Featured Film Review
'The Exorcist’ 1973 © Warner Brothers starring Linda Blair, Ellen Burstyn, Jason Miller and Max von Sydow, 117 mins; plus ‘The Fear of God: The Making of the Exorcist’ 1998 © BBC documentary, 74 minutes. This version a box-set (including a book by Bob McCabe ‘Out of the Shadows: The Making of the Film’) 1999 © Warner Brothers.
‘The Exorcist’ was released the year after I was born and banned by the time I was old enough to discern all the fuss about it. In my teenage years, it became the Holy Grail of films to see – my RE teacher in High School once regaled our class with stories about how a lad in their year, supposedly the ‘toughest boy in the school’, had been so scared that he’d not been able to get off the bus at his stop, so had continued on throughout the entire night’s bus-route until it eventually took him back to the depot. There had been nuns outside the cinema when she had seen it, helping the hysterical as they emerged. It’s fairly safe to say that our class would have given anything to see it right around then.
I didn’t get my chance until the late ‘90s, when a local arthouse
cinema in Wolverhampton played it at a midnight showing at Samhain, just
after the ban had been lifted. Two friends and I pounced on the tickets,
then sat down to watch a film which had had, in our minds, at least a
decade’s worth of intense hype as the scariest film in the world.
We laughed. We couldn’t help it. Ours was the generation of films
like ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, the ‘Nightmare on
Elm Street’ series, we were thoroughly desensitized to special effects
as were shown in ‘The Exorcist’, which were anyway very amateurish
in comparison to those we were used to seeing over twenty years on.
Nontheless, about three years ago, I found this boxset in a January sale. I paid £5.99 for a video containing the widescreen version of the film, a documentary and a book. Then let it sitting there catching dust, not even out of the cellophane wrapper, until yesterday. Watching ‘The Exorcism of Emily Rose’ and subsequently reading that ‘The Exorcist’ had been based on the same story, I settled myself down with crisps and whiskey to watch how the 1973 crew had treated the same subject matter. Having got the hype and hilarity out of the way in the 1990s, I was surprised to discover last night that ‘The Exorcist’ is actually a really good film. What it isn’t is the same story as ‘The Exorcism of Emily Rose’. The latter is loosely based on the case of Anneliese Michel, in Bavaria, in 1976; the former is based on a case in America, during the 1940s, in the same smalltown village where William Peter Blatty – the story’s author – lived, involving the possession of a 14 year old boy.
‘The Exorcist’ tells the story of Regan, a twelve-year-old girl, daughter of a famous film actress, who becomes possessed by the devil after playing with a ouija board. Coming from a non-religious family, the medical route is the first taken and utterly exhausted – both in terms of neurological disorders and psychology – before her mother, Chris, is persuaded that the Catholic church may be able to help. A priest, and a family friend, puts her in touch with the church’s resident psychiatrist priest, Father Karras, who is in the process of losing his religion. Exposure to Regan convinces him that, despite his earlier ridicule on the subject, an exorcism is required. His diocese contacts Father Merrin, a priest with previous experience with such matters, newly returned from an archaeological dig in Iraq.
Some of the imagery is downright gruesome and shocking, for example, the masturbation scene with the crucifix, but on the whole the horror in terms of special effects isn’t as terrifying now as it purportedly was in the 1970s. If viewed as a psychological thriller, then the film deserves its title as a classic. Two priests were not only advisors, but also actors within the film, one of whom, Father William O’Malley playing Father Dyer, had a fairly substantial role. This adds an element of realism insofar as it’s implied that this is precisely how the Catholic church would respond to such circumstances. Special effects besides, there is much about the acting that gives an air of realism to the scenes, for example, when Chris is trying to determine who had left the crucifix in her daughter’s bed, it actually feels like a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Each of the characters are seen as flawed in some way, none of them entirely sure of what to do for the best, and this too adds to the sense that this is something that could happen.
This film is basically a story of good versus evil, courage and doing the best you can in an horrific, overwhelming situation. It would probably have been better to have seen it without the hype, but nonetheless it was worth the second viewing last night. The documentary includes interviews with all of the cast-members, 25 years on, and answers many of the burning questions raised by the film, while also highlighting aspects which hadn’t been immediately obvious.
My own main question – you got a child to film a scene doing THAT!? – was solved in this documentary by learning that no, a 25 year old actress was there for a couple of scenes, where you don’t actually see Regan’s face. ‘The Fear of God…’ is a treasure trove of trivia, covering everything from the technicalities involved in filming it, through the rumours and legends which have grown up surrounding the film (yes, 9 people did die; different points of view are shown concerning that fact), to the impact that ‘The Exorcist’ has had on films and people to the present day. It was interesting simply as a documentary about a film, but was fascinating when it concerned the film that I had just finished watching.
I haven’t read the book yet, so cannot comment, but it ‘explores the web of shocking truths and myths which surround the film’ and appears to be similar to the documentary in content.
Reviewer: Mab
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