REVIEW: The Exorcist (1973)

If I had a nickel for every demonic possession movie that came out these last five years or so, I’d be rich enough to make sure there was never another one. I mean honestly. What subset of movies has been sucked dry more than this? Let's just take a look at some of these wonderfully creative films which have so much of their own ideas...

 

...and the list goes on. It’s gone beyond beating a dead horse and more into beating a dead horse with the flogged carcass of another dead horse, while sitting on a third dead horse. Where does it end? Where did it begin?

Well, we can answer the second question.

Director: William Friedkin

Starring: Linda Blair, Ellen Burstyn

IMDb

Yes, The Exorcist, often touted as one of the scariest movies ever made. And rightly so. It’s a masterpiece. It is one of the most richly textured horror films out there, as much a drama as it is a horror film really. But at the same time, it also packs some of the blackest, vilest depths of evil you will ever see in a film. But to truly understand this masterpiece of cinema, we must call a priest and have him cast out everything from the movie so we can examine it.

The movie begins slowly, with an old man out in Iraq discovering some mysterious artifacts that remind him of something long-past that we don’t know about yet. We get some quiet build-ups that really just establish his character and the hesitation he’s going through. We fade out on a shot of him standing in the desert against a demonic shadow figure.

Pretty damn effective and ominous.

Then we get our main characters, Regan and Chris, who are both women born in that strange ambiguous time when men and womens’ names seemed to be interchangeable. Chris is an actress and spends her time trying to make her hairdo as gender-ambiguous as her name. When she’s not doing that, she hangs out with her British director, Burke Dennings, and plays with Regan in the evenings. Regan has made a new invisible friend named Captain Howdy, who I think used to hang out with the Devil’s Rejects cast before this movie.

Another difference between then and now: parents would immediately become suspicious in 2013 if their little girls started saying they were hanging out with Captain Howdy.

So the movie unfolds pretty slow and comfortably, taking its time to set up its characters. Shit – most modern movies would have had about twenty jump scares at this point. Some people might confuse this kind of pacing as sluggish, but I like it. It sets up everything very well and you get to like the characters pretty well. We get introduced to our other main character in Father Damien Karras, a priest in the city losing his faith while his ailing mother passes away under the gaze of uncaring relatives.

Here’s another thing this does so well – it really does a good job with those scenes of people trying to figure out what’s wrong with Regan. To start with, there really isn’t much of a transition into her getting sick. We get introduced to the character, she seems okay, and after we return from some of the Father Karras scenes, she’s just in the hospital – bam. No other explanation needed. I love how we find out a lot of the stuff wrong with her just through Chris talking with the doctors. There are no goofy over the top jump scares and no bullshit mythos – it’s all very grounded in reality at first, which is really the way to go. Unfortunately these days, we are so over-saturated with these kinds of stories and we have the Internet to contend with, so it wouldn’t be believable quite as much to have a scene like this in, say, The Last Exorcism III: The Dead Horse.

In The Exorcist though, we get some very good, detailed scenes of hard-working doctors trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with Regan. There are some expensive medical treatments and some very uncomfortable scenes. The film, again, takes its time. Remember in my Paranormal Activity review when I said research isn’t scary? This is the exception.

The reason is because it’s all so slowly built up – the film crawls toward its point by establishing that the characters really have no other options to turn to. Chris is pushed to her breaking point and simply cannot find any other explanation except the supernatural. She becomes so desperate that she ends up accepting the one thing she never thought she would: demonic forces from another plane of existence.

"Hmmm...my diagnosis is, you're fucked."

That’s really, really good, actually. If you’ve never seen this movie before, let me go back and explain a bit – in the middle of the research scenes where the doctors are puzzled about what’s wrong with Regan, one of the doctors asks if she or Regan has any religious beliefs. Chris replies that no, neither one of them do. Which would be a fairly commonplace thing nowadays – many people are atheists now and it’s not something to be ashamed of. Most people don’t even blink at that. But this was the 70s, when we as a country were just starting to come out of the long shadow of the Church and of religion in general. It was a confusing, transitional time and people were moving away from the old guard of religious beliefs – the world was changing.

