Iconic image from The Exorcist (www.imamusuem.org)
Jack-o’-lanterns, spooks, scarecrows, and ghosts! AAAARGH!!! Is it (gulp) the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown? Not quite, but it is October, folks, the season when the leaves turn brown and the skies turn gray. And that means… Halloween is upon us and just around the corner.
We’re not there yet, of course, but Reviews by Josmar Lopes will be celebrating its annual October Horror Fest with a month-long parade of revamped (Zombies? The undead?) reviews. Yes, you heard that right. In addition to our regular features and overviews of movies, opera, theater, and the like, we’ll be posting newly expanded critiques of our favorite horror flicks from time immemorial (well, my time, anyway) for your weekly consumption.
Let’s start our October Horror Fest off not with a whimper but with a bang: one of my all-time favorite flicks, The Exorcist from 1973.
Confession is Good for the Soul
Two priests — one young, one old — are in the midst of performing the Roman Catholic rite of exorcism in a suburban Georgetown home. The temperature in the room they are in has gone down to 30 below zero. As the priests repeat the phrase, “The power of Christ compels you!” ad nauseam, they sprinkle holy water over the free-floating form of a twelve-year-old girl.
The shocking events that follow are all part of director William Friedkin’s two-hour fright-fest The Exorcist, one of the most chilling examples of horror ever committed to celluloid. Written by novelist William Peter Blatty, who adapted his own 1971 bestseller for the screen and worked as one of the producers, the film begins, innocently enough, at an archeological site somewhere in Northern Iraq. The elderly Father Lankester Merrin (a wrinkled up Max von Sydow in makeup) suspects an old “enemy” has been let loose on the Earth in the form of an ancient relic. To his horror, Father Merrin realizes that sooner or later he will have to come to grips with this evil force, their final confrontation taking place in the climactic exorcism scene described above.
Back in Georgetown, a troubled priest named Father Damien Karras (a somber and dark visaged Jason Miller) is approached by Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), a desperate actress and single mother whose young daughter Regan (the fresh-faced Linda Blair) is experiencing, shall we say, dramatic physical and behavioral changes — an “extreme makeover” no child would want (and no mother could love).
Ellen Burstyn in The Exorcist
Chris begs Father Karras to perform an exorcism on the girl, but Karras is not so easily convinced. To start, he has doubts about his own faith, and worries if exorcism is the right path to take. But after seeing Regan “in the flesh,” he decides to seek the Church’s advice and aid in combating the vile menace that’s taken over the girl. That’s where Father Merrin comes in, the exorcist of the title.
Demonic possession is the winner-take-all game – and the devil, or something claiming to be the devil, plays for keeps. Regan’s transformation from a cute and playful youngster into a projectile vomiting, filthy-tongued monstrosity (“Your mother sucks cocks in hell” is one of the film’s classic lines) serves as the special FX centerpiece to the drama, one of the scariest features we know.
Filmed on location at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and at Fordham University in the Bronx (where yours truly went to school!), the lead actors underwent unbelievable pain and suffering to produce this masterpiece of the genre. The book, while richer in detail and background information, was shocking enough for readers; but the film version transcends the normal boundaries of the printed page to deliver a gut-wrenching punch to the solar plexus at every opportunity.
Yet its main strength remains the ironclad script, Blatty’s first. He went on to direct The Exorcist III, but none of the subsequent sequels approached the original’s flair. Kudos to director Friedkin (The French Connection) for getting his cast to undergo almost as much physical torture and discomfort as their fictional counterparts. The end result is gripping storytelling at its edge-of-the-seat finest. In addition to the superb technical aspects — by makeup man Dick Smith (Amadeus), and effects wizard Marcel Vercoutere — the sound plays an absolutely integral part in the overall production design, thanks to Gonzalo Gavira of El Topo fame.
Max von Sydow & Jason Miller (andsoitbeginsfilms.com)
Jason Miller, who was also a fine playwright as well as comedian Jackie Gleason’s son-in-law, proved a wise choice for the role of Damien Karras, while Max von Sydow, who was then in his early 40s, made an excellent elder exorcist. Their faith is put to the supreme test in the all-important exorcism. Along with Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair, this quartet of key players brings a convincing presence to everyday individuals thrust into a maelstrom of horrific events few of us have ever experienced. Because of their utter believability, taking whatever was thrown at them in stride (they were locked up for weeks in an ice-cold room cooled by industrial-strength air conditioners), that exorcism scene retains its devastating power 40 years after the fact. Lives are lost, sacrifices are made, and good triumphs over evil, but not in the way one would expect.
The fine supporting cast includes veteran Lee J. Cobb as kindly Lieutenant Kinderman, Jack MacGowran (who died shortly after completing his part) as Burke Dennings, William O’Malley (an actual Jesuit priest, who served as technical adviser on the project) as Father Joe Dyer, and Rev. Tom Bermingham, another real-life priest, with Kitty Wynn, Vasiliki Mariaros, Titos Vandis, Peter Masterson, Barton Heyman, and Wallace Rooney. The electronically enhanced voice of the demon was mouthed by veteran actress Mercedes McCambridge.
And, yes, that really was green-pea soup that Linda Blair sprayed all over Von Sydow’s face. The urban legend that audience members had fainted and thrown up in theater aisles at the time of the film’s release is based on fact. We dare you to see it with the lights out! Go on…
Copyright © 2013 by Josmar F. Lopes
