As all film buffs know, the 70s is
widely regarded as the greatest decade in American film history.
I’ve mentioned this before. The censorship of the Hayes Code had
been lifted and the Film Brats were hard at work reinventing cinema.
Sadly though, their egos got the better of them. They spent way too
much money on vanity projects and the whole house of cards came
crashing down upon them, leading to the bureaucratic mess that
Hollywood is today.
My personal view is that the 70s were
separated from the rest of American film history not by talent,
(there are filmmakers today who could do exactly what the Film Brats
did,) but by a rejection of genre. Every film that gets funded or
released nowadays must be easy to classify. In and of itself, that’s
not horrible, it certainly meets Poe’s requirement for a “Single
Effect.” But it also prevents many of our films from striving for
real greatness or expanding their scope to show a complete world.
For example, Guardians of the Galaxy became an unexpected hit
by giving us just the smallest taste of a movie that was slightly
(very slightly) fuzzy about how to classify it.
The Exorcist embodies this
genreless spirit of the 70s. Were the film made today, we would
either see Egypt only in small rooms by night, or we’d be told
about it. After all, seeing wide landscapes and Egyptian dig sites
are strictly reserved for adventure films (hence the genre shift of
the Brendan Frasier Mummy movies). Muslim calls to prayer
must be reserved for political thrillers, bashing us over the head
with commentary on oil politics. If there are scenes between a
mother and daughter in a horror film, then they must be ominous,
never heart-warming or sweet. And how dare a horror film
offer commentary on the politics of Vietnam!
Certainly though, pop-culture has put
The Exorcist back in a box. Literally, all most people
remember about this movie is a priest yelling at a possessed little
girl in a bedroom and being vomited on. Hell, I don’t think most
people even remember that it was Father Karras (Jason Miller) who was
vomited on and not Father Merrin (Max von Sydow).
The effect is that this film takes
place in a real, functional world. These are people with
pre-existing lives to whom horrible things happen. The majority of
the film is spent observing Regan (Linda Blair), a young girl, and
her mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn), a famous actress. Until the final
act, the movie closely resembles The Exorcism of Emily Rose, a
movie that would come out decades later and be hailed as original for
only ripping off the parts of this movie that pop-cultural osmosis
didn’t preserve in the collective consciousness.
Regan begins showing signs of mental
illness, believing herself to be under supernatural assault, stumping
doctors and psychiatrists. Eventually, her mother calls in Father
Karras, a priest trained as a psychiatrist undergoing a crisis of
faith following the death of his mother. He finds the evidence to be
conflicting, walking a line between mental illness and possession.
The final act of the film, the part
that most people remember, is actually the least interesting part to
me. Father Karras, at the urging of his superiors, calls in a more
experienced demonologist, Father Merrin, to perform the exorcism
itself. Suddenly, we start seeing head-spinning, bed-floating, and a
demon that can jump victim-to-victim. I much prefer the earlier
parts of the film where Regan’s status was left far more ambiguous.
That’s not to say the movie’s final act is bad by any means.
It’s creepy as hell, using special effects to their full capacity.
What we see isn’t treated as simply a show for the viewer, but as
something truly sick and unnatural.
The movie’s treatment of the issue is
actually much more sensitive than Emily Rose. Even the
doctors, who are shown as lacking faith acknowledge that an Exorcism
could conceivably do some good to a patient who genuinely believes
she’s possessed. Likewise, the religious authorities are shown as
quite insistent that all psychiatric options be exhausted before an
Exorcism even be considered. This level of sensitivity is certainly
what puts it above films like The Conjuring and Annabel,
which leave you not feeling that you’ve watched the fight against
evil, but simply that you’ve observed the paranoid ravings of
religious lunatics.
Honestly, I think this movie was robbed
of the #1 spot on this list because both of the top 2 have more
famous directors. I can’t think of a single film that’s more
universally chilling. Watch this movie if, and only if, you want to
be scared.
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