Twelve-year-old Regan McNeil (Linda Blair) starts to act bizarrely. With medical science proving at a loss to explain her condition, Regan's mother (Ellen Burstyn) turns to religion, in spite of her avowed agnosticism. Father Karras (Jason Miller), a young priest experiencing a crisis of faith following the death of his mother, is called in to investigate. He diagnoses demonic possession and sends for Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow), an elderly priest with experience of exorcism.
What do we really have here? Certainly not the best film ever made. That's a conclusion one could only come to when engaged in boosterism and on the defensive about an investment of cultural capital. But The Exorcist is a well made, effective mainstream horror film, whose astute use of William Castle style exploitation tactics (nurses in attendance at screenings, rumours of a real-life curse on the production etc) and ability to tap into the zeitgeist ensured the it became a major cultural event and attracted non-horror audiences who would give down-and-dirty indies like Night of the Living Dead and Last House on the Left a wide berth.
It seems incredible to think, now, that the film was banned on video in the UK for nearly 20 years. And, indeed, one wonders if that wasn't part of the problem. Films that most likely came and went elsewhere in the world – A Clockwork Orange, Straw Dogs, to say nothing of obscure "video nasties" – garnered cult status and noteriety through their simple legal unavailability here.
But with all these titles freely available maybe the hype will die so then can be seen for what they are: nothing special for the most part.
Little in William Friedkin's later career has lived up to the early double whammy of The French Connection and The Exorcist . Cruising ? Jade ? Give me a break!
Maybe this painful decline is why the director more recently endorsed the new "version you've never seen" cut of The Exorcist, adding in new scnes like the infamous "spider walk" sequence.
These additions, however, actually seem to detract from the film rather than add to it. One of the Exorcist's great strengths, early on, its the ambiguity early on: This is the modern world; this can't be happening. Alas, as soon as Regan's head spins round and it is confirmed that this is indeed a case of demonic poseesion, the philosophically interesting aspects of the film are soon lost in a welter of special effects and demon-priest face-offs.
Friedkin is fond of saying that "you get out of [The Exorcist] what you take to it" I can't help thinking that it work best for conservative minded Catholic believers (it's worth mentioning here that, while the Catholic believer part might well be a fair description of screenwriter William Peter Blatty, it wouldn't apply to the Jewish agnostic director) but is less effective for others, including this reviewer.
Copyright © K H Brown 2002-2005
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