The Exorcist (1973) is the sensational, shocking horror story about devil possession and the subsequent exorcism of the demonic spirits from a young, innocent girl (of a divorced family). The film was made on the actual case of a youth controlled by demonical forces (a 14-year-old boy in Maryland in 1949, now happily married and the father of three).The Exorcist was notable for being one of the biggest box-office successes (and one of the first 'blockbusters' in film history, predating Jaws (1975)), and surpassed The Godfather (1972) as the biggest money-maker of its time. And it remains one of the few horror films nominated for Best Picture. However, it was also one of the most opposed films for its controversial content. Roman Polanski's successful Rosemary's Baby (1968) played upon similar fears of devil possession.
The controversial nature of the film's content - exorcism (accompanied by blasphemies, obscenities and graphic physical shocks), was supposedly based upon an authentic, nearly two-month long exorcism performed in 1949 on a 14-year old boy (with pseudonym "Robbie Mannheim") in Mt. Rainier, Maryland by the Catholic Church (in the form of a fifty-two year old Jesuit priest named Fr. William S. Bowdern and Fr. Raymond Bishop). The official exorcism was reported in Thomas B. Allen's and Carl Brandt's 1993 book Possessed: The True Story of an Exorcism. Possessed (2000) was also a pay-TV-cable Showtime movie of the same name, starring Timothy Dalton.] The film's plot was also partially inspired by a similar demonic possession case in Earling, Iowa in 1928.
The film's screenplay - a horror-tinged western (and tale of good vs. evil), was faithfully based upon author William Peter Blatty's 1971 best-selling theological-horror novel of the same name. Under the direction of Academy-Award winner William Friedkin a frightening, horror film masterpiece, with sensational, nauseating, horrendous special effects (360 degree head-rotation, self-mutilation/masturbation with a crucifix, the projectile spewing of green puke (a mixture of split-pea soup and outmeal), etc.). The film featured the terrific acting debut of 12-year old actress Linda Blair, who played the helpless girl possessed by demons. The recognizable opening instrumental tune, titled Tubular Bells (by Mike Oldfield), eventually became a #1 single on the Billboard charts - and the first big seller for Virgin Records.
The film was enormously popular with moviegoers at Christmas-time of 1973, but some portions of the viewing audience fled from theaters due to nausea or sheer fright/anger, especially during the long sequence of invasive medical testing performed on the hapless patient. Its tale of the devil came at a difficult and disordered time when the world had just experienced the end of the Vietnam War (US troop withdrawal and the fall of Saigon) and at the time of the coverup of the Watergate office break-in (also in Washington, D.C.). Friction developed between director Friedkin and various cast and crew members during production, and there were additional post-production conflicts between Friedkin and Blatty. Other disturbing events that affected some of the film's stars (injury and death) also plagued the production. It was a great source of controversy for the film is that a about nineteen people involved in the movie died during in its time of production (according to actress Ellen Berstein); including the actor Jack MacGowran who died after finishing to shoot his scenes in the movie; plus the prop man who set up the deep-freeze air conditioner on the room where Linda Blair’s character Regan is being possessed; and Max Von Sydow’s relative, and just recently – less than a year after the re-issue of the movie for its 25th year, the actor Jason Miller passed away making the death count for the people involved in this movie to 20 in body count.
Unfortunately, the film spawned imitations (i.e., The Omen trilogy, the Italian knockoff films Beyond the Door (1974) and The Tempter (1974) (aka The Anti-Christ), the 'blaxploitation' clone Abby (1974), and the UK's
The Devil Within Her (1975)), and inspired many inferior sequels of its own:
Exorcist: The Beginning (2003), a prequel, d. Paul Schrader with script by William Wisher, Jr. and Caleb Carr; this film was shelved by production company Morgan Creek and Warner Bros; stars included Gabriel Mann, Clara Bellar, and Billy Crawford; to be released with 2004 version on DVD
Exorcist: The Beginning (2004), a prequel, d. Renny Harlin (originally to be directed by John Frankenheimer, who died before shooting), with entirely new script by Alexi Hawley; stars included Stellan Skarsgard, James D'Arcy, Izabella Scorupco, Ralph Brown, and Alan Ford
Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) is a movie star working on her latest project with her daughter Regan (Linda Blair) in tow. One evening, we discover that Regan has been using a ouija board alone (which is considered extremely dangerous, making the user susceptible to any demons that might come to or be attached to the board). Regan begins acting strangely, her bed shakes, she openly pees on the living room rug in front of a gathering of Chris' friends and she begins speaking in tongues. Chris takes her to countless doctors and they all seem to say the same thing: she needs a psychiatrist. Even the psychiatrists can't diagnose the real problem. Eventually, the suggestion is made that she might be possessed. She then turns to a priest that one of her friends knows for guidance.Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller) is skeptical at first, but eventually realizes that Regan is indeed possessed. He tries to convince the church and eventually succeeds with a tape recording of his and Regan's conversation (which appears to be a phrase played backwards). The church calls in Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) to assist in the exorcism.
