13 Creepy movies #1: 'The Exorcist'

November 4, 9:19 AMWinter Park Movie ExaminerJack Calvert

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Scariest movie ever?: 'The Exorcist' (1973)

The scariest movie ever made is still the scariest movie ever made. That much was clear from a recent screening of Warner Bros. 2000 re-release of William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973), 'the version you've never seen,' which, even without the juiced-up soundtrack and a few seconds of additional footage (e.g., the famous 'spider walk' scene cut from the 1973 release), still has the power to shock.

As with the bestselling William Peter Blatty novel on which it is based, the film opens in the sun-blasted deserts of northern Iraq, at an excavation near the ancient city of Nineveh, where archaeologist and priest Father Lankester Merrin (Max von Sydow) discovers a small dragon-like ceramic head among the old coins and shards of pottery. The significance of the artifact isn't immediately apparent, however the discovery is disturbing enough for Merrin to reach for his heart pills and excuse himself from the dig. 'There is something I must do,' he vaguely explains.         
            
Half a world away, film actress Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) is in Washington shooting her latest movie, Crash Course, helmed by Burke Dennings (Jack MacGowran), an alcoholic director to whom MacNeil is romantically attached. While on location for the shoot, MacNeil and her 12 year-old daughter, Regan (Linda Blair), are renting a comfortable townhome in upscale Georgetown. One evening, MacNeil discovers a Ouija board that Regan has found in one of the closets. Curious, MacNeil invites her daughter to play, however the planchette unexpectedly darts away from her hand.

'You really don't want me to play, huh?', says MacNeil.

'No, I do,' replies Regan. 'Captain Howdy said no.'

'Who?'

'Captain Howdy.'

'Who's Captain Howdy?', asks MacNeil.

'You know,' Regan says, 'I make the questions and he does the answers.'

Unfortunately, 'Captain Howdy' turns out not to be as childish or harmless as the name implies. Regan's innocent experiments with the talking board have opened a doorway to hell, and the big guy himself is coming through. The first clue that something isn't right is Regan's offhanded remark the next morning that she had trouble sleeping because the bed kept shaking. That same morning, a local priest is horrified to find that a statue of Mary has been unattractively accessorized with a Tetsuo-like phallus and a pair of exaggerated conical breasts. Clearly the work of the Devil if not a vandal with poor taste.

During a physical exam, Regan begins acting erratically, knocking an electronic thermometer out of the doctor's hand and uttering obscenities. That evening, at a party at the MacNeils', Regan unexpectedly appears in the living room in her nightgown and calmly urinates on the carpet as she tells one of the guests that he's about to die.

It is the beginning of a quick trip to Hell Town. Population: Regan.

The following night, Regan's bed shakes violently as she bellows profanities in a weird voice and thrashes wildly about. The doctors blame muscle spasms. Later, when MacNeil returns from a desperate conference with Regan's doctor, she is stunned to learn that Burke Dennings was killed in a fall from Regan's window while house-sitting the girl. As the investigating detective, Lt. Kinderman (Lee J. Cobb) later explains, Dennings was found at the bottom of the steps 'with his head turned completely around, facing backwards.'

The doctors can't seem to find the cause of Regan's frightening behavior. Each fresh battery of tests leaves them more puzzled than before, and as the multiplying villainies of the girl's afflictions leave her mother at wits' end, MacNeil's doctor makes an unorthodox suggestion: exorcism. 'It's been pretty much discarded these days,' says Dr. Klein (Barton Heyman), 'except by the Catholics, who keep it in the closet as a sort of embarrassment, but it has worked, although not for the reasons they think, it's purely a force of suggestion. The victim's belief in possession is what helped cause it, so in that same way, the belief in the power of exorcism can make it disappear.'

MacNeil, who is not a religious woman, discounts the idea until a horrifying episode in which Regan sexually mutilates herself with a crucifix and then attacks MacNeil, knocking her across the room. Desperate for any remedy, MacNeil approaches Fr. Damien Karras (Jason Miller), a Jesuit priest and psychiatrist who serves as parish counselor. 

'If a person is possessed by a demon or something, how do they get an exorcism?', she asks.

'Well, the first thing,' Karras says dryly, 'I'd have to get them into a time machine and get them back to the sixteenth century. It just doesn't happen anymore..'  

When MacNeil tells Karras about Regan, he dismisses the idea of exorcism and offers to see the girl, but only as a psychiatrist. 

'Not a psychiatrist!', MacNeil erupts, 'She's seen every (bleep)ing psychiatrist in the world and they sent me to you! Now you're going to send me back to them?'

When Karras finally sees the girl, her appearance is shocking. Regan's once cherubic face is an ashen moonscape of gouges and scabs, her eyes burning with cold light. Her wrists and ankles have been bound to the bedposts to prevent further self-destruction.

'I'm Damien Karras,' the priest introduces.

