The 2001 Version You've never Seen (DVD)

Rating: Null/10 (10 January 2001)

When this movie was originally released in 1973, Billy Graham warned it contained "real evil." Perhaps he's right. This ultimate horror spectacle terrified and fascinated an international audience of many cultures and languages with its truly shocking depiction of innocent, cherubic Linda Blair's transformation into a vile, pathetic vessel of Satanic possession. William Peter Blatty scripted from his best selling novel which was allegedly based on a real case of possession. The original DVD release included a fascinating "making of" documentary that reveals director William Friedkin as an arrogant bully who had no qualms about physically abusing his actors in an attempt to get a desired reaction on camera.
This new version is a cut based in part on author Blatty's restoring of deleted material from Friedkin's first cut and includes about ten minutes of new and extended scenes, the most shocking of which is Blair's infamous "spider walk" down the stairs.
The informative conversation with Blatty and director Friedkin are not included on this version, but there's an exceedingly strange commentary track by Friedkin that's kind of like a description for the blind of what's on the screen. There's hardly a word about the directing process, the subliminal shots, the brilliant sound design, behind the scenes events or even the spectacular effects. One gets the notion that Friedkin pretty much made this film by himself.
Friedkin makes a whopping mistake when, in describing the terrific opening scenes shot in northern Iraq near the ruins of ancient Ninevah, he recalls the Biblical story of Joshua bringing down its fabled walls. Ooops, Joshua battled Jericho! It's Jonah, who is said to be buried in nearby Mosul (where they also shot atmospheric, underground bazaar scenes), who had something to do with Ninevah.
The great underpinnings of this story revolve around the resurrection, as it were, of the actual middle eastern demon idol Pazuzu from a place of renown evil by a priest-archaeologist (Max Von Sydow) who has to eventually confront it again in a final showdown half a world away. There is no why to all this, because that's what makes evil, evil; it's irrational.
That said, this remains the most frightening of all mainstream films and it still delivers the horrors that generate nightmares. Perhaps that's because when it's over, there remains the unsettling feeling that the demon wins the battle. That fear conquers all.