From the Vaults: The Exorcist

editor's note: the following was - I think - partially written for a class on horror films, and potentially reshaped halfway through to be included in the old blog as a quasi-retrospective on the Exorcist series. I'm going to check it against the old essay and include both versions. Warning, they represent the Cap'n in a very early stage, and probably aren't up to what you've come to expect from the Blogorium.

Film Report:

William Friedkin’s The Exorcist

Evil is a palpable presence. This is clear from the opening moments of The Exorcist, even if we are not yet aware of its intentions. A dig in northern Iraq brings Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) into direct contact with evil, in this case the demon Pazazu. Pazazu’s visage is buried in the earth and displayed prominently as a statue, but his power permeates Merrin’s world. Clocks stop, beasts rage, and ominous signs point to the arrival of evil incarnate. But not in Iraq; this evil will manifest itself much closer to home.

In Georgetown, Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) lives with her daughter Regan (Linda Blair), her assistant Sharon (Kitty Winn), and assorted servants. The MacNeils are displaced people in a world coming apart; Chris is divorced and living in the Washington D.C. area while her home is being rebuilt in Los Angeles. She’s also in the midst of shooting a film about student riots, another sign of the times. The world is in upheaval, and Chris’s world will undergo a further change soon, beginning with sounds in her attic.

Regan is a normal girl; she likes horses, art, and loves her mother. But all this moving disrupts her social world, and at the cups of puberty, Regan is all alone. Chris pays little attention to Regan’s imaginary friend Captain Howdy, but soon her strange behavior becomes too much to ignore. Although it may be no surprise that Regan knows how to curse (her mother frequently utters profanity), when she urinates on the floor during a dinner party and complains of her bed shaking, Chris realizes something is amiss. Little do Regan and Chris know of the journey into the abject that lies before them.

Chris is not the only person in Georgetown suffering a crisis of conscience. When we meet Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller); he is dealing with the crippling blow of his ailing mother’s death after being committed to a psychiatric facility. Damien is himself a psychiatrist, and his faith is waning from the shifts he and his mother faced; her death is but another test he is incapable of dealing with. Meanwhile, his church is shocked when a statue of the Virgin Mary is defiled with a phallus and overly phallic breasts, reminiscent of Pazazu.

Regan’s condition continues to worsen, and her behavior continually breaches what could be considered abject: she vomits bile, curses, mutilates herself, and violently masturbates using a cross. She is sexually uninhibited in her language, either by her own virtue or that of a demon who claims to possess her. Whether it is Regan or this demon speaking, her actions are beyond that of the abilities of doctors and psychiatrists. Their horrendous tests amount to no reasonable answer for her condition, and when Chris’s director / love interest is murdered (possibly by Regan), they attempt one last option; hypnosis. Even while under hypnotic suggestion, Regan is openly hostile towards men and attempts to castrate the psychiatrist. As a last ditch effort to avoid committing Regan to an institution, one doctor recommends the possibility of an exorcism.

Chris turns to Father Karras for assistance, but he is at first unconvinced that Regan is actually possessed. The demon inside of Regan claims to know Damien’s mother, and reacts to tap water as though it were Holy Water. However, when she begins speaking in languages which Regan does not know, and one Karras discovers to be backwards English, he suspects this may in fact be possession. Damien does not believe the demon’s claims that it is the Devil himself, but the demon speaks fearfully of a priest called Merrin. Regan appears to plea for help from inside her own body, now wracked and cut from self mutilation and filthy from vomit. The church agrees to allow the exorcism, on the condition that Merrin oversees it.

For Chris, Regan, Father Karras, and Father Merrin, the final act of The Exorcist is a journey into the abject itself. Karras and Merrin are instruments designed to restore the natural order, and Regan / Pazazu / Captain Howdy is the abject, which must be faced and rejected in order to do so. Their ritual, an exorcism, will not be easy. Regan hurls profanity, telling Karras “Your mother sucks cocks in hell!” and implying the two priests are homosexuals, challenging order. Merrin remains unfazed by her display of language and her attempts to distract him by spewing bile, but Karras cannot ignore her, and Merrin casts him out of the ritual. When Damien returns, he discovers that evil prevails; Merrin is dead, and Regan, unbound from her bed, sits laughing. In a fit of rage, Damien attacks the girl, begging the demon to enter him, and as it does, he casts himself out her bedroom window, plunging down the same stairwell that killed Chris’s lover. The ritual is complete; order is restored.

Finally, with her daughter returned to her and the natural order back in balance, Chris and Regan leave Georgetown, presumably to Los Angeles. Regan has no memory of what happened, and Chris will perhaps no longer utter profanity or take the Lord’s name in vain, but the cost of facing the abject will sit heavy on them both. The Exorcist warns us that evil is everywhere, and we cannot simply ignore it. Only by facing evil can we hope to understand or even defeat it.

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The Exorcist

William Peter Blatty and William Friedkin knew that had something on their hands when adapting Blatty's book, The Exorcist, but perhaps no clue of the impact it would have on horror to come.

The Exorcist, regardless of what came before or since, is rightly considered a benchmark of horror because it deals with demonic possession in a sober and disturbing light. While Rosemary's Baby came first, The Exorcist is from beginning to end an exercise in mounting terror, the inability to a mother to help her daughter in the face of evil.

The Exorcist works because it shies away from explaining too much, instead only disproving every other possibility for what ails Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair). The problem isn't brain damage: there is no lesion. The problem isn't psychiatric: Regan will not respond to conventional therapy, or even hypnosis. As the outer world spirals out of control, so too does Chris MacNeil's (Ellen Burstyn) world, her daughter, on the cusp of puberty, becomes the very definition of the abject.

This evil is not unprecedented, however. Father Lankaster Merrin (Max Von Sydow) senses the presence of the demon Pazazu while digging in Northern Iraq, although he will travel a great distance to come face to face with it.

Because much of The Exorcist is about people and how they deal with the world, Regan's transformation is that much more terrifying. Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller) losing his mother becomes a tool for the demon inside of Regan to torture him. Father Merrin's heart condition is a weapon with which it can wage war on him. And Regan takes special care to corrupt her relationship with her mother, leaving no choice to but choose exorcism.

The Exorcist spawned three sequels (well, two, if you want to get technical about it) and a refurbished "Version You've Never Seen" in 2000, which is more of a writer's cut, since it reinserted a number of sequences Blatty felt were important, including a jarringly happy ending and the quite disturbing "spider walk" sequence. While Exorcist II: The Heretic is considered one of the most ill conceived sequels of all time, The Exorcist III: Legion at least attempts to re-establish the series, even if Blatty's results are less than desirable.

Then there is the matter of The Exorcist's prequel, or should I say prequels. At this point it is public knowledge that Paul Schrader (writer of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull) shot a prequel to The Exorcist called Dominion, which producers Morgan Creek felt wasn't scary enough. So Schrader was fired, the film tucked away and go to Hack Director Renny Harlin (Deep Blue Sea) was hired to re-shoot 90% of the film and release it as The Exorcist: The Beginning.

Among Harlin's many changes are ill conceived fight sequences, a shoddy sandstorm, the wholesale replacement of characters, and a ridiculous showdown between the Devil and Father Merrin (Stellan Skarsgard) inside an ancient church in Africa. No, really.

So it would stand to reason that Schrader's more sober take on the prequel is the superior version. Well, yes and no. It's true, Dominion is better than Exorcist: The Beginning, but it doesn't keep it from being too sober and too laconic for its own good. The final confrontation between Merrin and the Devil is still undercooked, and the movie takes a little too long getting anywhere before puttering out after two hours.

The good news is that The Exorcist is still potent, although it depends greatly on your own personal feelings. Some people find the movie deeply disturbing; others find it unintentionally hilarious (the Version You've Never Seen does little to dissuade this with a subplot involving ritalin, which is now so common as to be considered a joke) but The Exorcist is still worth watching, even thirty three years later.

Five Movies: Five Theatrical Cuts I prefer over the Director's Cut

Apologies for that mouthful of a title, but sometimes cutting it down can be a little tricky. I'm returning to Five Movies to pick up on an older column reposted a few Tuesdays ago. Since Aliens is clearly a movie I prefer the shorter, theatrical cut, of, I'll simply include the link in this list. The other four films are movies that I think benefited from studio involvement in one way or the other, which sounds a little weird. Allow the Cap'n to make his case.

Normally speaking, I side with the writer / director / creative team when it comes to a film: ultimately, their vision should be on the screen and not some watered down compromise designed to appeal to larger audiences. A film can, under varying circumstances, find its audience without dumbing things down or spelling things out. There are plenty of examples where a "complete" version came out that made a considerable difference in viewers' reactions to the film: Brazil, Kingdom of Heaven, Blade Runner, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Touch of Evil, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Almost Famous, Once Upon a Time in America, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The New World, Alien 3, Payback, The Big Red One, Major Dundee, and Leon: The Professional*.

In other instances, there are alternate versions of films where I feel nothing is particularly gained or lost (Apocalypse Now: Redux springs to mind, or the "extended" cut of Alien Resurrection), and then there are the "Unrated" cuts so prevalent today that add anywhere from one to thirty-five minutes of footage back into the narrative (Hot Tub Time Machine and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story respectively), some of which is negligible unless directly compared. Every now and then, a director's cut will be shorter, like the Coen brothers' Blood Simple.

That being said, sometimes that extra studio input comes in handy. Sometimes (at least in five instances listed below), a mandated "studio cut" turns out to benefit the narrative and provides a better viewing experience than the subsequent extended director's cut that follows in DVD or Blu-Ray (and, periodically, in a theatrical re-release). I've said before that this is a subjective system, but for my money, the following films work better under the duress of "studio interference" and compromise, and when the "pure" vision came out, I wasn't as impressed. Feel free to agree or disagree.


THX 1138: The George Lucas Director's Cut - It's tempting to beat up on Lucas' tinkering with the Star Wars trilogy, but the unaltered cuts are at least available (albeit in non-remastered, chucked out DVD versions), whereas his first film, THX 1138 exists on DVD and Blu-Ray only in a 2004 "director's cut" form. The imposition of new special effects, an extended car chase, cgi monsters, and a number of deletions drastically alters the claustrophobic tone of the original THX 1138, substituting instead a noisy, digitally cluttered version of the film that Lucas "always wanted to make." That's fine, but since the original version hasn't (and won't) see the light of day again, we're instead stuck with a film that replaces the ingenuity of budget limitations with a cut that undermines the tone and story of the original cut. (for a very comprehensive list of exactly what's different, check out the side-by-side comparison here.)


Donnie Darko - Sometimes a director strikes gold without realizing it, and then goes back and messes things up by giving the audience more of something they don't need. Donnie Darko is such a case. Like many people in the Cult of Donnie Darko, I was immensely curious when the word came out that writer / director Richard Kelly had another cut of his first film, one that delved deeper into the philosophy of time travel and fleshed out the family dynamic (flashes of which were apparent in the "Deleted Scenes" section of the Donnie Darko DVD), but when his "Extended Director's Remix" arrived on DVD, I was underwhelmed to say the least.

The longer Director's Cut removed all of the ambiguity from the theatrical version of Donnie Darko, replacing implications and conjecture with obvious, awkwardly inserted "passages" from The Philosophy of Time Travel that spelled out exactly what was going on in the story. Suddenly the mystery of the film vanished, replaced by explanations that made any discussion of the film feel stupid and unnecessary. Does it really help to have the film explain what the "manipulated dead" do? That Donnie's medication was a placebo? How "time arrows" work? All of the magic of Donnie Darko evaporated, and it was coupled with a disastrous commentary track where it became clear that Kelly didn't have any idea what it was that worked about the film and why it attracted the rabid fanbase it did.


