I really hope you didn’t believe that I didn’t have a plan to fill out the 6 Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays left over after covering the 7 Paranormal Activity movies… The Exorcist and it’s 5(ish) sequels fit right into Paranormal Octoberty! Both franchises are about demons preying on humanity, but take different journeys on how that manifests. Plus it gives me a chance to review both a horror classic–this one–and also what a number of people argue is one of the worst horror movies ever made–Exorcist II: The Heretic. Is that really how I’m going to honor the recent death of Mr. James Earl Jones? Christ Almighty… Choices have certainly been made.
We all know the story of The Exorcist, right? It’s a horror classic so it feels a little reductive and/or redundant to spend a lot of time summarizing it, but just to get it out of the way… Father Merrin (Mr. Max von Sydow, AKA the iconic and very important Lor San Tekka in Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens) is in Iraq doing… something and finds… something else. Back in America, a girl named Regan (Linda Blair) gets possessed after playing with a Ouija board (more on that later). Her mother, actress Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), is at her wit’s end with the possibility that her daughter may actually be possessed instead of having a mental problem, which is what all the specialists she hired say. When people start dying due to this demonic situation, Columbo Lt. Kinderman (Lee J Cobb) shows up and does his Columbo thing pokes around. Eventually Chris turns to Father Karras (Jason Miller), a priest at risk of losing his faith. He teams up with Merrin to try an exorcism on this demon who calls itself the Devil (no Pazuzu in this film!), but it doesn’t go well. Merrin dies and a furious Karras demands the demon take over his body. It does, but is seemingly defeated when Karras jumps out a window to his death. Regan is free, though! I’m sure that will last.
There’s a lot to talk about this film, and people better than me have do so to death. So, uh… How about the way time passes in the movie? I don’t think that has been discussed to death. So many bad movies seem to bend over backwards to show you every step of a simple process; like, Birdemic: Shock and Terror has to show us people getting into their car, driving to a location, getting out of their car, and then entering building. The Exorcist is not a fan of that. Sizable periods of time pass between scenes, and we’re just supposed to pick up details through context clues. Like, how did Karras’ mother die? The last we see of her is being involuntarily institutionalized at Bellevue Hospital–which, side note, is also a city in my home state and I was so confused growing up whenever Law & Order or whatever talked about it–and then we’re told she died. Except we’re told she was living alone and was dead for several days before her body was found, which doesn’t work if she was in a hospital. What’s the disconnect? Well, Karras’ uncle talks about money problems, so it makes sense that she was forcibly discharged between scenes. Things like Chris’ movie and Regan’s “illness” progress without us actively seeing them, but we get enough details to know that yes, they are still happening while the movie focuses on other things. Basically I like that The Exorcist fleshes itself out with details like that; we don’t need to be spoon-fed every detail that doesn’t further the plot. Take note, shitty movies!
I’m also fascinated by the legacy of this movie. Yeah yeah yeah, horror classic that spawned a thousand tropes, that’s not what I’m talking about. The Exorcist ruined Ouija boards forever, or at least gave them an air of menace that they didn’t have before. The quick and dirty history is that talking boards used to communicate with the dead and/or swindle money out of rubes had been used for centuries and picked up popularity when occultism was en vogue in the 19th century, with Ouija now being the most recognizable brand. But the vibes were completely different before this movie. Hell, there’s an episode of I Love Lucy featuring a Ouija board and it was played for laughs. But this movie changed everything in a way that I find captivating. People went back to swimming after Jaws and continued to take showers after Psycho, but go ahead and suggest bringing out a Ouija board at a party and see how many people immediately and forcefully tell you not to. As a real life example, while writing this section I asked my partners if they’d be cool with me using a board in our new house and the reaction was… not receptive. And amidst all this, the boards are not actually evil, man! It’s a piece of cardboard that’s a age-old party trick that sometimes sees the planchette move thanks to unconscious movements from you, not from a demon or ghost just waiting to take over your body! But then again, this could be Pazuzu talking through me, hoping to get a few of his friends into our world. He’s tricksy like that.
Next: Exorcist II: The Heretic
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