THE WORLD, THE FLESH and THE DEVIL
"They've found something... small pieces. "
"Your mother's in here, Karras. Would you like to leave a message? I'll see that she gets it."
It's something that I've never been able to share with anyone accurately unless the desert was something we had in common. Most seem to believe that what I've tried to describe is having sensed something about the divine. They're wrong. The main character's presented here not only exist at odds with their environments / surroundings, both visually and seemingly spiritually, but not one so much believes in God as they do in the Devil inside Linda Blair. Mercedes McCambridge smoked incessantly to achieve the Oscar-winning voice of the demon—an earthy voice made hellish when issuing from Linda Blair’s contorted, hideous face. The child actress endured literal torture at the hands of William Friedkin, her director and captor; the pain she exudes while being thrashed bodily for an early possesion scene is all too real. Ellen Burstyn and Max Von Sydow both turn in career performances as the frantic mother and geologically aged exorcist.
"You show me Regan's double, same face, same voice, everything. And I'd know it wasn't Regan. I'd know in my gut. Now, I want you to tell me that you know for a fact that there's nothing wrong with my daughter, except in her mind. YOU TELL ME FOR A FACT YOU KNOW AN EXORCISIM WOULDN'T DO ANY GOOD. YOU TELL ME THAT."
Subliminally, this film possesses the audience literally; death masks flash for 2-3 frames, subconsciously uniting demon, Regan, Karras, and his mother; pigs squeal and bees buzz in the soundtrack for the sheer disturbance of it. Liminally, it violently tears at the eyes—one cannot watch a twelve-year-old masturbate with a crucifix and shrug. In 1973, no film had ever caused such public outrage, shock, and fascination (not to mention vomiting)—in 2001, only one has. "The Exorcist" manages to unite so many of society’s unmentionables—menstruation, pubescence, dying parents, shaken faith, suicide—and it handles each with brutal, devastating honesty. The Exorcist itself is possessed by demons all too real, and each implies the existence of the god who created them.
"You're telling me that I should take my daughter to a witch doctor? Is that it? "
You be sure and sleep tight tonight folks.
It was one of my dissapointments in life to be relatively unaffected by The Exorcist. And I usually scare pretty easy. In fact, I'm scared right now.
It might have been all the satanic-themed music I was listening to around then. Whatever the reason, movies involving possession just aren't that scary in my book.
Zombies, however, scare the f*ck out of me. Even Rilke's poem about Jesus raising Lazarus scares me a little.
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