10 Video Nasties That Became Horror Classics

Never mind that it won star Isabelle Adjani both a César and the Cannes award for Best Actress over in mainland Europe where folk are clearly less judgy nor the fact it boasted a monster designed by Oscar-winning SFX artist and E.T. creator Carlo Rambaldi, Andrzej Żuławski’s nightmarish horror Possession nevertheless ignited the fury of Britain’s moral crusaders.

Why? Once described by the director himself as “a movie about a woman who f*cks an octopus" it’s certainly a bit out there. Cephalopod sexy times aside, Possession also features some rather irresponsible usage of an electric carving knife and a disturbingly infamous scene in which Adjani appears to miscarry said octopus creature in a dank Berlin subway. Well, that’ll do it.

Of course, this is European arthouse horror and there’s a lot more going on than just Adjani doing the nasty with her own demonic miscarriage but you can kind of see why there might have been some concern.