It is truely rare for a film to transend its plot, its genre. I am sure besides The Exorcist, there are examples, but I have thought hard and none come to mind
What does come to mind is that when see this film at the video store in the horror section, I just have to laugh. Horror is great, but calling Billy Friedkin's Exorcist horror is like calling the Beatles a rock and roll group or Picasso a painter--true but in grand context totally meaningless.
And even that does not hold water. The Beatles and Picasso worked in their genres to define them. Exorsist takes elements of horror, but goes completely outside the box of horror fights or horror cheese.
A preist digs up an idol on a archeology site in Iraq. He knows he has found something evil, forces he cannot put back. Soon, in Georgetown Washington, a sweet little girl, daughter of a film star, develops what seems to be a psychatric illness. She morphs, slowly, into a sexualized monster.
This is what we think at first, and so does her mother. But she is not the monster. The monster is the devil himself. The mother does not know this, and after extensive psychological and medical treatment, goes to see a priest. The mother knows something even more awful--far more awful-than disease has taken her daugter. She is proven right when the beast comes out of the little girl and kills two priests during the exorsism, one having a crisis of faith, the other the priest who excavated the idol in Iraq.
This was 1973, which is part of the reason the Exorcist works so amazingly on so many levels. Horror was becomming more serious, graphic, and better made in the 1970s.
Friendkin, though, removes the always implied fiction of the genre . We are so sucked into the idea this child has a grave mental illness, it becomes plausable that she is in fact had by Satan himself.
Even the most secularized viewer of the Exorsist will feel the fear of this prospect. Dark nights, cold rooms, the mother being totally alone in the house: all the conventions that make standard horror creepy, and define it in our minds as fiction, are given concrete and awful reality. If it can happen to a film star in a major US city in 1973, it can happen to any of us. The devil is real.
Evil exists, The Exorsist tells us, and can strike randomly at any time. We beleive it.
1973 was David Bowie, key clubs, Watergate: even the most straight suburbinte was getting more secularized. The counter-culture was seeping to the mainstreem. God, the intellectuals thought, was dead. There was no evil or good, just relative behavior.
I embrace secular society: if you don't, look at Iran or Taliban Afganistan: but that is my point. The Exorcist is powerful enough as both fiction and theory to make you question if there is a force of true evil: a devil liberal rock and rollers like me dismiss as arcane as which trials or deeming mental illness a crime.
Friedkin is sticking it to us here in the most primal of ways: no good, no evil, like your textbooks, your encounter groups, your psychoanalysis?
HAVE THIS.
Average Rating:
Actor:
- Ellen Burstyn
- Max von Sydow
- Linda Blair
- Lee J. Cobb
- Kitty Winn
Director: William Friedkin
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Region Code: 0
Languages:
Original Language: Arabic
Original Language: English
Original Language: French
Original Language: German
Original Language: Greek
Original Language: Latin
Amazon.com essential video:
Director William Friedkin was a hot ticket in Hollywood after the success of The French Connection, and he turned heads (in more ways than one) when he decided to make The Exorcist as his follow-up film. Adapted by William Peter Blatty from his controversial bestseller, this shocking 1973 thriller set an intense and often-copied milestone for screen terror with its unflinching depiction of a young girl (Linda Blair) who is possessed by an evil spirit. Jason Miller and Max von Sydow are perfectly cast as the priests who risk their sanity and their lives to administer the rites of demonic exorcism, and Ellen Burstyn plays Blair's mother, who can only stand by in horror as her daughter's body is wracked by satanic disfiguration. One of the most frightening films ever made, The Exorcist was mysteriously plagued by troubles during production, and the years have not diminished its capacity to disturb even the most stoical viewers. The film is presented in letterbox format on digital video disc, with a soundtrack that's guaranteed to curdle your blood. Don't say you weren't warned! --Jeff Shannon
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Customer Reviews
The Greatest of Horrors (for some)
Probably the most suspenseful thing about this much-lauded horror flick is when the exorcist appears in the doorway as a mysterious and intriguing figure. The rest is an attempt to raise the bar on horror gore, blood, profanity and sickeningly repulsive special effects. Originally, I really didn't find it either scary or disturbing in any way. That's because the dialogue was so predictable that you could just about pen the next line yourself. Every device was used in this movie to attempt to shock the audience; you name it, it had it. However, it was so over-the-top that it became nearly laughable in its extremes. To me, true horror is what is implied rather than actual; referred rather than present.
The Exorcist was released in 1973, a time when people were just about fed-up with Hollywood. This particular film was meant to revive interest in the cinema experience, and, to that end, was reasonably successful. It even had tall tales of people running out of the theatre screaming: hard to know whether that was real or hyped by hired stooges.
However, I do recall clearly how the practice of exorcism became extremely popular for a time after the release of this movie. In fact, the catholic church had a real boost in public interest, especially its semi-mystical side. The catholic church never had it so good for a few years!
The Exorcist routinely makes the top of lists of greatest ever horror movies so who am I to argue with the majority view? I must confess, though, it doesn't conjure too many phobias in me, apart from putting me off porridge in bed, perhaps.
Three and a half stars because it is worth watching for its unique subject matter up to that time.
Can we think the Catholic Church endorses such pagan demons?
That film was a turning point in horror films, in a way. For sure it did not concern some kind of mythical being or character. It was centered on a real person, living next door or up the street. That's the really new element, and even so, there had been some antecedents. The second new element here is the strongly Catholic context, and it is not clear at all that the Catholic Church is not used as a justification, a stamp of truth posted on the film, in other words an alibi. I find that slightly embarrassing today for the Catholic Church and all Catholics in the world. Many Catholics consider that demons, and daemons, and so on along that line, are nothing but a pagan heritage in the Christian approach of the world. The last point is not new at all. It is the close association of these demons to something found in some archaeological site in North Iraq, in other words in Moslem territory. This can be seen today as an anti-Moslem bias and it is absolutely unacceptable. On that point, like on the previous one, the film has aged tremendously. Apart from that the film was well made and still is well made. The suspense and the progression of the plot are quite clear. We understand more or less that the demon takes possession of the younger exorcist and that this priest prefers killing himself to being possessed. There are though several points that remain unanswered and difficult to accept. Why did that demon take possession of a priest? Wasn't it more comfortable to be in a young girl? And how can the priest justify his suicide in any way? If God enables a demon to take possession of one of his priests, that priest has to wait for God to liberate him, and committing suicide is not that kind of a liberation. That's why I will classify this film among the films that played an important role when they came out and even accumulated some fame because of it, but that have today aged tremendously and lost most of their appeal. The list of those is long.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
IT'S A CLASSIC
this is a movie that sent chills down my spine when i was growing up. i had to have it for my collection and now that my daughter is grown it is one of her favorits also.
The Exorcist
When a 12-year old girl is possessed by demons, a young priest takes it upon himself to selflessly save her at the behest of her famous movie-star mother. In an era when many movies compete to scare the devil out of you, The Exorcist remains one of the few able to successfully scare the devil into you. This is one of the great horror movies.
