Interesting & compelling for its time

Rating: 6/10 (6 November 2004)

One of the films that nobody can believe I hadn't seen until recently is 'The Exorcist', William Friedkin's screen adaptation of William Peter Blatty's novel. Starring a young (and pretty weird looking) Linda Blair as Regan, the unfortunate 12 year old who Satan decides to possess, Ellen Burstyn as her mother and Max von Sydow and Jason Miller as the priests who attempt to exorcise Regan's demons, the film has been called 'The Scariest Film of All Time'.
I think that in 1973 it probably WAS the scariest film of all time. Unfortunately, as with so many films that hold any substantial amount of notoriety, the film has been so pervasive in pop culture that nothing is up for grabs as a surprise anymore for anyone who genuinely hasn't seen it. We know about the 360 degree head turn, the pea soup, the vulgarities spewed from the mouth of this little girl with a Mercedes McCambridge voice (probably one of the most frightening aspects of the film). What I was prepared to base my opinion on was the actual film. How did the film progress from one shocking scene to another? Unfortunately, I found that it is pretty weak. Friedkin's jump-cut scenes are almost as startling as anything else in the film. There are many things that go unexplained, or are at least barely weakly supported, (for example, why Regan ended up in the hospital going through testing in the first place; all she had said at that point that she had felt her bed shake) and plots that are built up go nowhere. (I'm still confused as to what the excavation in Iraq had to do at all with the end results) The acting is decent in The Exorcist; Burstyn is always good, and Blair is good enough to see that she was probably completely miserable for the duration of the filming.
The version I saw was fortunately the director's cut, which featured the very effective 'spider walk' scene that Friedkin had removed for thirty years, and some really great flashes of what I kept calling the 'zombie face', which turned out to be extremely effective in terms of scare value. Every time there would be one of these 'subliminal' shots, you could hear people in the audience ask one another 'Whoa! Did you catch that?' The print was also stellar, which allowed us to see Friedkin's excellent lighting in this film.
I caught the midnight showing at a locally owned theater on the eve of Halloween, and the crowds 'The Exorcist' drew is a testimony to its long-standing reputation and its inherent appeal, even thirty years later. While the film itself is just okay, and the actual 'horror' portions are almost passé in this day and age, the film should certainly be remembered for its impact thirty years ago, and in reality, because 'The Exorcist' raised the bar for horror films, the eventual emulation by future directors of horror films probably caused its own impact to be lessened. I also believe that once the dust cleared on the shock value, it is clear to see that the rest of the film is not as strong as it maybe should be. Still, the film is an important one, even with its shortcomings. 6/10