Mechanically engineered for scares

Rating: 7/10 (8 July 2006)

Young daughter of a famous actress demonstrates such strange, violently self-inflicted behavior that her mother is eventually told about the Catholic practice of Exorcism. Some audiences start giggling during "The Exorcist" right about the time Linda Blair's bed starts shaking, an understandable response since the film's shocks are occasionally outlandish, and the possessed girl's mother curses as much as the demon! The film is intense (sometimes glumly or heavily so) and also very scary (battering the viewer with graphic obscenities), yet there is art in the way director William Friedkin shaped William Peter Blatty's story, and many scenes are now classics: a haunting shot of Regan's scarred face overlapping the arrival of Father Merrin; Regan being promised a nice day out on her birthday, instead overhearing her mom on the phone trying to contact the estranged father, telling the secretary, "He doesn't give a s**t!" "The Exorcist" is definitely a horror movie, but it's also a psychological suspense story; if viewers do laugh at the freaky moments, that's because the shocks are engineered mechanically--they provoke either fright or nervous laughter (and in a crowded movie-house, reactions can go either way). The extra scenes included on "The Version You've Never Seen" were long overdue, however they do not add nor detract from the original product (although I found the "ghostly apparitions" a distraction). The expanded ending is fun for those who know the original by heart, but for the uninitiated viewer I would stick with the '73 goods. *** from ****