the Duck (1986)
The poster child for bad movies based on really good comic characters is also the poster child for great performances that almost rescue them: in this case Jeffrey Jones as Dr. Walter Jenning, a scientist whose possession by an extra-dimensional demon provides the film with its unnecessary action climax. Jenning's bumpy transformation into faux-Lovecraftian monster is a (you should only excuse the expression) marvel, until the special effects take over.
And while you're in a Halloween state of mind, why not check out:
Day 1: 19 amazing Star Wars pumpkins
Day 2: Our 9 favorite crazy zombie kills of all time (video)
Day 3: 10 scariest Stephen King novels
Day 4: 14 great Cthulhu toys that make devouring souls fun
Day 5: 15 haunted cereals that will scare your dentist
Day 6: 20 great costumes to dress up your pet
Day 7: 21 (mostly) sexy female stormtroopers (NSFW)
Day 8: 9 movie and TV clowns that scared the hell out of us
Day 9: 10 creepy movie kids even Angelina Jolie wouldn't adopt
Day 10: 6 most awesome Stephen King horror films (plus 3 that sucked)
Day 11: 16 horror movie posters so gruesome they make our eyeballs bleed
Day 12: 16 hot movie and TV vampires who turn us into willing victims
Day 13: 20 awesomely hot Slave Leia costumes (slightly NSFW)
Day 14: 14 lamest horror movie killer costumes (What were they thinking?)
Day 15: 9 of the grossest, goriest X-Files creatures
Day 16: 11 splatterific exploding head scenes from the movies
Day 17: 15 of the most disgusting Halloween candies you can buy
Day 18: 19 freakiest movie and TV neighbors from hell
Day 19: 11 most disturbing Treehouse of Horror segments from The Simpsons
Day 20: 9 rampaging space zombies hungry for our sci-fi brains
Day 21: 10 most nightmarish movie prom nights
Day 22: 11 scary, goofy and just plain revolting movie possessions
Day 23: 13 kick-ass moments from Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Day 24:13 real haunted houses you can visit in the U.S.
Day 25: 15 ghoulish apps you can download to your iPhone
Day 26: 20 hot film and TV witches and warlocks that cast a spell on us
Day 27: The 10 most truly, utterly evil things in sci-fi
Day 28: The 15 cursed movie objects you NEVER want to own
Day 29: 14 most twisted original Twilight Zone twist endings
Day 30: 16 sci-fi costumes that would definitely get you fired (NSFW)
Day 31: 12 awesome sci-fi Halloween moments, real and fake
By Obi Window Washer at 12:12 PM ON 10/22/09
The Hypnotoad rules them all!
By Obi Window Washer at 12:17 PM ON 10/22/09
I just realised you left out the alien slugs of "Slither". Don't make Browncoats angry, rectify this oversight immediatly!
By thehomegaman at 1:09 PM ON 10/22/09
Heads up, Syfy. Somewhere, out there, an alarm is going off in the Whedonverse for not referencing them
By lindyxmjh at 2:54 PM ON 10/22/09
thehomegaman, tomorrow is a list of all Buffy moments, so the Whedonverse's nerd rage will be easily subdued. Besides, they're more concerned about Dollhouse not being on at all this November.
By exiguus at 9:13 PM ON 10/22/09
Numero Uno goofy possession: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension -- Lord John Whorfin / Dr. Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow) -- "Barney, I'm going home... with my overthruster."
By hermy at 12:26 AM ON 10/23/09
the sad thing is i saw howard the duck in the theater.
By lookn_4_stars at 9:55 AM ON 10/23/09
Hermy, we all make mistakes. Mine was Hudson Hawk. Also, here's another shout for Lord John Whorfin, the best role John Lithgow ever had. "Sealed with a curse as sharp as a knife. Doomed is you soul and damned is your life."
By cruel angel at 5:53 PM ON 10/28/09
Acutally, the Ceti eels would not count as a case of possession. As Khan explained, the eels just enter through the ear, and decide to wrap themselves around the cerebral cortex. They grow, then the host dies.
The eels are not controlling the host... Khan was able to give them orders to be carried out because the side effect of the eel being around the cortex was that the host became very susceptible to outside suggestion.
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cruel angel:
Acutally, the Ceti eels would not count as a case of possession. As Khan explained, the eels just enter through the...More »