What "The Exorcist" turns out to be in the end, is a shocking, dialogue-rich film that feels like it could have been made today. Blair is hauntingly effective as a possessee while Mercedes McCambridge, an Oscar winning actress from Hollywood's heyday, gives the possessor a bone-chilling voice. Burstyn gives a terrific, tender performance. No mother has ever been so concerned about her child than she. Miller and Sydow are also good, neither missing a beat.Without a single post-production-added visual effect, the special effects are indeed wonderful. They give the film a more realistic quality that some modern films just don't have.William Friedkin never panders to the audience; he only gives the audience what they need to see. It's not easy to forget his imagery. From the pea soup Regan spews on everyone to her frighteningly adult language, "The Exorcist" is one of the most honest and disturbing films to come out of the 1970s.
When you think of terror, "The Exorcist" should rank near the top. It's not just a story about possession; it's a story about the possession of a little girl, innocent and pure. It's not only one of the best horror films ever made, it's easily one of the silver screens finest features.At the end of the film, the demon is exorcised, but by leaving that victory somewhat dark, the film suggests that it was a small victory in a much larger war. Evil will continue to hold its grip on the world even if Regan is saved, and that is the feeling with which the final frames leave its audience. The Exorcist" has long been considered one of history's best horror films, if not a great film in any other genre.
In the early fall of 2000, the film was recut and released in a 12-minute longer version (and retitled as The Version You've Never Seen), with an enhanced digital surround-sound, six-track soundtrack - as a writer-producer's cut. Additional scenes that were excised were restored to the print, including Blatty's preferred (but less effective) ending in which good triumphed over evil. (In a post-ritual scene, a bantering discussion between police detective Kinderman (Lee J. Cobb) and Karras' friend - a young Jesuit named Father Dyer (Rev. William O'Malley), confirmed the fact that the spirit of Father Damien Karras lived on rather than the Devil's spirit.) Other additions included more physical tests for Regan, a shocking down-the-stairs, back-bending "spider-walk" by the satanically-inhabited girl, enhanced scenes with Father Merrin (played by the brilliant central actor Max von Sydow who based his performance on the real-life Jesuit theologian Pierre Tielhard de Chardin), and a few other minor changes (mostly subliminals of demonic imagery).
After a few blood-red credits on a black background, the film opens with a prologue. The locale is an archaeological dig site deep in the arid desert of Northern Iraq - near the ancient town of Nineveh. An Arabic prayer is chanted on the soundtrack behind an image of an oblong, burnt-reddish sun. Workers dig inexorably with pick-axes through mounds of dirt to uncover ancient artifacts. A young boy in a red head-dress runs through the weaving, maze-like trenches to summon one of the supervisors. The camera shoots through his legs as he speaks in Arabic: "(Subtitle): They found something...small pieces...At the base of the mound." Father Lankester Merrin (Max von Sydow), an elderly, scholarly Jesuit Catholic priest and archaeologist, is told that ancient objects have been unearthed during his search for evil: "Lamps, arrowheads, coins..." Merrin inspects a small silver, Christian medallion (depicting Mary and the baby Jesus) and observes that it is unusual to find it buried in a pre-Christian location: "This is strange...Not of the same period." Merrin then digs in a crevice near the Christian objects and discovers a small, greenish, gargoyle-like stone amulet or statuette [in the figure of the Mesopotamian demon Pazuzu, known for its serpent-like phallus]. [The Iraqi sequence sets a tone of foreboding and establishes the presence of 'Good' and 'Evil' - it also foreshadows the battle between the two forces later in the film.] In the Iraqi marketplace on the streets of Mosul, with a throbbing, drumming sound, the strain is evident as Merrin's hand shakes when he takes his heart medicine. Iron workers clang their hammers on anvils near a red-hot burning furnace. One of the steelworkers turns toward Merrin, revealing his blind right eye [an allusion to future horrors in the film]. Back in the curator's office, as Merrin eyes the ancient Pazuzu amulet, he is told: "Evil against evil." Ominously, the swinging pendulum of the clock behind him stops working. The curator knows Merrin will be leaving to go home to the States: "I wish you didn't have to go." Weary and exhausted, Merrin replies: "There is something I must do." He passes by prostrate Muslim worshippers and into a dark passageway. When he emerges in the narrow, sunlit street, he is nearly run down by a fast-moving, horse-drawn carriage carrying an old woman in a black droshky, worn over her face like a shroud. After driving his jeep to an ancient temple ruins guarded by armed, white and black-garbed watchmen, he walks up to a full-sized stone statue of the demon Pazuzu. Nearby, two dogs begin fighting and snarling at each other in the dust. [This struggle foreshadows the eventual conflict between good (the priest) and evil (the possessed girl).] He again has a premonition that the amulet is a concrete manifestation that something evil has been unearthed - the soundtrack simulates an eerie, shrieking chord, symbolizing the loosing of ancient, pagan evil in the world. The camera zooms in on the face of the open-mouthed, fearsome creature. As he confronts the demonic statue that has been called up for protection by the amulet's discovery, the wind blows dust over the scene as he feels all around him the