And that’s the cincher right there – that’s why this movie is so scary. Because it takes a woman who, by all accounts is rational and modernistic in this world, and shows her that really, everything we know as sophisticated, civilized and modern is just a bunch of shit. Really, the old world never left and it never will leave – the old world is eternal and the Devil is real. That’s fuckin’ terrifying, man. That’s the pitch blackest horror there is. The Exorcist takes our changing, atheistic and unchristian world and turns it upside down.

The expression on their faces sums up the movie for me: pure fear masked by a shaky confidence in science and manmade inventions, even though what lies beneath the Earth is about to take over. Terrifying.

So yeah, I guess I should talk about the Regan devil-possession scenes…they’re pretty damned gross. I don’t think these scenes by themselves are anything that scary as much as they are disturbing. I mean, especially if you don’t like people vomiting up green bile. In that case, don’t watch Troll 2. You’ll probably have an aneurysm.

There's one for the family photo albums!

These scenes are just crazy. I mean, there’s one scene where she scuttles down the stairs backwards with her mouth bleeding. I don’t think there’s enough antibiotics in the world for that. Plus, this scene comes on the tails of Regan discovering that her director friend is dead and that Regan’s doctors can’t help her. Jesus. Can this woman’s life get any worse? Why not just add in the fact that she doesn’t get to appear in the sequel to the mix?

Oh, well, that last one – probably a plus…but still:

So we get some scenes of this detective guy who looks like a drunk, out-of-work Paul Newman investigating Father Karras – ironically, he says Father Karras looks like Paul Newman. Maybe having Paul Newman in this movie wouldn’t have been a bad idea. You could have had him be the possessed one. That would be something…especially if he played the role of the daughter just like Linda Blair does. I’m not going to post a picture of that, but just let it sit in your mind for a while: a little girl contracts an otherworldly possession and turns into Paul Newman. Terrifying.

And yes, I fully realize the above passage will never be entered into the annals of my all-time funniest jokes on the blog. Shut up. The detective guy’s only character seems to be inviting the people he interrogates to go see movies with him. I guess it’s supposed to be a way to try and bribe them, but I dunno; I’m more inclined to think he just has no friends after letting the killer in 12 Angry Men go free.

Well I never!

Either way he doesn’t get very far, and the movie mostly focuses on Chris’s attempts to save Regan. She finally consults with Father Karras, who has become a tortured soul after his mother passed away. Karras takes her seriously enough to start an investigation into whether or not Regan’s case merits an exorcism.

This is yet another difference from most other movies that took influence from The Exorcist: these scenes actually take their time and feel realistic. The Church above all is not just some transparent entity that lets people do whatever they want – there are rules. And very few times – much less in films like The Possession, The Devil Inside or The Conjuring – would they actually just allow an exorcism. But here we have the exception: this is the case that throws everyone for a loop, that proves the Church wrong after years of nothing, here’s another exorcism they have to do, nestled in this modern agnostic world.

Movies today just treat exorcisms like any other everyday thing: “Oh, damn, time for another exorcism again. Want to meet for coffee after?” Just try and tell me with a straight face that any of the scenes in The Conjuring that try and make this idea suspenseful are any good. Fucking please. This is the real deal. Here it feels like things matter. You, the viewer, feel the weight of Karras’s discovery and of the decision to perform the exorcism. That matters a lot.

They recruit Father Merrin, who was the old man from the opening, to come and help out. Apparently because Merrin has so much experience after almost dying the last time he did an exorcism. How do you think that conversation went? “Hey, Father Merrin…remember that time you almost died doing that extremely dangerous exorcism? …Want to do it again?” How rude.

So then we get the exorcism scenes, which are great in part just because any movie that can make two guys standing over a wrinkled Muppet reject and shouting “The power of Christ compels you!” suspenseful is doing something right.

"And for my next trick, I'll make a sequel without any logic or sense in it whatsoever!"

But we quickly find out that it doesn’t work as well as they’d like. Karras tries, but the demon in Regan just won’t let him forget his dearly departed mother, channeling her at every turn to rattle him. Karras has to go downstairs, and when he comes back up, Father Merrin has been killed by the demon. Losing control, Karras goes and strangles Regan until the demon leaves her and comes into him instead. Then he jumps out a window and dies, ending the demon’s reign of terror forever…or until the two sequels came out. But either way, hurray!

The ending does raise some interesting questions though – they went through all that ritualistic bullshit when the real way to beat the demon was just to strangle it out with your bare hands? How stupid they must be feeling now! Ha ha…a good man just lost his life. But seriously though. I really do like the subtext here: religion isn’t all-powerful, the Church isn’t all-knowing. In place of a holy, sacrosanct ritual, it’s blunt violence that wins the day in this movie. That’s pretty important.

And it’s a very important movie. As gruesome and unpleasant as The Exorcist can be, it really is a prime example of horror working outside its bounds and making something artistic and meaningful, while still being scary and suspenseful. It’s the best of both worlds, and an all-time classic. If you’ve never seen this, and are enamored with its pale imitators…well, you need to treat yourself to this movie this Halloween. Whether or not you agree with me that its modern-day imitators are crap, there is no denying the power of The Exorcist.

Happy Halloween!

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Review: Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

Director: John Boorman

Starring: Linda Blair, James Earl Jones, Richard Burton

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076009/

"I was possessed by a demon. Oh, it's okay. He's gone!"

-Regan

It takes a special type to review so many bad movies. You start to question things – you start to really look at yourself and how you spend your time. Sometimes you feel like giving up. ‘This is stupid,’ you’ll say, wistfully looking at your work and deciding that you’ll stop doing it, that you’ll quit and start doing more productive things with your time. Like feeding homeless people, or helping autistic children. Yes, you’ll say…this is the way to a better, more productive life. But the demon is always there. Do you feel it yet? It’s nagging at you. Kind of…small at first; a little itch in the back of your mind. And the rage builds up, and then you find yourself there again, in the midst of it all, sitting through another product of humanity’s misery and lunacy.

Huh? Oh, right; I’m still doing a review. This one was hard to swallow, people. It’s just…yergh, what a bad one this was. If you remember the original Exorcist movie from ’73; well, it was a masterwork, with a sick, festering demeanor that really elevated it above anything else at the time. But even if you disagree with that statement, I think we can all come to the conclusion that the sequel, released a mere 4 years later, is an abomination upon man and beast alike. Yes, folks, this is Exorcist II: The Heretic, widely reviled as one of the worst films ever made in the history of filmmaking. This movie is so bad that most people don’t even want to acknowledge its existence, instead preferring to jump to the third Exorcist movie instead. It’s so bad it caused riots at the theater when it was first released. So, the question on everyone's mind: is it really that bad? Yes. Yes it is.

We kick off our magical ass-raping adventure with a black screen that displays the title while some cats are apparently being murdered in the background, as the horrible yowling noise that continues on throughout the credits suggests. As a side note, the soundtrack for this movie was done by the same guys who did Once Upon a Time in America and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Isn’t that sad? Then we see a priest trying to exorcise a girl in South America as a crowd protests. She gets set on fire somehow, lets out a really fake scream and then...we cut to a scene of people rehearsing a stage performance? What?

That’s a pretty messy transition there, guys. But don’t worry! If you didn’t like that, there’s only a MILLION MORE HORRIBLE TRANSITIONS like it to come! We’ve got two hours of movie and you can bet your shorts they’ll exploit this horrendous directing to the fullest!

Among the performers is Regan, the girl from the first movie, played again by Linda Blair. Yeah. She’s grown up a lot in the last few years. And the movie won’t let you forget that, either, as every scene she’s in seems to show off her perky breasts like trophies, because I guess that’s all her vapid, stupid character has going for her. Not that I have a problem with this, though – probably one of the only redeeming factors in this movie. Might as well just make two hours of Linda Blair stripping. I know her character is only 16 here, but…you’d still end up with a more integral, intelligent movie than we have here.

Yes, apparently she’s still under the care of a psychiatrist to make sure the memories of her demonic possession don’t resurface, I guess. She also has a caretaker named Sharon, played by Kitty Winn, who reprises another role from the original film. I’d go into more detail here but really there’s no substance – the scenes are so short they’re gone before you can even process them; what, is the movie on speed? And were they…instructed to act like they do here? I call it acting but really I don’t know what they were doing. They’re so wooden and so completely devoid of any kind of feeling that it’s like I’m watching the robots from the Jetsons emoting in a horror film. Take a guess if you think I ever wanted to see the robots from the Jetsons acting in a horror movie. Just guess.

If you picked ‘yes,’ then go lobotomize yourself with the blunt end of a hammer. There’s no hope for you.

So we see the priest from the opening, whose name is Father Lamont, talking to an older guy who I think taught Tommy Wiseau from The Room how to act; he’s just about as stiff. The older guy tells him to investigate the death of Father Merrin from the first movie, who is under posthumous charges of heresy as the church didn’t like what he was writing about, not wanting to acknowledge Satan as an actual evil presence anymore. I do think this is a pretty interesting subplot, but of course it’s never given any due attention and quickly fades into the background. Disappointment, thy name is Exorcist 2. But don’t worry, there’s more of that to come, too.

That scene ends abruptly after like 2 minutes again, and I really have to wonder how anyone didn’t just go up to director John Boorman and kick him straight in the ballsack for this, because how am I supposed to be invested in this movie when EVERY SINGLE SCENE just randomly cuts off and ends, no tension whatsoever? It’s insipid as shit! This is really textbook bad filmmaking right here. Seriously, guys. Try and make a scene longer than a minute and a half.

Okay, so we have Father Lamont coming to Regan’s psychiatrist to try and talk to her. Somehow this leads to a strange, strange experiment where Regan and her psychiatrist are hooked up to a machine that links their brain waves, or some shit like that; I don’t really know. It flashes a light repeatedly while a cheap synthesizer plays one plodding note over and over again, all while the characters talk in monotones that somehow manage to be even less convincing than the regular acting.

Well, that’s alright. It will end after a minute and a half, right? And then we can move onto the next scene and forget about this abysmal crap.

…right? RIGHT?!

No, apparently THIS is the scene they were saving the mindnumbingly long duration for! Yep, this is like 5 straight minutes of nothing but one-note synths and a flashing light over the characters’ faces while they babble about ‘coming down to one another,’ or some other inane garbage that the writers probably shat out of their asses while on a marijuana high. Have you noticed the weird sexual undertone to this whole thing? Talking about ‘trying the machine,’ ‘going deeper,’ ‘doing it like I showed you’…it’s pretty damn disturbing, and I don’t think I’m alone when I say I don’t need to see a threesome with Linda Blair, a psychiatrist and a priest – that sounds more like a really bad joke. The synth noise in the background is just hysterical, too; like hypnosis performed by a drunken sloth on Ritalin.

Look at that; it's like they hired the special effect editor's five year old to help with their movie.

Don’t you always think of these images when you think of The Exorcist? Isn’t it just a perfect fit?

Through a highly silly attempted recreation of the demonic possession of the first film Father Lamont finds out the demon’s name is Pazuzu, which sounds kind of like a particularly colorful Pokemon name or something. We see possessed Regan again in the vision, except her voice is now more like a kooky old cat lady rather than the embodiment of evil from the original film. Then we get some highly weird, drugged out montages of African wilderness and animal life through the eyes of a locust flying around. Did the movie just decide it wanted to be a documentary instead? Maybe the director wanted to go to Africa and just figured, hey, why not put what I saw on my Safari tour into the movie I’m making? That’s good filmmaking!

Run! The cameraman from Exorcist II is going to put us in his movie!

Augh, and they’re still going with this one scene, too! What is up with this? Just fucking end it already!

