Aged, dull, empty propaganda

Rating: 9/10 (20 August 2003)

The passage of time has not been kind to The Exorcist.
A re-viewing of the flick will show that it is slow, dull and ultimately empty Catholic propaganda which doesn't make full use of its source material - for which we can only blame William Friedkin. This is not to say it is worthless, merely that it is too full of its own self importance to actually have anything worthwhile to say or to even deliver the modicum of shocks that one would expect from a movie that carries its reputation. As for the anecdotal stories of people vomiting, fainting (and even dying) at screenings - I don't believe a fricking word of it - unless cinema audiences in the seventies were a lot more sensitive - the reverse is probably true considering some of the violent and nihilistic movies that this decade produced. Exorcist II was nothing more than B movie exploitation fare that fails even within its own limited scope. Exorcist III - thats another story for another time.