presence of the devil. In a clever transitional dissolve linking two distant locales and their coincidental association, the scene from the desert (a sizzling view of the orb of the dawning sun) dissolves into the sounds and views of early morning traffic crossing the Potomac in Georgetown outside Washington, D.C. The camera zooms into one of the Georgetown houses where a hand turns on a different kind of bright light - a white electric lamp. Inside her bedroom, divorced mother and actress Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn, reportedly modeling her role on actress Shirley MacLaine) is working on lines in her latest script. She hears unsettling sounds from the attic similar to the dirt-digging sounds of the prologue. [This form of infestation is the first classic stage of possession.] She investigates - following the sounds to her 12-year old daughter Regan's (Linda Blair) bedroom where the young girl is sleeping. The covers are pulled back and the window is inexplicably wide open with fluttering curtains - she senses a certain coldness or presence in the room. Downstairs in the kitchen, Chris instructs housekeeper Karl (Rudolf Schundler) to purchase traps for "rats in the attic." The next minimalist scene introduces other film characters and a 'film within a film.' On the Georgetown University campus, Chris emerges from a movie-set trailer on the set of Warner Bros. Inc.' Crash Course (now filming at locations in California and Washington, D.C.). (Later, Chris expresses how she despises the film when she describes the movie as "kinda like the, uh, Walt Disney version of the Ho Chi Minh story...") [William Peter Blatty makes a brief cameo appearance as an upset producer, telling the director: "Is the scene really essential? Would you just consider it, whether or not..."] The scene that is being filmed at the Catholic school dramatizes early 1970s student protest that threatens to tear down the historic stone walls of the university. Chris, a representative of the academic-adult population, questions the British director Burke Dennings (Jack MacGowran, who died one week after completing his scenes in the film) about the unrealistic plot of adolescent counter-cultural turmoil. One of the curious onlookers among a crowd of students, a Jesuit priest (in black) from the university, named Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller), smiles amusedly after overhearing their conversation. A few moments later into the shoot, when Chris grabs a bullhorn and tells the rebellious students in the crowd: "If you want to effect any change, you have to do it within the system," a long crane shot finds Father Karras walking away from the crowd and the filming - he turns back to watch for a moment, and then continues his departure in serious thought. [To accentuate one of the film's themes, the actor's lines are deliberately juxtaposed with the priest's departure, since he is experiencing an inner struggle of religious faith within his own system - the church.] After the day's shoot is finished, Chris walks the leaf-covered street from the campus to her home, accompanied by the tinkling, mesmerizing sounds of "Tubular Bells' (by Mike Oldfield). It is Halloween, and children run by in their masks and costumes. [Historically, scary Halloween masks, pumpkin faces, and costumes were designed to ward off evil spirits - another manifestation of the film's theme.] For a brief moment, a roaring black motorbike that passes behind her slightly drowns out the sounds of the bells. Two nuns trailing billowing black and white habits walk down a road in front of a brick wall. Now in her neighborhood, she turns and hears, from a distance, the priest Karras counseling a fellow priest (until his spiritual words are overshadowed by the loud, mechanical roar of an overhead jet engine): There's not a day in my life that I don't feel like a fraud. Other priests, doctors, lawyers - I talk to them all. I don't know anyone who hasn't felt that. As priest Karras rises up from an underground stairwell, emerging into the noisy track area of the New York City subway where the tracks spew jets of steam, the camera pans past a soft-drink vending machine, emblazoned with: "TRAVEL REFRESHED." On the dirty, trash-littered platform of the subway station, he turns to hear a tattered, derelict drunk begging with an outstretched hand: Father, could you help an old altar boy. I'm Cat'lick. Wrapped up in his own problems and unable to be charitable in this subway encounter, Father Karras turns away from the wretched man whose bearded, sweaty face is momentarily illuminated in flashes by the window lights of a passing subway. He visits his dying, sick mother, Mother Karras (Vasiliki Maliaros) who lives in humble, pauper's conditions by herself (after he left her and moved to the priesthood in Georgetown) in a derelict area of New York City. The street, lined with run-down housing, is populated with unruly kids, drunks, graffiti, and litter. After first stopping in his own room and reflecting on his past [two photographs of his early boxing career, trophies, a childhood photograph, and a picture of a former girlfriend], he enters his Mama's room. As he carefully binds his mother's injured leg and then lights a cigarette for a smoke [atypical for a priest], he suggests moving her elsewhere, but she is a stoic, stubborn, Greek immigrant woman from the Old World, and she doesn't want to move: Damien: Mama, I could take you somewhere where you'd be safe. You wouldn't be alone. There would be people around. You know, you wouldn't be sitting here listening to a radio. Mother: (She first speaks in her native tongue) ...You understand me? This is my house and I'm not going no place. Dimmy, you're worried for something? Damien: No, Mama. Mother: You're not happy. Tell me, what is the matter? Damien: Mama, I'm all right, I'm fine, really I am.
