'The Exorcist' (1973): An Appreciation

"You show me Regan's double, same face, same voice, everything. And I'd know it wasn't Regan. I'd know in my gut. I'm telling you that that thing upstairs isn't my daughter. Now I want you to tell me that you know for a fact that there's nothing wrong with my daughter except in her mind! You tell me for a fact that an exorcism wouldn't do any good! YOU TELL ME THAT!"

—Ellen Burstyn as Chris MacNeil to Jason Miller as Father Damien Karras

Hello, one and all.

So, this is my one post that drops the fact that this film is part of my horror movie marathon; I've decided to straight up review the one film that is considered by many as "the scariest horror movie of all time." Strangely enough, I do concur. I had seen the initial 1973 film on VHS back in the spring of 1990 and got through it clean. On the second attempt, I wasn't so lucky.

The lights in my room didn't go off for three months. I'd say it did its job. It scared the living bejesus out of me!

It's a film that doesn't compromise, doesn't let up. Grabs a hold of you and refuses to let go, and never once cares to apologize. I was a mere one-and-a-half years old when this film was released. I had heard the many stories of mass hysteria while lines were miles long to see this film. Being the early 1970s, classic films like The Godfather, A Clockwork Orange, The French Connection (also directed by William Friedkin), Deliverance, and Dirty Harry were leaving imprints on America's consciousness in the Nixon years. The Exorcist was in a class by itself. The first horror film that clearly emphasized horror with a Capital H.

Based and adapted from a 1971 phenom-bestseller by the late William Peter Blatty, a one-time Jesuit student, the story itself has some roots in fact. A 1949 documented case involving a Maryland boy named Roland Doe revealed that he was the victim of a demonic possession. The gender was changed for the novel, which also brought attention to the Catholic Church's stance on demonic possession and how it's actually handled in-then modern times rather than in years past. Advances in modern medicine and psychiatry have made it easier to understand many psychotic afflictions that plagued people with mental illness. But the story keeps the idea of possession, which many believed was cured by Jesus Christ Himself in the Bible, as a blatant supernatural force that can... possibly happen.

A CJG Reproduction of the Original 1973 One-sheet Poster

Still of the Demon Pazuzu

Actress Linda Blair in the Iconic Role

The film opens in Northern Iraq in an archeological dig where a Jesuit priest named Father Lankester Merrin (played by Swedish actor Max Von Sydow, a self-professed atheist himself) unearths an amulet that's a representation of a demon named Pazuzu. Reading Father Merrin's face early on, we sense immediately that imminent danger is on the horizon.

We cut to Georgetown, Washington DC, where an actress named Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) is shooting a film on-location. Her daughter Regan (Linda Blair in her iconic role) is a happy-go-lucky 12-year old girl talking about buying a horse for her birthday, and typical preteen stuff. Things in the house are not normal. Loud, thumping noises emanate from the attic. Chris is convinced they are rats. But, her manservant (Rudolf Schündler) is convinced the house is clean. Things deteriorate slowly as Regan begins to show signs of behavioral problems, seemingly from her mother's recent divorce. They range from catatonia to acting out. The "noises" begin to manifest more physically in Regan's bedroom. In the attic, Chris investigates the rat situation only to have a candle nearly burn her alive. Her manservant makes it clear for the last time: "no rats." She has no choice but to concur.

The film takes a massive turn for the worse. Regan is silent. Her vocabulary is expanding to include profanity. She's urinating on the floor. Chris, now in a panic, begins taking her to doctors. All run tests, looking for a physical answer to Regan's erratic behavior. Nothing appears. Spinal taps, X-rays, even standard physicals are revealing nothing in the physical sense. Is it all in Regan's mind? It was revealed earlier that Regan had been playing solitaire with a Ouija board and her bed seems to shake on a moment's notice. In a chilling scene, her body convulses violently and she shows brute muscular strength, slapping her doctors and speaking in a growl: "Get away! The sow is mine! Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!"

Chris and her doctors are at a loss. One is convinced she has a lesion in her temporal lobe in her brain, but it never actually registers. Chris is desperate and needs answers. Regan begins a rapid change in her appearance and even self-mutilates with, of all things, a wooden crucifix left in her room. Meanwhile, as all this is going on, we are learning of another parish priest named Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller), a practicing psychiatrist who is in the midst of doubt in his faith as his mother is slowly dying from ill-health and dementia. Chris finds Father Karras, tries desperately to explain her situation as all medical and psychiatric resolutions have proven moot, and is actually suggested by the medical experts to try a religious rite called an exorcism. Chris, an atheist woman, is shocked at the suggestion, but tries to convince Father Karras to help her daughter.

As many people who know the story are aware, Father Merrin will enter the equation and may very well be the girl's only salvation. I, for one, feel that the film has taken us through a literal Hell and back. While I remember the 1973 version vividly, there's the now infamous 2000 Director's Cut, approved by Friedkin and author and scriptwriter Blatty (he died in January of this year), which added some deleted scenes, including the infamous (but wildly unnecessary) spider-walk-down-the-stairs sequence.

In conclusion, The Exorcist still remains a tried-and-true horror film that does what it sets out to do. Scare, disturb, repel, unnerve, chill, repulse, and shake you to your core. It did to me, so much so that I didn't watch the film for many, many years. The scenes with Linda Blair in full makeup still revile me, and the scenes of Chris begging Karras to "help her daughter" make me cry like there's no tomorrow. As I've stated in previous posts, religion and horror are often bizarre bedfellows, but when done correctly, can be quite the conversation piece.

Much of the film's credit will also go to director William Friedkin, a maverick filmmaker who has courted controversy and has never blinked. He's also been known to use very bizarre and unflinching methods to incite a reaction from his actors. It was believed that Ellen Burstyn and young Linda Blair sustained harness injuries during their intense scenes. Actor and real-life priest Father William O' Malley was allegedly slapped in the face for his crucial "last rites" scene. It was also actress and voice talent Mercedes McCambridge, the demon Pazuzu's "voice," who demanded that she get screen credit for Blair's vocal overdubs. His list of credits include The Boys in the Band (one of the first openly LGBT movies of the 1970s), The French Connection (he would win the Oscar for Best Director and Best Picture), Sorcerer, Cruising, To Live and Die in LA, The Guardian, Blue Chips, Jade, The Hunted, and Bug, to name a select important few. Of all those films mentioned, this one will be his hallmark, his lasting legacy—his one true masterpiece.

Thank you both, Mr. Friedkin and Mr. Blatty, for our endless sleepless nights.

Next Up: Next post pending.