William Friedkin and William Peter Blatty’s horror masterpiece received its premiere 50 years ago today – Boxing Day, 1973.
I’ll never forget my first viewing of the film. My dad suggested we go to a late-night Friday screening at a nightclub-cum-cinema called Options in deepest Kingston-upon-Thames sometime during late summer 1988.
I was 15 years old. I didn’t have a clue what lay in store for me. I’d seen ‘The Fog’, ‘Halloween’ and ‘An American Werewolf In London’ but this was a completely different kettle of fish.
The house was absolutely packed and the print was awful – this was years before ‘The Exorcist’ got a posh Warner Bros. re-release. But the graininess of the picture actually suited this truly ‘forbidden’ movie; it was still banned on video in 1988 and had the cache of a lost cult classic.
If memory serves, I spent most of the film completely terrified while my dad frequently laughed at it, possibly to mitigate my reactions and make me realise ‘it’s only a movie’ – or because he was scared too.
I still vividly recall the hideous demon face (which haunted my dreams for a few weeks afterwards) and the scraping/scratching soundtrack. And then the panic of the penultimate scene followed by moving/disturbing denouement, with Regan’s very visible facial scars, before being cut loose from the film, battered and bleeding, and hearing Salt-N-Pepa’s ‘Push It’ incongruously booming out from the nightclub below as we left the cinema. It also wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the movie got me thinking seriously about spiritual matters for the first time.
Watching ‘The Exorcist’ recently for the first time in five years or so, I was again mesmerised by the masterful first hour, with Friedkin’s documentary-style brilliance, fast pacing and wonderful performances from Jason Miller, Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair and Lee J Cobb. It still makes the likes of ‘The Omen’ and ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ look fairly ridiculous.
But a few things rankled – the abuse of Regan by various male ‘authority’ figures. And, speaking from experience, in my view it would still be madness to show this film to under-18s.
Also where were the press/paparazzi at the McNeil house while all of this hooey was going on? After all, Ellen Burstyn is supposed to be playing a world-famous actress.
And take your pick of the scenes controversially excised by Friedkin to trim the film down to two hours, but I really could have done with the so-called ‘Casablanca’ ending. But the power of ‘The Exorcist’ is undiminished after 50 years. Happy birthday to a classic and RIP director William Friedkin.