![]() We're made to feel uneasy about Karras' lapse of faith, and to feel shame and guilt for Chris MacNeil because she's a non-practicing modern woman "cursed" by divorce and sexual freedom. So is the idea of rats in the attic (nice people don't have them) and your kid telling an important guest that he's going to die - these social embarrassments put us on edge more than we admit. I place Regan's urinating on the nice new rug as one of these. Author William Peter Blatty's idea of The Devil's minor mischief comes straight from conservatives' guilty conscience list - "bad taste" things that make superstitious people uncomfortable. The movie delivers a perverse Sunday School lesson in fundamentalist fire and brimstone without a shred of irony or humor. This is a legit strategy for breaking people down in an interrogation, or to soften them up for brainwashing. It's like being startled by loud noises when you're already worried about something. These shocks are a wholly mechanical assault on the nervous system. HUGE NOISES of electric motors moving the photos into position knock us back in our seats, as if Friedkin had cut to a close-up of a jet engine. Friedkin evokes a Pavlovian jolt when he shock-cuts to X-rays being displayed on a light box. The most absurd is the deafening blast of a scanning machine (which just makes a hum, normally). Every time we see Regan "tortured" by what are actually benign medical procedures, we're hit by an avalanche of brain-rattling noise. Frightened people discuss the plight of little Regan (Linda Blair) in between massive jolts of noise. Friedkin has often remarked on his strategy of alternating quiet scenes with loud scenes, a manipulative pattern that we immediately noticed. The Exorcist hammers the audience with ugly sensations until our mental defenses are exhausted. William Friedkin's film marks a major change of tactics for the horror film, which previously might have used atmospherics and suggestive imagery to tease us into a sense of unease. ![]() The film is conservative propaganda: It insists that The Church is the only way, and everything secular, especially science, is heretical. What they got was an intimidating Hellfire and Brimstone spectacle that uses every cinematic trick available to beat them into psychological submission. Like a well-primed carnival audience ("Step right up to see the Devil!"), audiences were already rattled before the movie started. The filmmakers denied that The Exorcist was "just a horror film" they instead pushed the notion that True Evil was on the screen. Promoting a movie this way was a really crass thing to do. Times reported the filmmakers' claim of an actual curse on the movie, which went so far as to imply that the death of actor Jack MacGowran was related. "Gee, I guess maybe there really is a devil in there!" I was not happy when the L.A. Sure enough, when the TV news covered the long lines around the block, 24 hours a day, there was my boss the manager looking sheepish as he reported that people were screaming and running out of the theater. I had worked as an usher at the National Westwood until a few weeks before and saw studio men discussing publicity ideas with the theater manager. ![]() I've intensely disliked The Exorcist since the night it opened, just after Christmas in 1973. new Blu-ray contains two versions of the film, the original theatrical cut, and a longer Extended Director's Cut that restores a few minutes of material dropped before the picture was locked in editorial. It still has a reputation for being scary. The horror blockbuster was for a time the most successful moneymaker in Hollywood history. I've long avoided writing directly about The Exorcist. Or, an overly opinionated DVD reviewer blows a fuse. Written and Produced by William Peter Blatty from his novel Cobb, Kitty Winn, Jack MacGowran, Reverend William O'Malley S.J. Starring Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Jason Miller, Linda Blair, Lee J. Extended Director's Cut & Original Theatrical Version / Street Date Octo/ 34.99 Extended Director's Cut & Original Theatrical Versionġ973 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 122 132 min.
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