Linda Blair on the cover of a DVD for 'The Exorcist' 

'And I'm the Devil,' Regan says in a growling, animalistic voice. After a few minutes of verbal sparring, she abruptly spews green vomitus into Karras' face in the now-infamous, much-lampooned 'pea soup' moment. Later, as an experiment, Karras sprinkles tap water on the girl, telling her it's holy water. Her violent reaction leaves Karras doubtful about possession, however shortly thereafter he observes an eerie manifestation. Entering Regan's now-freezing bedroom, Karras is thunderstruck to see the words 'help me' appearing on the girl's stomach in swollen lesions.

Convinced at last that Regan is possessed, Karras obtains permission to perform an exorcism, however the bishop insists that a more experienced priest perform the rite, someone who has 'spent time in foreign missions.' It so happens Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) has recently returned from Iraq, and is working on a book at Georgetown University's Woodstock Theological Center. Moreover, Merrin is an experienced exorcist, having performed the rite several years earlier in Africa: 'The exorcism supposedly lasted months. Heard it damn near killed him.'

Merrin will perform the rite, with Karras assisting.

The events of the film all build toward Merrin's arrival, gladstone bag in hand, a modern day Abraham van Helsing armed with rituals, crucifixes and holy water, prepared to confront his old nemesis over the soul of an innocent girl. The only thing missing are the wooden stakes, however they are of little use here; Merrin's enemy isn't Dracula, it's Dracula's boss. The ensuing pitched battle between good and evil that plays out in Regan's icy bedroom made The Exorcist one of the most terrifying and  unforgettable movies of all time. The final twenty minutes are harrowing in a skin-crawling way that almost transcends the medium. If The Passion of the Christ was the closest thing some people have ever had to a religious experience, The Exorcist is its demonic equivalent.

One of the things that made the film work so well was novelist/screenwriter William Peter Blatty's attention to the Catholic details. I am not a Catholic, nor am I particularly religious, however I know enough to be annoyed by the intellectual laziness endemic to most religious-themed horror thrillers (i.e., Stigmata, End of Days, etc.), the makers of which seem to think that a few stained glass windows and actors in cassocks will lend sufficient ecclesiastical gravitas to their confabulationist pseudo-theologies. If one intends to make a movie whose plot depends heavily on certain faith-specific religious conventions, it's important to know a little about those conventions instead of trying to 'make something up.' If you want us to buy into your movie about the Antichrist, at least get the backstory right, if not the theology. The Devil, as they say, is in the details. 

Similarly refreshing is director Friedkin's non-condescending attitude toward the characters. The Catholic church has always been a popular target of derision, however what I find most tiresome are the film industry's typically cynical and unimaginative portrayals of Catholic religious as cartoonishly one-dimensional buffoons or villains. Don't misunderstand, I appreciate that not all priests are nice (Torquemada, anyone?), however neither  movie characters nor the audiences that watch them are well served by the reduction to clownish stereotype. Friedkin avoids this by making his Jesuits thoughtful, highly educated men who might have become doctors or lawyers had they not chosen religious vocations. Playwright and stage actor Jason Miller, who had never appeared in a film before, was adroitly cast as the troubled, stoic Father Karras, while the inimitable Swedish actor Max von Sydow brings enormous moral authority to the role of Father Merrin. If you're getting ready to fight the Devil, he's the kind of guy you want on your side. (Gotta watch out for that bad ticker, though.)      

Friedkin, who had previously directed The French Connection, does an interesting thing by structuring the movie more like a murder mystery than a conventional horror film. The Exorcist essentially is a supernatural crime thriller with Merrin and Karras the investigating detectives. Unfortunately, the good guys don't always get their man. Merrin and Karras manage to save the girl, but they pay a steep price for their heroism. As is usually the case in any conflict involving God, Man, and the Devil, Man can be counted upon to come out the worse for wear.

The premise that the very Prince of Darkness, the archetypal Devil of two thousand years' worth of inculcated Christian theology--ostensibly the most powerful spirit in the universe aside from God--would be bound by the niggling rules of an 18th century parlor game (i.e., a Ouija board) seems as ridiculous as crucifixes and vampires--and it is--yet even if we profess not to believe in western religious convention, the popular symbology is so deeply ingrained in our Judeo-Christian culture and our collective inherited memories (if you believe in that sort of thing), that we still respond to it on a subconscious level. If that weren't the case, we'd be laughing off devils and vampires as primitive superstitious mumbo-jumbo rather than buying tickets to see movies about them.

Our troubling awareness of our own fragile mortality inspires the secret hope of an afterlife, and makes us willing to accept the possiblity of the supernatural, for better or worse. If demons suggest the existence of angels, the Devil surely implies the existence of God. If nothing else, the fact that they both apparently make such a fuss over us ought to make us feel pretty special.

The Exorcist is available through online rental from Netflix and Blockbuster.com, and is available for purchase at  Amazon.com. Rated R for strong language and disturbing images.

Links about exorcism:

• The true case that inspired 'The Exorcist'
• Catholic Encyclopedia article about exorcism
• Complete text of the Catholic Rite of Exorcism

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