This blog entry is part of my “movie year countdown”. To read more about that check out my first Spout filmblog entry.
The Exorcist
I feel like I've spoken about this one already quite a bit on Spout already as well.
So instead of writing some new stuff here, I'm going to cut and paste a lot of stuff from The Exorcist discussion thread that I started in the Horror 101 group.
So I saw it for the first time two nights ago. I thought I'd be alright. After I saw it I went to take a short nap. I didn't want to go to bed yet because I still had some stuff to take care of, dishes and other stuff. I always do this though. I try to take a small nap and set my alarm for just a half hour, but then I end up just hitting the snooze so long that I end up sleeping the whole night. Well this time when I woke up after a half hour or so I had all kinds of weird freaky images going through my head whenever I'd close my eyes. So I had to end up going to the couch and watching more TV to fill my head with other items for a while. I saw an episode of Friends, which was actually more disturbing in a different way. So anyways, yet I guess it was pretty freaky.
I'm going to watch it again with commentary, but I was wondering if anyone had any idea what the signifcance of all the actor and movie reference type stuff was. Was it supposed to be some metaphore or parallel to the posession theme? I'm speaking specifically about the fact that the main character was a famous actress and there were scenes on a movie set and there was a director character. And Cobb's character would often ask people if they wanted to come out and see a movie with him, but the movie was always some classic story with actors who would probably never have actually played those parts. Well what's the deal with this?
---------------------------------------
I think I watched "the version you've never seen". It actually says "the restored version" on my DVD. The legth was 2:11 if that helps.
I'm wondering if Friedkin was trying to make some comment about the way movies are made. Who knows. Was all of the stuff that I mentioned about movies within the movie also in the original novel?
You know what was the absolute most disturbing part for me? When they gave her that spinal tap or whatever. The doctors shoved that thing in her neck and the blood kept spurting out in a regular pulse.
Uh, the part when she came down the stairs on her hands and feet upside down with the blood coming out of her mouth was pretty fucked too though.
The truth is most of the freakiest parts I had already seen or heard about somewhere else in clips or pictures or other references. So there were actually few surprises. Except for the SPINAL TAP EW!
---------------------------------------------------------
There was something both very goofy about many parts and very scary. I don't know if the goofiness was due to it actually being goofy, seeming goofy because of something about the history of horror movies since, or because of the fact that the movies has been parodied so many times. I found most of the swearing coming from the evil voice from the girl to be rather humorous. Maybe because in the improv world I hear so much swearing and associate it with comedy. Hard to say. Somehow I find something to be much more dangerous and evil when it can refrain from outbursts and anger and swearing. Swearing seems out of control which can be scary. But something calculated can seem much more frightening.
-------------------------------------
I just started listening to the first 30 minutes of commentary by director Friedkin, and I'm not sure if I can do any more of it. There were a few interesting insights but most of him was just narrating EXACTLY WHAT WAS HAPPENING on screen while I was watching it! That's about the most worthless and annoying commentary you could have.
------------------------------------
After seeing The Exorcist and The Ninth Configuration and hearing some of the commentary on it, I think Blatty has some interesting ideas to reveal some things about his Christian faith. I'm not sure how well it really comes through sometimes though without further explination. I think sometimes because what he is trying to say is so simple and obvious but there's all kind of extraneous characters and situations that confuse things. ----------------------------------
In The Exorcist there is a battle between good and evil. In the commentary, Friedkin is talking at the end of the movie when Father Karras gets posesssed himself and then overcomes the demon for a moment to jump out of the window. What he says in about the ending of the movie is that some people believe that in the end the powers of good have been victorious and some people believe that evil has won. He said that it seems that what people see in that moment is usually an indication of the world view they already had when coming in to the movie. If they generally believe that in this world good can and will triumph over evil, then that's what they see in the ending of the movie. However if they believe that evil is always overpowering the goodness in the world, then they see that in this movie as well. I did think there was something interesting and probably true about that. Rating: 6/10