Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) is an actress who lives with her daughter Regan (Linda Blair). She notices that Regan is going through some unpleasant changes and begins to act bizarre. Situation gets worse, not to mention frightening. Burke (Jack MacGowran of “Fearless Vampire Killers” fame), the movie director whom Chris was working with ends up dead outside on the stairs and Chris finds out that her daughter had something to do with it in a very scary way. Regan seems to have been possessed by an entity. Chris is desperate. Detectives, doctors and psychiatrists are no good. Who can help her?
Father Karras (Jason Miller) is a young priest. His mother is very ill and that makes him question his faith. Chris asks him to help his daughter but he is not very keen on practicing an exorcism on her; it is almost as if he doesn’t believe any of this. But soon realizes that he is way out of his depth on this one and that’s when Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) comes in.
This is the mother of all possession movies. Since this is an idea that’s been done to death one may not understand what all the fuss is about. But just imagine watching a movie like this in 1973. It caused quite a stir at its time and scared a lot of audiences some of which couldn’t even watch it until the end; this wasn’t even due to the hype in most of the cases. People had to wait in ticket queues for hours only to be informed it was sold out so they could simply head to the next queue that was already built by the others.
Its effect was similar to the one of “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968) by Roman Polanski, however “Rosemary’s Baby” kept you guessing whether or not something paranormal going on or was it just the imagination of the main character Rosemary (Mia Farrow). Here, quite early in the movie the viewer is made known that this is no game of pretense; there is an entity, a demonic force, the devil about. It may not be "the scariest movie ever made" as claimed but there are many impressive scenes nevertheless and the tone of the movie as the other horror classics set perfectly:
Washington DC, old buildings, quiet atmosphere (calm before the storm, so to speak), fantastic music ("Tubular Bells" by Mike Oldfield), unprecedented obscenity, etc.
Actors and actresses are all brilliant at their parts. The director William Friedkin had also had great success with crime/action “French Connection” (1971) starring Gene Hackman.
My memory of this film is:
As I mentioned before I was too young to see movies like these at the time they came out. But I lived in places where movie theaters weren’t limited by only the latest releases. And “The Exorcist” too showed up one day. I managed to get in with some friends although were no more than 9 years old; yes somebody actually sold ticket to little kids to see “the scariest movie in history”(at the time, that is). We sat in the dark not believing our luck that we were actually going to see it; giggling, making fake horror noises. But to our surprise, this was not the original that we were expecting to see; instead it was the “perfect” copy of it called “Sheytan” (stands for “Devil” in Turkish). We had no choice, we watched it until the end; we were disappointed a bit (!) but hey, it was better than nothing (did I mention we were only 9 years old?). That movie is so bad that it is good if you know what I mean; some collectors go after that kind of stuff, believe you me!
When I did watch it for the very first time several years later, I did like it but only for the scary parts. I was still too young to appreciate what the movie was about and how successfully the characters were portrayed in an interesting story that wasn’t just an excuse to startle people. The movies in late 60s, 70s and early 80s took their time, introduced us the characters, made us care for them; once we were there only then the directors threw us into the storm.
G.R.Senn
