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"The Exorcist" : My 2nd Favorite Horror Movie

Hello again, Bidites new and old, and welcome to the penultimate installment of my horror movie countdown. Last time, we kicked off my top three with The Mist, a masterful adaptation of a novella by Stephen King. My next choice is also based on a work of fiction, although it's perhaps made even scarier by the fact that the novel in question is supposedly inspired by a real life case of posseson. It gives me great pleasure to present to you one of the giants of the genre and my 2nd favorite horror movie of all time: The Exorcist

The first time I watched this 1973 standard bearer from director William Friedkin, I went into it not expecting too much. I'd seen most of the other clascs that you typically hear being praised as "groundbreaking" or "terrifying" or "unassailable by anything in modern cinema" and while I didn't find any of those films bad, they mostly failed to live up to the mountains of hype they'd amassed nce their release. The first installments in the Halloween and Friday the 13th series were a little bland compared to what I'd imagined based on the reverence with which they're held by many horror fans. The Last House on the Left seemed lacking in depth, notable mainly for its revenge message and its willingness to push the envelope in regards to torture and exploitation. Poltergeist was a tad on the corny de. Night of the Living Dead was an impresve, well crafted piece of cinema that I could respect for its artistic merit, but to say it ever really scared me would be a stretch. Chalk it up to desentization or expectations that were too high on my part, or whatever you want, but when I popped The Exorcist in for that initial viewing, the only clascs that had so far lived up to their hype, in my estimation, were The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and A Nightmare on Elm Street. I was rather jaded for a 14 year old and condered myself damn near imposble to scare.

http://oi43.tinypic.com/x6htg5.jpg" class="photoborder" />Needless to say, I was entirely unprepared for the dark ride The Exorcist was about to take me on. This was the first movie that ever gave me actual nightmares. Recurring and horrifying, they featured the white faced demon that is only shown in glimpses in the film as it lently crawled across my bedroom floor, over my body and up towards my face. I was always completely paralyzed in the dreams and I could feel the thing glaring at me as it tried to possess me. The first time one of these nightmares made me wake up gasping and sweaty, I was completely rattled and had fleeting notions of never watching The Exorcist again. I was even scared enough to conder the posbility that a real demon who looked exactly like the one from the movie was actually trying to possess me. The fear subded as the day went on without me hearing any demonic whispers or showing any other telltale gns of posseson, and I began to marvel at the awesomeness of that nightmare. I'd experienced a phenomenon I'd previously only heard about. A horror movie had finally given me a nightmare. I still have pretty much the same nightmare every now and then, particularly if I've recently watched the movie. I rarely even bother to t bolt upright in bed anymore before nodding back off, but as the first film to ever truly trouble my sleep, The Exorcist was my first great love when it comes to horror.

The plot centers on Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair), a rambunctious child whose worst problem at first seems to be that she might be a little spoiled. Her actress mother, Chris (Ellen Burstyn) seems to be on the verge of buying her a horse near the start of the film. Unfortunately, Regan won't be in any shape for recreational activities such as horseback riding for much longer. She begins acting out of sorts shortly after it's revealed that she's been communicating via Ouija board with someone she knows as Captain Howdy. Her mother doesn't bat an eye when she discovers her daughter has been playing with the board, accepting that Regan has an invible friend with good humor and no doubt assuming that Captain Howdy is just a product of a child's overactive imagination. Not being a religious or superstitious person, Chris has no reason to think any of this is related to Regan's sudden change in behavior, so she takes Regan to the doctor when she begins zoning out and acting vaguely drugged. During testing at the clinic, the normally sweet child colorfully advises the doctor to stay away from her private parts in language that would shock many full grown adults.

After that, things go from bad to worse with stunning velocity. The doctors initially think Regan has "a nerve disorder" which can be treated with Ritalin, a theory they stick to even after the girl urinates all over her mother's carpet during a dinner party and tells a guest that he's going to die. Any hopes Chris has of finding a medical explanation for Regan's condition begin to fade when she witnesses the child's bed shaking and ring off the ground even with both of them on top of it, and are dashed the rest of the way when a roomful of doctors and specialists, having exhausted all other avenues, finally advise her to seek an exorcism. They claim that such an option would only be "shock therapy" that operates on "the power of suggestion" but what they're saying is clear to Chris and she calls them on it, pointedly asking "You're telling me that I should take my daughter to a witch doctor?". None of the doctors in the room volunteer a response, offering chilling testament to the fact that science and medicine have failed Regan, their representatives forced to begrudgingly acknowledge that what's happening to her is a matter of the spirit.

