Last night I had the pleasure (if you want to call it that) of attending a Fathom Exorcist event at my local Regal Cinema here in Lexington, Kentucky and put together by Warner Brothers Studios. I was born in 1976, so I was about three years too late on seeing the film (okay, more than that — my parents would be the worst parents in the world if they took a baby to see The Exorcist). When Warner Brothers sent me an email asking if I was interested in seeing The Exorcist on the big screen there wasn’t anyway I was going to miss it. I had seen it on DVD and I hope to see it soon on the upcoming Blu-ray release from Warner.
Still there’s something great about seeing such a scary film in the theater. Of course, it helps it even more when Warner Brothers cleans up the film and remixes the sound. It makes for a jarring experience.
If you haven’t seen it, the film revolves around an actress named Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) and her daughter Regan (Linda Blair). They’ve just moved into a condo in Georgetown, right outside of D.C. so that Chris can shoot a film. While there strange things begin to occur in the house, mainly just noises. The noises move from the attic to Regan’s bedroom (after Chris opens the attic to explore the happenings) and soon Regan slowly begins to change. A normally sweet child starts turning brash and even downright violent at times and her mother simply cannot figure out what the issue can be. Chris takes Regan to various doctors who run various painful tests to pinpoint the problem. Regretfully, the doctors run out of options, so Chris turns to something she has never turned to before, religion. Father Karras (Jason Miller) and Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) show up to investigate the situation and soon find they are getting more than they could have bargained for.
What simply amazes me about this film is how slowly they build everything. Seeing Regan jump from normal girl to possessed by the devil isn’t an overnight process in the film. It builds and builds and builds until it finally reaches a point that there isn’t anything left to do, but go head-to-head against the beast. Seeing Blair’s transformation, which was just brilliantly timed, gives off a sense of ‘creepy’ while also saying, “Wow, this could happen this way.” It’s probably the most effective part of the film and one that establishes a sense of hopelessness that I can’t remember being in any other film of this genre. We (the audience) are right there with Ellen Burstyn’s Chris MacNeil going through the checklist of possibilities. Each time Chris takes Regan to another doctor to perform another test we feel the same hopelessness for a resolution as her character does. While I’m not completely sure, I suspect that most people seeing this film get more freaked out by the tests performed by the doctors than they do with the climactic scenes towards the end. Regardless, by the time the priests show up you’re begging for them to do something just like Chris. This might be the heart and soul of the film; the true even flow.
With all of that said, there are some preachy elements of the movie I’ve never noticed until last night’s screening. First, most of the people involved with the film (including author/screenwriter William Peter Blatty and director William Friedkin) don’t consider this movie a ‘horror’. While certainly it is scary as hell if you take a step back you can understand why they think this way. The movie involves an atheist mom/daughter that turns to science for answers. The scientist/doctors put this girl through rigorous tests that would make anyone cringe (and you probably will when you see it), but still don’t have answers to what could be the problem. What’s great is that after all these tests and all that pain they tell the mother in the movie that they might have missed something and want to do more tests. At this point the filmmakers are non-directly pointing out the insanity of science (insanity: doing things over and over again and expecting different results). At the end of all these tests they finally run out of answers and recommend Chris take Regan to go see ‘witch doctors’, which are Catholic Priests. The priests are as skeptical as the doctors, but soon find that they have the answers and end up helping the family. The science versus religion argument has a strong hold over the film, even on Jason Miller’s character (he struggles with his own beliefs). I had never noticed this before and I certainly appreciate it now.
One last thought about this film that I would like to point out is that no matter how many years have passed (nearly four decades now) the film is still effective with the scare factor. During the end of the film you have a lot of ridiculous lines and ‘things’ coming from Blair’s mouth as the exorcism is being performed. For example, the people in theater wanted to laugh at the ‘pea soup’ scenes. Regan spits and throws up a ridiculous amount of pea soup, not really soup — but it looked like it, onto the two priests. One guy behind me gave a small laugh and then realized that this probably wasn’t funny. While the special effects of the movie are certainly outdated, the content won’t allow for you to chuckle, giggle or truly laugh at it. I’ve never been to a film this old where someone wasn’t mocking it in some way. When the original Star Wars trilogy came out years ago for a one-weekend event we had people just shouting shit at the screen like it was a Mystery Science Theater 3000 film. With The Exorcist you’re watching so intensely that you wouldn’t feel right to laugh at what was going on. The film puts you in this trapped room with this girl and you’re doing everything you can to get out. Laughter might be a way to break the tension, but it wasn’t at all rampant in the theater; even after 37 years. I found this to be fascinating and credit the longevity of the material and its seriousness.
Anyway, I won’t ramble about the film’s underlying tones anymore. I found it quite breathtaking on the big screen and highly recommend on attending these types of screenings, as it was completely open to the public. The sound quality and the secluded theater feeling really were effective for this type of film.
At the end of the film we were treated to a very informative ‘making of’ featurette. It went into depth on how the film was made, it had interviews and just pretty much covered the entire gambit of the production. It was extremely entertaining and I’m hoping it will be one of the features on the upcoming Blu-ray that is coming out on Tuesday.
Until then, if you get a chance to see this film in theaters I highly recommend it. If you have a theater in your home then pick up a copy on Tuesday. Should be damn good, especially for this time of year.
