The Devil's in the details.

Rating: 9/10 (11 May 2014)

The story goes that future Hollywood scribe Blatty while a student attending the Jesuit University at Georgetown back in 1949, came across a curious item in the Washington Post involving a 14 year old Mt. Rainier youth plagued by demons, not the psychological or drug-addled kind but the bona fide supernatural variety, undergoing the ancient ritual of exorcism (the casting out of said demons). Flash-forward after years of paying his dues in Hollywood, Blatty would later base certain aspects of the incident mostly entailing the ritual and cant involved as the basis for his runaway bestseller "The Exorcist". Oscar winning filmmaker Friedkin ("The French Connection") realized it as the perfect follow up as he was on a winning streak, and, the rest, as they say, is cinema history. It was certainly a blockbuster when it premiered in 1973 and has earned its reputation as the scariest movie ever made over the years. Those unseen forces and invisible agencies for both good and evil notwithstanding, it's also quality filmmaking. The effects by Marcel Vercoutere are more mechanical in nature rather than those effects involving traveling mattes, matte art, etc. but are no less compelling in its depiction of bilious graphic horror (a later reissue was retouched using a few digital effects) and the demonic makeup by Dick Smith goes beyond grotesque, it's downright sickening. Not to mention, language so strong it would make David Mamet shrivel up in a corner and die. But it was those powerful four letter invectives along with other aspects of the script that won Blatty his coveted Oscar for Best Screenplay.