1. The pacing. Some might call it slow. Those people don’t understand movies. Those “slow” moments serve several purposes. They make the insane scenes more impactful. There has to be a story that properly leads up to the head spinning and projectile vomiting for those scenes to have an emotional impact beyond just disgust, something that more recent films seem to forget. Those scenes also help create an atmosphere by focusing on things like characters and setting.
2. The settings. It opens in a holy city in northern Iraq, and they really went to a holy city in northern Iraq to shoot a total of 15 minutes of screen time. The attention to details matter. They also filmed in actual buildings at Georgetown University (the author of the book, William Peter Blatty, went to Georgetown). Also, one of the priests in the movie is a real Jesuit priest. All of those details help create a sense of realism and a tangible sense of place. That matters.
3. The stairs. The Exorcist stairs at Georgetown walked so the Joker stairs in the Bronx could fly. Truly iconic.
4. The music. The Exorcist theme song (a snippet from Tubular Bells) walked so the Halloween theme song could fly. Also iconic.
5. The slow build. I’ll reiterate this: the pacing is so important. To start off, we see an old priest searching for something in Iraq. Why is he here? What does this have to do with anything? Why are the first words we hear in a movie about Christian exorcisms “allahu akbar,” part of a Muslim chant? Why are those damn dogs barking so viciously? We don’t know what the hell is going on and there’s a sense of mystery and uneasiness at all times. Then we head to America and spend some time meeting a mother and her little girl. We are told that the little girl is acting strangely and we see her going through this horrible medical procedure. Then we see her come downstairs during her mother’s dinner party and tell an astronaut, “you’re gonna die up there” right before she pees on the carpet. It’s at this point we know shit's gonna get wild. But everything so far (including this scene) has been very real, nothing supernatural yet, just hinting at it and setting the tone.
6. Skepticism. Questioning of faith. The main priest, Father Karras, is a caring, honest portrayal of a priest/psychologist who loses his mother and starts to lose his faith. That also adds to the uneasiness; this is a man who dedicated his life to god, yet he is having doubts. He especially has doubts about the reality of exorcisms. Watching now, I think this is one of the main reasons I was drawn to this movie as a teen. That’s when I started to question and eventually lose my faith. I don’t believe in exorcisms or even god, but I could relate to a man who questioned his faith and believed in science (that’s why I loved Scully in the X-Files...and Steven in Nacho Libre). I love stories about the supernatural and appreciate the idea of the supernatural, but I relate more to people who question its existence. The whole movie is an examination of the meaning of faith and the forces of good and evil, and while the film certainly creates a sense of surrealism, it is grounded in realism, from the real settings and people, to the real emotions the characters feel in the face of the supernatural.
7. The horrors of modern science. Regan undergoes an EEG and they stab a giant fucking needle in her throat and let blood squirt out onto her chest. Then her head is put in this old cat-scan-like machine that makes a loud knocking sound. It’s uncomfortable, distressing…it was the most disturbing part of the movie, and it had nothing to do with possessions. It was a completely realistic portrayal of a completely real procedure. Besides making your skin crawl, it also makes the audience empathize with this little girl even more than audiences normally empathize with children. It’s not like a lot of other evil child movies (like the awesome The Omen) where the kid is weird and creepy from the start. She’s a normal cute kid forced to go through this horrifying treatment. This is important once she starts flipping out. That too is something forced upon her, and like the priests do, we have to see her humanity even when she’s saying things like…
8. “Let Jesus fuck you!” Oh my gawd this line and scene. The first scene where the bed is knocking around is whatever. Then comes the scene where she starts flipping out, and it’s loud, and the voice is upsetting, and what this little girl is screaming is so vulgar, and the reactions from the adults are so pure…it’s just terrifying. Soon after that, she’s stabbing herself in the crotch with a crucifix and screaming “Let Jesus Fuck you” and putting her mother’s face in her bloody crotch. Jesus, man.
9. The spider crab walk. I watched the Director’s cut, which included possessed Regan crawling upside-down/backwards down the stairs. Friedkin cut this from the original, and it makes sense (he thought it appeared too early in the movie and he hadn't set the stage yet) but I’m glad he put it back in. In this version, she stops at the bottom of the stairs and pukes blood. In the original deleted scene, she continues crabwalking toward her mother and flicking her tongue out. I like both but kinda wish they kept that original scene in.
10. Directing style. There are several weird, unique camera angles. There is a lot of symbolism and symbols and images are flashed briefly on screen at times to increase the feeling of uneasiness. One of the most famous “flashes” is the face of a demon during the final exorcism. It’s even creepier because it’s a quick flash. You can miss it if you blink, and even if you see it, you question if it was really there.
11. Cinematography. There are some beautiful interior and exteriro shots. One of the most iconic shots is of Father Merrin arriving by taxi, then standing under the streetlight as fog surrounds him and he looks up at the window of Regan’s room. It’s a beautiful shot in and of itself, but it is also a mirror/callback to a shot from the opening scene, in which Father Merrin finds the statue of Pazuzu. The statue is on a rock, and Merrin faces off with it as the sun glares behind them and the heat creates a visible haze. That shot foreshadows the shot of him arriving at Regan’s and becomes even more powerful. Something evil is at work here.
12. The performances. Everyone here is great. Linda Blair came out of nowhere to make an everlasting mark on cinema. The puking and head spinning and swearing wouldn't be as effectively gross as they are without her performance. Her smirk is deliciously delirious. Ellen Burstyn proves she was killing the game long before she finally got her accolades with Requiem for a Dream. The main priest Father Karras was Stephen Miller, known more as a playwright, but he was perfect here. It helps that he studied at a Jesuit University. The old priest, Father Merrin, is played by a 44 year old Max von Sydow and his makeup is probably the worst part of the movie. But at the same time, he's meant to look old and beat up, and he certainly does.
13. Behind the scenes insanity. One of the guys working the EEG ended up murdering someone in real life. Linda Blair and Ellen Burstyn suffered back injuries because Friedkin insisted on actually tossing them around. Burstyn damaged her coccyx in the scene where Regan slaps her because she was actually tossed to the ground by a grown man, and her scream of pain is 100% real. She was not happy with Friedkin for using the actual scream, but…it works. The 70s, baby! There are so many other stories too, like the fact they had to take Linda Blair on a promotional tour to prove to people that she wasn’t really possessed (although that itself might have been a promotional tool). One of my favorite stories is that of the voice of the demon. Blair did a lot of the voice work, often distorted with vocal effects, but Mercedes McCambridge did the demon's voice. She was a semi-retired voice actress and recovering alcoholic. When she was offered the job, she consulted with her priest about it because she felt that she could easily embody a demon when she drank. So she jumped back on the wagon, got raging drunk, started chainsmoking because she thought it made her sound even worse, had guys strap her down and put a mic in front of here, and helped create history.
I Love You All...Class Dismissed.
