What follows is a haunted house of scares that have been imitated ad nauseum (pun intended) so many times that we know the beats: head spinning, pea soup vomit, masturbation with a cross, blood, strange voices, levitation. When Regan (Linda Blair) intrudes on one of her mother’s boring parties, pisses on the floor and tells an astronaut “You’re gonna die up there.” PS - Want to know more about that guy? Then you should watch The Ninth Configuration. When do we realize something is wrong? When it is too late. Scenes of Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) acting take precedence over the sad life of Father Karras, who has to deal with the death of his mother and his increasing lack of faith. What’s striking is that how long the movie takes to get there. Inspired by William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel, which itself was inspired by the 1949 exorcism of Roland Doe (“The Pope’s Exorcist” Malachi Martin claimed that he was the inspiration, a point that Blatty denied) the legends around this film - it was a cursed set, it’s filled with subliminal messages - supersede a very simple fact: this movie is frightening as hell, even 40 plus years later.ĭo I even need to tell you the story of how Pazuzu finds its way into an Ouija board and into the soul of the daughter of an actress? Probably not. The much remembered projectile vomiting doesn’t occur until much later, by which time those who have come merely for cheap shocks have long since tuned out.What do you write about a movie that pretty much created modern horror? Sure, you can point to Night of the Living Dead and even Carnival of Souls as starting points, but from a mainstream blockbuster perspective, this is where the rules of modern supernatural horror begin. One of William Friedkin’s master strokes was knowing that viewers would already be worked up into a state before enterting the theatre, because the novel was so controversial and no one knew how they would film it without getting an X-rating, so he played off the expectation, toying with the audience for the first half-hour with nothing but an enigmatic prologue in Iraq and scratching noises in the attic. That’s not what the film is about, despite its reputation. Well, almost no film can overcome a willful desire not to be entertained.Īs far as boring, well, yeah, if you go in expecting special effects and violence from scene one, then you will be bored. Whereas once people went to the film in anticipation of being scared, now they go in as if challenged, and put up resistance to the film. I think what has happened is that the audience attitude has changed. I saw the film again a few years agot at a midnight screenining in Westood, California, and I have to disagree with those today who insist that it is no longer scary or that it is camp. At any rate, I doubt this happened very often (I saw the film three or four times during its intial release and never observed such an incident) probably the media exaggerated a very few incidents. If people had been waiting out in the sun, without eating anything, they might even be light-headed to begin with, hence the potential fainting. I would be willing to bet that the advance word-of-mouth, apprehension over the subject matter, the notoriety of the book, and the long time waiting…waiting…waiting to get inside and finally see the movie–all these contributed to a mindset conducive to being scared witless. The film played in only 60 theatres for several months if people wanted to go, they had to drive downtown and stand in line for hours. Remember, THE EXORCIST was released in the days before wide national releases opened films on 2000 screens the first weekend. Seems he had tried to identify the subliminals in the days before home videotape, laserdisc, and DVD needless to say, without frame-by-frame analysis, he ended up way off the mark.īy the way, I doubt the subliminals had much to do with the stories of people fainting in theatres. While pointing out the subliminals that actually are in the film, they also dissed an earlier article written by the guy that did that “Subliminal Seduction” book. There’s a big difference.Įven if Karras had committed a mortal sin (suicide or any other), he would not have been damned at the end of the film, as he makes a final (albeit silent) confession before dying.Īs for subliminal messages, Video Watchdog magazine did a good article on this (sorry, can’t remember the issue). No, Father Karras did not commit suicide at the end of THE EXORCIST he performed an act of martyrdom in order to save Reagen Teresa MacNeil.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |