Can we talk about The Exorcist? Is this still the scariest film of all time? (Yes.)
Now when I hear about Harris's master class film events, I usually I try to make it up there as they're absolutely wonderful, but this film? Really? REALLY?
OMG. This film STILL scares the living shit out of me STILL.
It still scares the living fuck out of me.
Like nothing else.
I found out last year my older daughter watched it on YouTube (against my better judgement) and now just laughs at me about this (and everything else) and thinks it's a dopey crap film. But me? No way. Still the scariest thing on film ever made.
If I even watch the shortest clip of it I seriously can't function alone at night.
I'm like LIGHTS ON. DO NOT THINK ABOUT EVEN ONE SCENE FROM THAT THING. If I'm out walking the dog and I'm like DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT THAT MUSIC.
That much fear.
TRUE STORY: I grew up an only child living in a, well, rather gothic corner of the (real) world.
My father? He has always been a character. At turns he could be a rather scary dude himself -- when he was busy channeling his scary priest side. He was definitely an Episcopal-going (opera worshipping) bible-toting English teacher (amongst many, many things) at the time, who - long story short - once had a former student, from his days teaching English in New Orleans (blah, blah, blah -- I told you there's a gothic twist to my history.)
Anyway, flash forward -- he gets a phone call from this woman who was his former student, Linda Tuero, who married, of all people, William Peter Blatty: And you know who he was, right? He was the literary genius responsible for scaring the living Jesus (literally) out of everyone since the mid-70's.
So, I could tell he was super happy to hear from his former student who he always bragged about being something of a tennis star and upon hanging up from his happy chat with her -- he then (acutually) blithely announced "Oh, Linda and her new husband, William Peter Blatty, are coming to Vermont and staying for dinner!"
Uh, no. AS. IF.
I was only 12, but that day I threw the biggest, Maria Callas-sized, Greek drama, freak-out, shit-fit of my entire life. I was just: BOOM. NO way.
His words were no sooner out of his mouth when I just completely lost it -- and I was the mellow one in our wee family of three. Trust me I was. I usually prided myself in never matching them on their hissy-fit parades, or accusations I'd never know what serpents tooth I was until I played Cordelia in King Lear, but that day? - I was like, okay, fuck your shit I'm going to blow your histrionics out of the stratosphere.
There were tears, lying on the floor sobbing, begging him to take it back! Take that dinner offer back! No, no no, you can't bring him over!
Me. The shit fit-throwing pre-adolescent who refused entrance to William Peter Blatty.
I could not fathom the one person who thought that evil shit up was actually going to cross the threshold of childhood my house. Him? Here? Are you KIDDING me? - No way.
I was sobbing on the linoleum floor envisioning it all: Blatty would enter the kitchen door, and no sooner accept my father's famous bourbon Old Fashioned, Blatty would relax, and banter with the grown ups, perhaps even start to note some similarities I share with his literary heroine. Oh, I knew that would happen, I mean, look where I live? I had a grave yard outside my front window. My parents literally bought a burial plot for ALL of us, everyone with the "L"s last name, all merely a stones throw from our TV set.
(See below my EXORCIST mocking older daughter taking a selfie on our family burial plot.
-- "If you die first, I'll get you a little stone angel," my mother lovingly remarked one day as we walked her two miserably tethered dachsunds. "Your father wants a granite bench so you can all come here for picnics." This is how conversations go at home.)
Back to my fictional evening with Wm P. Blatty and The Grown Ups In Charge: "Well, Louise, tell me about yourself." I do, then he goes ,"Oh well, you're about the same age as Regan!"
Blatty's slightly watery jet black eyes, would sparkle and began to connect the dots from Hell. "Yes, George, I'd love another Old Fashioned, thank you. And, so Louise, you're an only child, too...Hm, so interesting." ( -- Oh, Christ. I'd think. Here we go.) "Hm..."Blatty would look out of our house, with typical New England suburb windows over toward the grim church with teeth floating next to the grave yard and would then mutter to himself (fictionally, of course.) "Astonishing...Just like Regan, yet even more remote...Mind if I take a few notes?" -- Even in my morose, panicked flight of fancy, I just know that would happen. I knew if he so much as even breathed the air near my home, I was a goner.
"And that church! Louise, tell me -- Ever ever read the Bible over there??" Okay, just start throwing dirt on me and be done with this terrible fantasy from Hell, please.
The similarities would be too numerous not to comment on and, then I, being, 12, even knowing this is just a fictional horror story - that day in the kitchen/dining from - well, I LOST IT.
Okay. The real truth was I'd snuck into Dad's office and read the damn book already and if the film doesn't freak people out, try reading that book.
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| My front yard growing up |
Did I mention that we truly did live right across the street from what was then just a scary-ass church? Okay, sure, today they call it beautiful -- NOW. Sure, NOW it's fixed up and nice. But, back then it was just a scary ass abandoned church with pointy spikes daring bodies to not fall on them.
Today it's a historic landmark but at the time it just looked like a giant building-version of Max von Sydow shaking a Puritanical fist at the sky. It has a pointy bell tower with two turrets, and ten (count them) spikes so sharp they looked like Sky Teeth. An imposing structure I remember trying not to envision seeing Omen-like innocent bodies pegged on the next morning, still dripping blood, frozen in post hellish encounter, as I trudged off to school.
Just one daily thought I attempted not to think about back then. Being 12 is hard.
For instance, the windows. All of them. Always wide open, yet black. All black. Empty windows containing one large presence of Empty -- open to nothing but us to look back at it. Which I would cheerfully attempt to not even glance towards especially at night -- because if I did I'd surely accidentally lock eyes with an anguished, pissed off ghost face peering right back at me just at that moment. Of course they were looking at me who else was stupid enough to look there then? Me, that's who. The idiot who secretly knew better, but looked anyway. Everyone knows evil entities only "manifest" for those "sensitive enough" to see them, right? So, knowing all this as surely I did, at 12, I was not big on looking over there at night. (Try, like never.)
I mean, I knew that's how the scary book shit works. Nobody ever, ever believes the little girl -- till it's all, too too late, of course. I see the ghost face lock eyes with me. Of course, it would be me. Who else would be looking at the damn ghost right then? NOBODY, that's who. A loner kid, a weirdo, with no brothers or sisters. Text book scary book victim. And, that was my reality. At 12. So given I already lived on a Hitchcock set there was no way in Hell Mr. William Peter Blatty was paying us a visit here on my watch. Usually, my concerns were laughably invisible to the adults in charge, but not that day. That day I won.
Interesting to note. I got my way. I should have tried that more given how effective that fit was.
There's some scary power pre-adolescent girls have which nobody expects.
Hence, some of the fear factor of the film. Nobody expects little old sweetie pie to turn into Freaky Friday. On steroids.
Seriously. This pic was taken from our dining room window last summer? --
Moral of this story? When you already live in a scary place you really don't want WP Blatty to drop by.
True story.
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Lynda