Of special note is at the end of the scene when the psychiatrist lady actually gets a heart attack from being wired to the machine. Isn’t that silly? I guess it backfired, huh lady? And then after that we see the movie turning into a satanic Lifetime special as the movie shows us Regan using her unconscious psychic powers to get an autistic girl to talk. This scientific miracle should have been studied and marveled over by everyone in the world, but I guess it’ll have to wait, as the psychologist doesn’t want Regan to study these powers until she’s older. Why? No real reason. That’s just how this fucking movie rolls I guess!

So since Father Lamont saw some weird visions of a little African kid surviving a demonic possession just like Regan did except over in Africa, he wants to go there and track down the kid, who he thinks will be able to help him figure out how to stop the demon, and has to disobey the church like a kid with his hand stuck in the cookie jar. Even though they wanted him to investigate what happened to Father Merrin, now that he actually has a lead, they don’t want him to do it anymore. Weird. It turns out that kid has grown up into James Earl Jones…but first we have to sit through some highly pointless, aimless scenes of Father Lamont wandering around in Africa with some tribal men. Yep, the movie is set in Africa now! Surprised? Yeah. Because you really think of tribal Africa when you think of The Exorcist. That makes a lot of sense.

But hey, at least we have a naked chick to show for no good reason! And Ned Beatty is in the film now, too! Surprised?

...that's really random. Both of these images are.

No, it’s all building up to the big meeting with James Earl Jones, who can apparently give Father Lamont all the answers he needs. Yes, this guy right here is going to finally reveal what this movie has been about all along and give us some much needed coherency. THANK YOU, Mr. Jones! You are a legend! You are a…locust?

….Hahaha! Hahahahahaha! What the hell is that? Are we really supposed to take that seriously? You know what I think happened? I don’t even think they told him to wear that costume. I think he probably just wears it randomly whenever he feels like it! It makes just about as much sense as anything else. He just walked onto set wearing nothing but that costume for the day and they just had to shrug and go with it. Maybe he knew this movie sucked and was just having fun or something. I couldn’t blame him for that one.

Then Jones takes Lamont on a tour of his research facility, because the whole locust thing was really just a dream – yeah, I know, just go with it – and talks to Lamont for a long time about locusts. Lamont goes back home and then everything Jones talked about is quickly forgotten and shoved into the movie’s abyssal ass-crack of forgettableness just like everything else in the plot. WHAT? I’m sorry but WHAT? You wasted ALL THAT TIME and showed us ALL THOSE POINTLESS SCENES just to forget about it the second they’re out of Africa? And he didn’t even learn anything! He just listened to Jones talk about locusts and then left! What happened to…oh, I don’t know, INVESTIGATING like you were supposed to? Did anyone even bother proofreading this script? Is anyone even aware of what they’re doing here? MAKE MORE SENSE.

Okay, so through more recycled scenes of the locust’s POV flying around Africa and mind-numbing scenes with that brain synchronizer machine that makes the synth noise, the movie reaches its climax, which is sort of like the armpit hairs of the movie Poltergeist. Somehow Lamont gets possessed, and then Sharon sets a car on fire, and there’s suddenly two different versions of Regan, and everything is flying around and exploding, and…it’s a mess. Sharon dies from some burn wounds and then the movie just kind of ends, no resolution at all.

Holy mother of shit, this was a bad one. I mean, what the hell can I even say about this? What can I possibly do to sum up why this movie is so horrible? It’s just unsalvageable. The acting is some of the worst out there, the directing is muddled in faux-symbolic stupidity and the storyline just makes no sense. At all. Plot threads are introduced with little fanfare and cut out with even less. Scenes plod along until they’re given the ax unceremoniously, ending without any kind of resolution. And the crowning jewel of the movie’s accomplishments is James Earl Jones wearing a locust costume; can you possibly get any less sane? This is just the cinematic version of the green vomit-like bile that Regan spat out in the first movie, like it mutated into a festering abortion of film. Just heinous. HEINOUS!

Happy Halloween!