I have really never ever seen such a terrifying film. The acting , the story , the direction everything is simply terrific. I remember the movie was 2 hours long and during that period it left the audience so shocked that there was pin-drop silence in the cinema.The film has also received a godd number of awards. :-
Awards:
Nominations: Oscars (10): Picture, Actress - Burstyn, Sup. Actor - Miller, Sup. Actress - Blair, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, Cinematography, Art Direction, Sound; GG (7): Drama Picture, Drama Actress - Burstyn, Sup. Actor - von Sydow, Sup. Actress - Blair, Director, Screenplay, Female Newcomer - Blair; BAFTA (1): Sound Track.
Max Von Sydow as Father Merrin Jason Miller as Damien Karras Linda Blair as Regan Ellen Burnstein as Regan’s Mother Chris MacNeil Lee J. Cobb as DetectiveLt. Kinderman Jack MacGowran as Burke Dennings Kitty Winn as Mrs. MacNeil’s housemaid Father Willaim O’ Malley as Father Dyer Mercedes Macambridge as the voice of Regan Ellen Dietz as the demonic double of Regan
A Hoya Production William Friedkin director/producer Noel Marshall executive producer William Peter Blatty screenplay (based from his novel) Sound: Ron Neagle Special Visual fx: Marcel Vercotere Make Up fx: Dick Smith
If you haven't already, get up and go see this movie!!!
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Production Year: 1977 - Horror - Director: John Boorman - Original Language: English - Classification: 18 years and over - Starring: Ned Beatty, Richard Burton, Linda Blair, Louise Fletcher, Max Von Sydow, Kitty Winn, Paul Henreid, James Earl Jones
Production Year: 2001 - Horror - Director: Stephen Sommers - Original Language: English - Classification: 12 years and over - Starring: Brendan Fraser, John Hannah, Rachel Weisz, Arnold Vosloo, Freddie Boath, Oded Fehr, The Rock, Tim Murdock
Director William Friedkin was a hot ticket in Hollywood after the success ofThe French ... more
Connection, and he turned heads (in more ways than one) when he decided to makeThe Exorcistas his follow-up film. Adapted by William Peter Blatty from his controvers...
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Director William Friedkin was a hot ticket in Hollywood after the success ofThe French ... more
Connection, and he turned heads (in more ways than one) when he decided to makeThe Exorcistas his follow-up film. Adapted by William Peter Blatty from his controvers...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours...
The belief in evil - and that evil can be cast out. From these two strands of faith ... more
author William Peter Blatty and director William Friedkin wove The Exorcist the frightening and realistic story of an innocent girl inhabited by a malevolent entity....
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The belief in evil - and that evil can be cast out. From these two strands of faith, ... more
author William Peter Blatty and director William Friedkin wove The Exorcist, the frightening and realistic story of an innocent girl inhabited by a malevolent entity. ...
Advantages: Great classic film for its era, a quick scare, classic acting in an all time classic 18 rated spook. Disadvantages: Poor effects compared with todays technology, not much of an in depth plot. Few recognised characters.
MissPitters 22.02.2005 ·
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Review of The Exorcist (DVD)
Advantages: Great screenplay and caught Friedkin in his top form Disadvantages: remarks about the film that turn away patrons whether good or bad for its publicity
CrutcHead 06.05.2004 (07.05.2004)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of The Exorcist (DVD)
![The Exorcist [DVD] [1974]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78547387.jpg "The Exorcist [DVD] [1974]")
May 18th, 2004
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