It has been 25 years since a little girl named Regan was possessed by the devil. Now "The Exorcist" is back, and there are some things viewers haven't seen.
The Exorcist - R
Starring:
Linda Blair, Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow
Directed by:
William Friedkin Owen Roizman and Billy Williams
Now playing:
Showplace 12 West
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When Regan -- played with a nymphet-like innocence by the incredible Linda Blair -- starts acting strangely, her mother does anything and everything to try to help her. Unable to cope with the idea that her daughter might be Satan in the flesh, she asks a priest questioning his role in the church (the brooding Jason Miller) to perform the exorcism. All this culminates in a good versus evil showdown, with a little girl's life and a priest's beliefs at stake.
"The Exorcist" has been rereleased in a special enhanced print with a forceful new sound mix (plenty of "Tubular Bells" to play with a viewer's mind). But perhaps the best thing about this new version are the "subliminal" shots of the devil's face, which looks like an evil clown, and 11 minutes of added footage. Some of it is bone-chilling -- Regan's mother (Ellen Burstyn) walks through a dark kitchen and the devil's face is placed over her shoulder -- and some of it is completely campy -- Regan does a spider walk down the stairs, culminating in a close-up of blood coming out of her mouth -- but all of it makes this classic horror film something worth revisiting.
Probably one of the scariest films of all time, "The Exorcist" works today not because there are monsters or killers lurking around every corner, but because Regan's terrifying possession has no real cause, and she is powerless to stop what's happening to her. Perhaps more frightening is the idea that William Peter Blatty's script, from his novel of the same name, was loosely based on a real exorcism in which a young boy was possessed by demons.
Because most of the Weekend readership was not old enough to see "The Exorcist" in its original 1973 release and have probably only experienced the movie on video, the revamped version on the big screen is definitely worth a trip to the theater. Sinister, blasphemous and very scary, this movie meets all expectations and goes one step further to surpass them.
