Help Me... I'm Possessed

Help Me... I'm Possessed (1974)

** (out of 4)

After a couple bodies are discovered the local sheriff goes to visit Dr. Blackwood (Bill Greer) who is running a sanitarium with his wife (Deedy Peters). Even though the doctor is acting suspicious there's nothing the sheriff can do. However, what the doctor is really up to includes a basement full of torture devices as well as woman chained up.

HELP ME... I'M POSSESSED is a film that not too many have heard of and that's somewhat too bad because this is certainly a bizarre little film that is worth watching if you're a fan of those no-budget drive-in films that are sadly no longer made. If you're looking for some sort of art film or Oscar-winner then you can obviously skip this.

What makes the film work is the fact that it is campy in all the right spots and that includes the lead performance from Greer. He plays the type of mad scientist that we've seen countless times over the years and he so fun doing it that you can't help but enjoy the character. It certainly doesn't hurt that you've got some really nutty scenes in the basement where a lot of the fun comes from.

This fun includes a lot of ladies either chained to the wall or stuck in cages. You've got some very silly and over-the-top scenes where the women are being tortured and in a lot of ways this reminded me of BLOODSUCKING FREAKS, which was released a few years after this and pushed the subject matter to the extreme. The ending is also pretty wild in its own way.

With all of that being said, there's no doubt that there are plenty of flaws including the pacing of the picture but at the same time it does well enough for what it was trying to accomplish.

Another haywire cinematrocity from Nevada-based schlockmeister Charles Nizet, wherein a doughy, toupee-mantled mad doctor and his toiling hunchback sidekick oversee the usual scientific quackery in a remote desert castle(which looks suspiciously like the architectural enclosure of a miniature-golf park). The castle's other residents include the doctor's mentally touched sister, a curvaceous nurse, and several beastly nut-cases imprisoned in their surprisingly tidy subterranean dungeon, patiently waiting to be tortured and killed. Said doctor's heedless experiments have yielded an awesome, uncontrollable beast which occasionally emerges from a nearby cave to kill random passers-by(between you and me, this soup-kitchen excuse for a Lovecraftian monster is merely a handful of red licorice ropes being waved around in front of the camera).

Side-splitting in its majestic ineptitude, and amateurishly played by a cast of nobodies(unless your notion of "star power" applies to Lynne Marta, a LOVE BOAT-type 70s TV personality, and quondam girlfriend of STARSKY AND HUTCH actor David Soul), HELP ME, I'M POSSESSED is a fire-breathing leviathan of rampageous celluloid bilge which deserves far greater esteem as one of best of the worst.

6/10. Recommended.

HELP ME... I'M POSSESSED (aka: NIGHTMARE AT BLOOD CASTLE) starts out with an attack on an amorous couple by some unknown creature.

The scene switches to the extremely well-lit dungeon of Dr. Arthur Blackwood (Bill Greer), located in the basement of his sanitarium / castle. This is where Blackwood keeps his test subjects / prisoners, and where he guillotine's the naughty, while quoting the bible. Postmortem, the doctor's hunchback henchman cuts the bodies into little pieces and stores them in tiny boxes. Said henchman also whips the prisoners and laughs. A lot.

Also living in the castle is Blackwood's doll-clutching sister, and his wife. Oh, there's also a mute, leering chauffeur named Ernest, and an odd woman who roams about, spouting ominous blather.

The local sheriff (Stuart Whitman) is investigating a series of murders that somehow involves the dangling of red licorice strings.

What's going on? Who can tell?!

This is mind-altering nonsense at its absolute summit! Only the likes of Al Adamson or Andy Milligan have ever achieved anything approaching the impossible density of this miraculous mishmash! Is it schlock? Hyper-schlock? My friends, this is Franken-schlock-zilla's second cousin, thrice removed! Watch it and feel the shrinkage of thy brain!...

"Help Me...I'm Possessed" stars Bill Greer (who also wrote the story & screenplay) as the mad Dr. Arthur Blackwood, who presides over a bevy of mental patients in a sanitarium / castle located way out in the desert. This mad doctor has an unusual idea of what to do with mental illness; meanwhile, his wife Diane (Deedy Peters, who wrote the script with Greer) is concerned and does some snooping around.

Basically 77 minutes of hilarious, stupid trash, this amusingly inane, crude movie trots out the expected exploitable elements, including scantily clad ladies, depravity, torture, and gore. The acting is sincere if not terribly competent, although a lot of the characters are pretty insipid. There's also a "monster" which we don't *really* see except for a flurry of incoherent movement, and images of what look like intestines flapping at the screen.

Accompanied by what I have to assume is library music, "Help Me...I'm Possessed" has wallowed in obscurity for a long time; I won't kid people that it's some lost gem in need of re-discovery, but I *will* say that if you dig these little independent horror-exploitation movies, then the movie *is* good for some entertainment.

Co-star Lynne Marta, who plays Blackwoods' disturbed sister, had a pretty good career (she passed away in 2024) that included lots of TV appearances as well as roles in such major motion pictures as "Joe Kidd", the original "Footloose", and "3 Men and a Little Lady". Greer himself later became a supervising producer on many episodes of 'Charles in Charge'.

Five out of 10.

This practically unknown 1970s gore movie was "presented by" Will Zens, the guy who made TO THE SHORES OF HELL (1966), THE STARFIGHTERS (1964), and SPY SQUAD (1961), all memorably daffy Z-movies. HELP ME, I'M POSSESSED, slackly directed by Charles (VOODOO HEARTBEAT) Nizet, has an anything-goes quality that cuts through the subpar acting, dialog, and plot.

Arthur Blackwood is a psychiatrist treating hopelessly crazy patients at his private sanitarium in the Nevada desert. He's a bit hopelessly crazy, too, with his torture chamber basement -- complete with a guillotine -- and a twitchy, hunchbacked assistant, Carl. When a patient dies, Carl hacks her to pieces with a hatchet while, nearby, one of the imprisoned madmen gets very visibly excited. It's that kind of movie.

Blackwood's experiments on his sister have created a barely-seen tentacled creature that lives in caves near the sanitarium. It makes sounds like the inside of a kennel just before the dogs get fed. Blackwood describes her having a "disembodied sense of evil" that lives in all people, which he was able to bring to life. Instead of taking his amazing discovery to the scientific community, Blackwood sends it out to murder local teens and cops.

A rather dim Sheriff shows up a number of times, questioning the increasingly belligerent and paranoid doctor. Bill Greer, who plays Blackwood, also wrote the incredibly lame dialog. For example:

BLACKWOOD: Death is a state of mind.

Later, when Blackwood's sister meets the Sheriff:

WOMAN (to Sheriff): Are you a real sheriff?

SHERIFF: As a far as I know...

When Blackwood's wife Diane (Deedy Peters) shows up, the movie picks up a bit. The doctor's mute chauffeur makes a pass at Diane, so Blackwood puts out one of his eyes with a hot poker -- "If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out," he rants.

When a male patient gets loose and attempts to torture a near-naked woman, Blackwood tosses her into a coffin with a poisonous snake and closes the lid. The patient refuses to repent his sins, so Blackwood decapitates him in the guillotine as he quotes scripture. Later, Diane finds her husband's notes while snooping around his lab, in which he writes, "When I saw his head severed from his body, I felt a definite sexual thrill."

Other riotous elements include the Sheriff's office set, which features a bright green prop phone; the filmmakers' desire to use women with red or silver hair; and a mouse that kills a cat (off-screen).

Also known as THE POSSESSED! And VANGITTU.