Exorcist, The(1973)

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Exorcist, The (1973)

Ah, for the good old days of a country scared shitless

Possessed child! Projectile vomiting! Blasphemous voice-overs!

Big deal.

Or so the attitude goes today. In 1973, The Exorcist had people fainting in theaters, swooning in terror and actually running to church immediately afterwards for confession and absolution. Reverend Billy Graham claimed that Satan himself was residing in the celluloid reels being shipped all over America and parts of Europe.

Nowadays, while surrounded by films with pie-fucking and anal rape scenes, much of the revulsion experienced by the original audience, as well as the film’s signature thrusts, is no more bothersome than the theater’s sticky floor or bad popcorn. Sure, crucifix masturbation can’t be that much fun, but listen to that little girl with the yucky teeth and the potty mouth! What a scream.

Anyone who thinks director William Friedkin and writer William Peter Blatty were only after shocking us with vulgarity and blasphemy aren’t looking deeply enough into this tale of the demonic possession of a young girl. The big deal about The Exorcist, at least to me, is that it is scaring us but good on two levels. For starters, we’ve got to actually believe that little Reagan MacNeil (Linda Blair) is possessed, and by a particularly vindictive spirit. Dick Smith’s makeup job (he also did Pacino’s broken jaw in The Godfather), Blair’s facial contortions, and Mercedes McCambridge’s voiceover accomplish this hands-down, and every time we have to so much as look at this thing is enough to elevate the heart rate, never mind whether or not it actually does anything. The other side of the coin, however, is more of a spiritual struggle: what will this possession do to the people around it? Will it restore or destroy Father Karras’ (Jason Miller) deteriorating faith? Will Reagan’s mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn) be able to get over her daughter shoving her face into her swimsuit area and yelling “Lick me!” or are they destined for a beach- and swimming-pool-free life?

And just what exactly is this demon, anyway? Certainly not the devil it claims to be. John Boorman exploited its name of Pazuzu (supplied by Blatty in the novel) in his ill-conceived sequel (Exorcist II: The Heretic), but in this picture it’s a nameless, feral thing, with ties to some archaeological dig Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) was doing in Iraq. Whatever it is, it challenges the very tenets of spiritualism the key players bring to the table, and that’s an even scarier concept than someone rotating their head 180 degrees. When Karras asks it why it’s not afraid of an exorcism, the demon sneers at him: "It would bring us together." "You and Reagan?" "You and us."

One larger problem the film suffers from is the intrusion of under-developed elements from the novel. Karras’s dialogue with Lt. Kinderman (Lee J. Cobb) is supposed to set up Kinderman’s conflict between a sense of professional and moral duty, but instead, all we learn is that he likes to watch movies. Dierctor Burke Dennings (Jack MacGowran) supposedly has it in for Chris’s butler Karl (Rudolf Schündler), but when the demon takes on Burke’s guise, the whole matter is dropped.

Still, all things considered, there are too many other qualities drowning the film’s faults. The cinematography is chilling, reining us in spinning us around, and the sound effects (rasping breathing; the effects for the infamous head-spinning scene) don't even need visuals to go along with them to set our teeth on edge. The 2000 re-release added demon faces leering in windows and makeup effects smoothly transitioned (not to mention a dissapointingly vapid commentary by Friedkin), but the basic elements of The Exorcist remain the same: brooding unease mixed with outright shock. This is horror that doesn’t have to jump out from behind closed doors. From right out in the open is terrifying enough.

-Long