Any further prodding Chris needs to go ahead and book that exorcism is provided by Regan's infamous, bloody mouthed crabwalk down the stairs and a later scene in which the girl's head does a 360 degree turn on her neck while objects and furniture fly around her room of their own accord. The nagging posbility that Regan may have murdered the director of Chris' latest film, Burke Dennings (Jack MacGowran) is a factor as well, although it takes Chris a while to admit out loud that she thinks her daughter killed someone. She turns to Father Damian Karras (Jason Miller), the psychiatric consult at a nearby church who has been struggling with his faith lately, partially due to guilt about the living tuation of his elderly mother (Valicki Maliaros).Karras is willing to see Regan as a psychiatrist but advises Chris against the exorcism, warning that it could do more harm than good and saying that exorcisms really don't even happen anymore. He even says he's never met a ngle priest who has performed or been present for an exorcism and that Chris herself is probably as much of an expert on the subject as most holy men. Even after Regan speaks in Latin, reveals knowledge that she shouldn't possess about his mother's pasng and makes a drawer open right in front of him without touching it, Karras isn't fully convinced that she's actually possessed. He does, however, agree to try to set up an exorcism. He's willing to perform the ritual himself, but the church decides to enlist some help from someone with experience. It turns out that such men do exist, and they tap Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) for the job, a character who was also shown at the beginning of the film, having an uneasy staring match with a creepy statue in Iraq. It could be that they're playing right into the hands of Regan's malevolent possesser, who can be heard shrieking Merrin's name well before he ever enters the lives of the MacNeil family.

The Exorcist

boasts strong performances from all its actors. Linda Blair is now justifiably condered horror royalty due to her performance as Regan. Much of the voicework is obviously not her own in scenes where multiple voices and demonic growls emanate from her. She also had help from the movie's make up and effects department, who gave her eyes an unearthly quality, crusted her face up a little and changed her skin tone to a ckly greenish color. All of that is a big part of the reason that Regan is frightful to behold and comes across as convincingly possessed. Still, it's Blair's work earlier in the film, beginning as a happy, well-adjusted girl before quickly unraveling before the viewer's eyes, that makes this transformation so shocking. Blair also took on most of the phycal demands of the role herself, due to William Friedkin's instence that relying on a stunt double for any gnificant part of the film would turn it into a joke. A stunt double was hired just in case, but was rarely used, the crabwalk down the stairs being one of the few times an exception was made. The violent thrashing the script called upon Regan to undergo in many scenes where she's caught in the throes of her posseson was largely completed by Blair and I can only imagine that it must have taken quite a toll on her body after a while. The commitment to her role that the then very young actress displayed in order to help her director achieve his vion is something I remain extremely respectful of. Linda Blair more than earned the Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress that she received for the role of Regan MacNeil.

Not to be outdone, Ellen Burstyn and Jason Miller were both nominated for Oscars too, in the Best Leading Actress and Best Supporting Actor categories, respectively. Both actors turned in tour-de-force performances. Burstyn plays Chris MacNeil as an independent woman who is used to having a large measure of control over her life. She's survived the death of her husband, built a successful acting career and become sure enough of herself to question the director of her latest film right in front of the entire cast. She becomes increangly unglued as her efforts to get a handle on Regan's condition meet with one failure after another, screaming at Regan's doctors for their ineptitude and eventually bursting into tears on Father Karras' shoulder as she uses her last vestiges of strength to plead with him to help her daughter. Karras' support seems to bolster Chris somewhat, and she regains some level of composure, but she still seems to be in a constant state of low level shock, even when performing normal tasks such as fixing a drink or ironing a shirt.

Jason Miller is all intenty and inner conflict as Father Karras. You can tell it hits home with him when his uncle suggests that if Karras hadn't become a priest, he probably would be making enough money as a psychiatrist to take much better care of his mother, who has grown too old and ckly to get around her house on her own, and has no one to look after her on a regular bas. He seems awkward and eager to escape when a lost soul asks for his help, turning his back on a homeless man looking for a donation and striding right by patients at a rest home who fall all over each other in their efforts to gain his attention. It's to Miller's credit that these failings on his part never make him seem cruel. Rather, he comes across as a flawed human being who is every bit as lost as the people who think he can save them, constantly fearing that his own growing lack of faith might rub off on anyone he touches. Ironically enough, the confrontation with the pure evil reding in Regan's body ends up being just the push Karras needs to confront his spiritual cris head on. I'm by no means a religious person, but even I couldn't help being moved by the scene in which Karras is taking Communion, saying all the same lines about the wafer being the body of Christ and the wine being his blood that he must have said innumerable times, but seeming to actually conder and believe the words he's speaking for the first time in a very long while.Max von Sydow has a comparatively small role as Father Merrin, but he does some pretty great things with it. The viewer can tell he's a damaged man well before the script even gives him any lines. Though its never revealed exactly what kind of pills he's taking, it's obvious that Merrin has developed a drug habit. This is something he struggles with later in the film, ultimately failing to abstain from taking a pill even though he's currently in the middle of an extremely volatile exorcism. Merrin is a haunted individual who wears his sadness and fatigue like a heavy coat. Though the character does have a level of inner resolve that keeps him going, he seems outwardly weak and frail, despite being played by an actor who is well over x feet tall. It can be difficult for a phycally impong actor to convey such fragility, but The Exorcist is proof that it can be done as long as an actor of sufficient skill is paired with an equally talented director.

I still haven't gotten around to reading the novel by William Peter Blatty which The Exorcist takes its name and plot from. I don't know yet how the book stacks up to the film, or how either one stacks up to the real life events that are said to inspire them. I know that Blatty changed the gender of the young person who was possessed from male to female, posbly to help protect the identity of the real young man who had apparently already been through quite an ordeal, or posbly so that he wouldn't need anyone's permison to tell the story he wanted to tell. What I do know is that the movie veron does an excellent job of weaving the paths of Chris MacNeil, Father Karras and Father Merrin together in a way that makes it seem almost like destiny being fulfilled when the three of them join forces. It also ends with an act of tragic heroism that turned Father Karras into one of my favorite characters in horror history. If these elements were not part of the novel, they damn well should have been.One of the scariest aspects of The Exorcist, in my opinion, is the fact that Regan and her mother are not religious. Most other exorcism films revolve around characters that are devout in their faith and seem to be targeted by demonic entities specifically for that reason. The suggestion that demons might mply pick random, secular targets without rhyme or reason is much scarier, because it means that none of us are safe. To this day, The Exorcist still holds up as one of the most terrifying movies of all time. It achieved this status not just by virtue of a fine director and a stellar cast, although it has those things. One of the greatest secrets to the film's success may be its impeccable, Oscar winning script from Mr. Blatty, which works philosophical, moral and spiritual questions into a fast-paced, no-holds-barred fright fest. When you factor in the total devotion to her role and trust in her director that Linda Blair brought to the table, what you get is a horror movie experience that is nothing short of astonishing. In fact, no horror movie has ever had a bigger impact on me...except one.Stay tuned for the thrilling concluon of my 25 Favorite Horror Movies Countdown to find out what that movie is (discerning readers may have already figured it out).
ImmortalSidneyP Monday 10/01/2012 at 05:06 AM | 96769
Can't WAIT to hear what number 1 is!!!!!

Looking forward to hearing your take on such a clasc like The Exorcist, one of my personal favs!

Also glad you posted this on a Monday morning, so much I need to do but I'll read this instead and enjoy myself!....
Horror Domain - Cursed Evil Overlord Monday 10/01/2012 at 11:23 AM | 96773
Finally, someone who agrees that this film is still scary.

I still have dreams inspired by The Exorcist.

My dreams center around the anticipation of having to watch the film, against my better judgement and my will.

And sometimes I see the exorcism scene played out right in front of me.

Good times...
Madloomis78 Monday 10/01/2012 at 11:37 AM | 96774
Finally, someone who agrees that this film is still scary.

I still have dreams inspired by The Exorcist.

My dreams center around the anticipation of having to watch the film, against my better judgement and my will.

And sometimes I see the exorcism scene played out right in front of me.

Good times...

Yeah I totally don't get this whole The Exorcist isn't scary anymore bullshit? I mean for the love of God if The Exorcist doesn't bother you than you're imune to fear....
Horror Domain - Cursed Evil Overlord Monday 10/01/2012 at 07:08 PM | 96779
Pretty sure number 1 will be 'Scream' haha
joshk1986 Tuesday 10/02/2012 at 12:41 AM | 96789
I don't think I saw the original HalloweeN, anywhere on this list.
Dimiter Tuesday 10/02/2012 at 08:52 PM | 96797
OMG, Bnizzle adds the most violent animated image EVER! Love it....hahahaha!
Horror Domain - Cursed Evil Overlord Tuesday 10/02/2012 at 10:51 PM | 96805
The Mist and now this? You have excellent taste.
Boisv Wednesday 10/03/2012 at 01:15 AM | 96811