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DARK CORRIDORS Vol. 1, No. 12 |
 MEETS THE EXORCIST ...AGAIN! |
 Max von Sydow as The Exorcist Arrives to Do Battle with the Demon in Linda Blair |
This Great Horror Film is Worth Revisiting, New Footage or Not
By
JOHN STANLEY
of TheColumnists.com
IT'S
BEEN so many years since I last saw "The Exorcist"
that I couldn't really tell you which scenes comprise the 12
minutes of new footage inserted into this revised version, reportedly
at the demand of William Peter Blatty, who wrote the best-selling
novel on which the film is based.
Blatty had major disagreements with director William Friedkin
about some initial cuts and, all these years later, he's getting
his way. This so-called restoration, which also features new
sound effects and music pieces in a remastered digital track,
is now playing in 600 theaters across the country, with hopes
that 2,000 more screens soon will be added.
I
can tell you that all of this revisionist window dressing--no
matter how passionately Blatty feels about it--is not the main
reason to go see the film again. When it was released in 1973
"The Exorcist" was one of the most original horror
films of its time, and it remains that, with or without all the
alterations.
The "scary" trends that followed in this film's wake--the
slasher epics and the blood-and-gore free-for-alls--only point
out the shallowness of most modern horror fare, and their inability
to tap into our "fear factor," that which makes us
viscerally experience what the characters are enduring, and which
all too infrequently makes us leap out of our viewing seats.
William Peter Blatty adapted his best-selling novel (said to be based on a real exorcism that occurred in 1949) without sacrificing all the subtle layers of allegory pitting good vs. evil. And that's what makes the film so compelling, 27 years after its initial release. It's character driven, with the special effects heaped on once we care about the people. The fact that Blatty won an Oscar for his efforts as screenwriter only embellishes the continued success of this once trend-setting, state-of-the-art movie.
Its
release in '73 was a controversial one, for there were newspaper
reports that some viewers fainted dead away while watching, and
some vomited in the aisles. Religious groups, Catholics in particular,
rose up in protest to the film's blasphemous depiction of a teenage
girl becoming possessed by a demon (or perhaps Satan himself).
A lot of it might have been press agent's hype, but there's no
arguing that ticket sales at the time reached $90 million, setting
a new record for gross-conscious Warner Bros. And the stories
about lines extending for blocks around the theaters where the
film originally opened were not exaggerated.
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The window dressing of this film is the possession of a young girl named Regan, played by Linda Blair. Daughter of a popular stage actress (Ellen Burstyn), Regan changes from a loving child into a cursing, monstrous, demonic-looking thing that spews green vomit, urinates openly in a roomful of party guests, urges observers to perform cunnilingus on her, spins her head around in a 360-degree circle, walks down the staircase with her body horribly arched, and releases an unearthly growling sound that was dubbed onto the final soundtrack by Mercedes McCambridge. (It has been written that the screams of the Demon when it is finally exorcised were actual cries of pigs being led to slaughter, but you might want to take that with a grain of salt.)
So
there's the graphic, horrific business that got all the exploitative
attention at the time. Almost unnoticed by the critics was the
more subtly textured story about Father Karras (Jason Miller),
a Catholic priest who becomes ineffectual when the Demon, during
the exorcism rites, taps into the priest's own feelings of insecurity.
Karras must also examine the recent death of his mother, about
whom he feels a deep sense of guilt.
There's also the brilliant performance by Max Von Sydow as Father
Merrin, a deeply spiritual priest who is suffering from a serious
illness, the nature of which is never disclosed. The film opens
in Iraq, where Father Merrin is on an archeological expedition
and digs up a miniature sculpting of Satan. The shot of Merrin
staring across the screen at a larger statue version of Satan
still strikes me as the the most memorable scene in the film,
foreshadowing the dual of good vs. evil that Merrin will soon
find himself fighting in Regan's bedroom. (The image of Satan's
statue is superimposed, almost subliminally, in a few of those
eerie bedroom sequences.)
The only weakness I detected in looking at the film anew is why the Devil would choose Regan for possession. There's a brief scene where Regan and her mother play with a ouija board, suggesting the old belief that fooling around with such a "game" opens doors to other dimensions and allows evil spirits to enter the earthly plane. I really think the Devil is after the weak-willed Karris from the nearby neighborhood church and is using Regan as a lure or mere pawn, although nothing like that is ever explicitly discussed. I wish that Burstyn's mother character could have been more involved with the ultimate exorcism, and figured into the story in a more personal way rather than ending up the frustrated, long-suffering parent who rants and screams a lot.
Although Lee J. Cobb's police lieutenant, Kinderman, is a minor character investigating the more earthly elements of the mystery surrounding the desecration of Father Karras' church, the veteran actor makes the most of his few scenes and provides a compelling extra elememt to the film. And the scenes of Regan being tested at a hospital, the equipment whipping around her like some kind of mechanical alien monster, makes a strong statement about modern medicine having its own demonic influence on us.
Forget
the hype and see it. It beats any other horror film making the
rounds right now.
© 2000 by John Stanley. Caricature of John Stanley ©
2000 by Jim Hummel. Photos from "The Exoricst" ©
1973 by Warner Bros.
JOHN STANLEY'S NEW EDITION OF HIS CLASSIC "CREATURE FEATURES" GUIDE IS NOW AVAILABLE. CLICK ON "SHOPPING MALL" BELOW TO LEARN HOW YOU CAN GET A COPY.
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