Audience Reaction Helps

Rating: Null/10 (28 October 2003)

It's said that one thing which enhanced Hitchcock's now famed 10:00 a.m. "Psycho" premiere in New York was the extreme audience reaction of shock.
Like viewers' laughter for comedy, horror films often depend upon audience screams, gasps and general "anxiety vibes" which sweep through the house.

Certainly such was the case for "The Exorcist" when it first made its showings back in '73. It's impossible to re-create that reaction today and part of the film's initial success was how effective Friedkin (like Hitchcock) was able to manipulate his audience.
It's constantly intriguing how each audience tends to take on a personality of its own (watch a film several times in a theater and note how variable and distinctive the reaction becomes from each group.
Thus, when one sits alone today to watch a DVD, it's a world of difference from those initial screenings of "The Exorcist" in the 70s, when folks were experiencing it for the first time.
Friedkin's film has held up pretty well, thanks to his painstaking production values. But true impact of "The Exorcist" is forever part of filmgoers' past history.
A hard-working cast was apparently pushed to the breaking point to finish this production, which ran way overtime. Like many tortuous film shoots, the extra effort has paid off, making "The Exorcist" one of the top films in the horror genre.