Aliens - While I'm including the link to the Four Reasons article, might I add that this is generally how I feel about the director's cut versions of Terminator 2: Judgment Day and The Abyss as well. I feel the additions add nothing particularly interesting to the story, and at times unnecessarily pad the films in ways that dull their impact.






The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen - It bears mentioning that this is more of a "Writer's Cut" than a Director's Cut, although William Friedkin ultimately signed off on the theatrical re-release of this longer, less effective version of The Exorcist. What once was a relentlessly creepy, tension building film about demonic possession returned to theatres in 2000 as an unintentionally goofy, padded cut, including one genuinely good effect (the "spider-walk" sequence, which despite looking cool doesn't add anything to the film), an unfortunate subplot near the beginning, and the "Casablanca" ending that writer William Peter Blatty preferred to the original cut.

I had an opportunity to see The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen a few times with audiences (the Cap'n was working as a projectionist when the film opened), and rather than squirm, most audiences howled with laughter during the film. This was due, considerably, to the inclusion of a pre-openly possessed Regan (Linda Blair) being erroneously prescribed Ritalin by her doctor. At the time, Generation Y was having a field day with the ADD / ADHD craze and Ritalin was the prescription drug du jour, meaning that this "old' movie was hitting on their buzzword, rendering the establishing plot immediately comical.

The inclusion of the Pazuzu "flashes" during scenes didn't help anything, as the frozen demon face popping up in shadows elicited chuckles rather than generate suspense or foreboding. The "spider-walk" scene failed to unnerve audiences, and many who had been exposed to the over-the-top gags in Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn, responded by laughing at the clear effect. At this point, nobody in the audience was taking The Exorcist seriously, and in the ensuing year or so, I had a number of arguments about whether the film had ever been "good" or "scary," a direct result of this unneeded "Version You'd Never Seen." That this cut has become the "norm," to the point that it - and not the original cut - will be playing this year in theatres is unfortunate to say the least.


Bad Santa: The Director's Cut - The Cap'n may be alone on this one, but as much as I like Terry Zwigoff's other films (particularly Louie Bluie, Crumb, and Ghost World), the truth is that the Weinstein-mandated recut of Bad Santa works better for me than the subsequently released Director's Cut (not to be mistaken for Badder Santa: Unrated, which came out simultaneously with the theatrical version on DVD). Having seen all three cuts, the "Badder Santa" version is probably my preferred cut.

By saying that, I'm sure that the Cap'n is now the enemy of die-hard Zwigoff supporters (and the director himself) because I settled for - and laughed at - the "watered down, studio version" that replaces his original vision with lowbrow yuks for the cheap seats. Well, here's the truth: the Director's Cut doesn't work. The significantly shorter cut has a less fluid plot structure (the immediate jump from Willie's first robbery to the second gives us no indication of why Marcus really needs him instead of finding a more reliable crook), and I'm going to be honest, the removal of Thornton's narration at the outset replaces any sympathy for the character with a sense of "why should we care about this pathetic drunk?"

Honestly, I understand that Zwigoff was more likely interested in exploring the less appealing side of Willie Stokes and giving the audience a protagonist that was in no way likable (much like his follow-up, Art School Confidential), but what works about the earlier (and in my opinion, more successful) Ghost World is that despite the fact all of his characters exist on the margins of "civilized" society, there's something about Enid and Seymour that's worth sticking around for. Zwigoff's cut of Bad Santa left a bad taste in my mouth, whereas the crass, studio involved theatrical cut at least generated some guilty chuckles.


So there you have it: five movies where the creative forces clashed with the studio and the end result turned out to be more successful. For the Cap'n, anyway. Feel free to disagree in the comments below, or add examples of films you think work better one way or the other.


* It is important to note that in the case of Touch of Evil, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Major Dundee, The Big Red One, and the not mentioned Mr. Arkadin, that the "director's cuts" were made without the participation of the director, who had passed on.