Synopsis
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The Exorcist (1973) is a sensational, shocking horror story about devil possession and the exorcism of the demonic spirits of a young, innocent girl (of a divorced family). The film was enormously popular with moviegoers at Christmas-time of 1973. However, some portions of the viewing audience fled from theatres due to nausea or sheer fright/anger, especially during the long sequence of invasive medical testing performed on the hapless patient. Its tale of the devil came at a complex and disordered time when the world had just experienced the end of the Vietnam War (U.S. troop withdrawal and the fall of Saigon) and at the time of the cover-up of the Watergate office break-in (also in Washington, D.C.).
Critically, it was presented with ten Academy Award nominations, two of which won (Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound). The other eight nominations included Best Picture, Best Actress (Ellen Burstyn), Best Supporting Actor (Jason Miller), Best Supporting Actress (Linda Blair), Best Director, Best Cinematography (Owen Roizman), Best Art Direction/Set Decoration, and Best Film Editing. The Exorcist was notable for being one of the biggest box-office successes of all time - it was also one of the first 'blockbusters' in film history.
The film's screenplay - a horror-tinged western (a tale of good vs. evil) - was faithfully based upon author William Peter Blatty's 1971 best-selling theological-horror novel. Academy-Award-winning director William Friedkin (previously known for The French Connection created a frightening horror film masterpiece with sensational, nauseating, horrendous special effects (360-degree head-swivelling, self-mutilation with a crucifix, the spewing of green puke, etc.) and the terrific acting debut of 12-year old actress Linda Blair who played the helpless girl possessed by demons. Roman Polanski's successful Rosemary's Baby played upon similar fears of devil possession. Unfortunately, the film spawned many inferior sequels of its own (The Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) and director Blatty's The Exorcist III (1990)) and other imitations, i.e., The Omen trilogy.
In the early fall of 2000, the film was recut and released in an 11-minute longer version with an enhanced digital surround-sound, six-track soundtrack - a writer-producer's cut. Additional scenes that were excised were restored to the print, including Blatty's preferred ending in which good triumphed over evil (a bantering discussion between a police detective and a young Jesuit confirms the fact that the spirit of Father Damien Karras lives on rather than the Devil's spirit), a shocking down-the-stairs, back-bending "spider-walk" by the satanically-inhabited girl, enhanced scenes with Father Merrin (played by the brilliant central actor Max von Sydow who based his performance on the real-life Jesuit theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin), and a few other minor changes.
The controversial nature of the film's content - exorcism (accompanied by blasphemies, obscenities, and graphic physical shocks), was supposedly based upon an authentic, nearly two-month-long exorcism performed in 1949 on a 14-year old boy (with the pseudonym "Robbie Mannheim") in Mt. Ranier, Maryland by the Catholic Church (in the form of a fifty-two-year-old Jesuit priest named William S. Bowdern).