Octopus sex.
Not only is the above phrase going to get me some really strange search engine hits; it's also the description given the newspapers gave to one key scene of the movie during its trial for obscenity. (In a rare moment of sanity, the jurors decided that Possession was highly unlikely to 'deprave and corrupt' because it was quite clearly a fantasy.)
Marc and Anna are a married couple with a young son, Bob (why are they always named Bob?). Marc has been away on business for some time and when he returns home he finds Anna acting strangely. When he discovers she's been having an affair with a man named Heinrich, Marc goes more than a little crazy; he tries to attack Anna in a cafe before spending three weeks having a breakdown in a hotel. But Marc isn't the only one having problems, however - Anna is also prone to bouts of hysteria, cutting her arms with an electric carving knife and generally giving Marc a run for his money in the "mentally unstable" department. It turns out that Anna has another secret - she has a second lover besides Heinrich; one who is somewhat more slimy and... tentacle-y than the average man, and she is willing to do anything, even kill, to protect their relationship...
Of all the films that ended up on the DPP's video nasties list, Possession is probably the one with the best pedigree. It premiered at the Cannes film festival and was nominated for the Palme d'Or. It also won several awards at other high-profile film festivals around Europe at the same time. It stars none other than Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani and was directed by Andrzej Zulawski, a very good European art-house director. And Possession is an art-house film, most certainly, which makes it stand out even more against the gore and exploitation that made up the majority of the rest of the video nasties list.
And it's not a particularly gory film. Sure, there's a body count, and there's a tentacle monster, but actual occurances of splatter are few and far between. Furthermore, a lot of the moments where blood is on the screen are presented in almost mundane scenes; Anna cutting her arm with the electric knife; Anna striding into the street with blood pouring from her mouth after Marc has slapped her repeatedly. And the movie's most shocking (and some might say even controversial) scene barely has any blood in it at all - and it's not the octopus sex scene. Coming back from shopping, Anna suddenly starts laughing hysterically. Her hysterics soon become a full-blown fit, however, complete with Anna dry-heaving till she turns purple and throwing herself from wall to wall like a demented pinball. At the end of this she collapses to the ground and has what is known in discussions of the film as a "spiritual miscarriage" (although there's an awful lot of unpleasant-coloured fluids for something "spiritual"). The whole scene takes five minutes, and it's pretty harrowing viewing for something that isn't nearly as gore-splattered as some of the other things we've seen in the past.
It's certainly not a "traditional" horror film, that much is certain. But it is still horror or a sort, focussing instead on the horrors that can come from obsession and the breakdowns of relationships - especially when the two are combined. And yes, there's a monster, but it's not actually the centre of the film, or even an antagonist in any way that we know. It's just a tentacle monster that walks like a man (especially by the end of the film). The real horror comes from the people and the lengths they go to to keep or regain what they feel is "theirs".
Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani both deliver astounding performances as well; Adjani in particular being utterly captivating and not just because she's a beautiful woman. Much like Olivia in The Quiet Ones, she is both waiflife, fragile and cruelly powerful all at the same time, and she is utterly spellbinding to watch. Apparently Adjani needed to take several years to get over playing Anna, and I can't say I'm surprised, as she looks to be one of the most emotionally draining characters ever - or at least on the DPP list.
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