Cultural Impact of The Exorcist (1973)

They REALLY believed in the Devil. They still do. And they believed then, as they do now, that Gays were the Devil's spawn, women were inherently evil nd needed to be controlled, and minorities, especially Blacks were Devil's Spawn too. They're still out here and they're far from innocent.

Omg not all Christians think like that r1

CBS David Sheehan’s report on the film back in 1973

Most people were squeamish at the hospital scene where they are having to insert the tube and the blood squirts out, thus the fainting. I was 6 when it came out theatrically, but my mother saw it at the theater then and she would tell me about it and I was enthralled. I think I saw the cut version on tv first and then finally the rated r version on cable in the early 80s. It really lived up to the hype she sold to me. It’s a true masterpiece, and some of the scenes , like the cross masturbation, are crazy and will never be replicated on film quite like this.

The trailer that was banned in 1973 for being too scary

There have been dozens and dozens and DOZENS of films about devils and exorcisms since The Exorcist, and there are only so many ways a movie can scare people by repeatedly going back to the same well.

Having said that, The Nun did give me a few unexpected jolts.

Interesting you should post this now as Mindhunter, the Netflix Series, launched its second season yesterday and one of the serial killers they interview is David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam killer. Part of his early defense was that he heard voices from the dog next door who was demonically possessed. In the show he tells the FBI agents that he made it all up and was inspired to say that based on seeing the Exorcist and reading about demonic possession in books. In the show it is presented as new information that they obtained from him.

R7 I’ve never seen that series but I will have to give it a watch.

I went to see The Exorcist as a 17 year old in 1973 PRECISELY because I wanted to watch people in the audience screaming, fainting and throwing up. Didn't happen, more laughter than anything else. This was White Plains, NY, new theater on S Broadway and Hamilton Ave which is now office space or apartments.

Ignorance, not innocence OP.

[quote]Part of his early defense was that he heard voices from the dog next door who was demonically possessed.

I saw SUMMER OF SAM in theaters when it came out and everyone in the audience cracked up at those dog talking scenes. XD

My stepfather saw it in theaters when he was 9 and said people were on the sidewalk here in Brooklyn throwing up and running out of the theater

R9 when I saw TITANIC way back during Christmas break 1997, there were many people in the audience who erupted into laughter during the sinking scenes, when people were falling over and hitting things. I was mortified! The second time I saw it in theaters, the audience responded better, with shock and awe!

R13 I always feel people that laugh during scenes like that is because that is how they deal with their “shock” or fear.

A few times during films something tragic will happen and someone will laugh.

I wish we still had that sense of innocence as a nation. What nation do you live in?

I always thought the “The Omen” was far scarier, but I can’t explain why.

R16 because it involved a child?

Was it banned in Ireland?

I was a theatre manager when the Exorcist came out. People were terrified. One person actually died during a showing.

R19 died of what?

Died of perforated bowel from being fucked by a horse the night before.

R17, “The Exorcist” involved a child also.

The Exorcist child was pretty much a teen.

The Omen child was a small child.

No, R17, it's because it involved the baboons...

The Exorcist is FAR scarier than The Omen, but both are EXCELLENT films.

My god I love that 70's trailer.

Just the grainy film, the lettering of the credits, the voiceover/trailer people they had in the 70's had MUCH better voices and it really worked for horror film trailers (to have someone speaking over it) You don't have that anymore...

Everything is too glossy and looks the same.. Hereditary was the first horror film I had seen in a VERY long time that had a look and a feel that evoked a 70's horror film (There have been a few others- like It Follows- which I really didn't love, but I loved the production design/vibe.

Yes, I thought the exorcist was terrifying when I was younger (I watched it when I was 9 through 12), but for some reason, The Omen scared me wayyyyy more when I watched it at 14. The Omen isn't nearly as good of a movie as The Exoricst, but it is scarier.

I find The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby COMFORTING. It is so weird, They are my go-to films for comfort.

Another stark 1970s trailer that was yugely effective.

R13, where was that? When I saw Dog Day Afternoon across from Bloomingdales in New York in 1975, the audience was silent and serious listening to Sonny dictate his will. When I saw it again in Yonkers on Central Ave a few months later, many in the audience laughed out loud.

I saw a so-so John Frankenheimer thriller (IMHO) called Black Sunday in New York in 1977. It was about terrorism at the Super Bowl starring Bruce Dern and Robert Shaw. The audience HOWLED with laughter during the movie. On a movie radio show I listened to at the time, a called related a similar audience reaction. The radio host INSISTED the laughter must have been nervous laughter to deal with their shock and fear. Bullshit. The audience was having fun with a bad movie, R14. I understand your point...but it definitely does not apply in most of my movie experiences.

Audiences ran out of the cinema back in the early days the first time they saw a movie pointed a gun directly at the camera in extreme close-up.

[quote]In 2019 most don’t find it scary, I say because everyone is so desensitized now. I don’t find any film that scary, but always think about how back in the 70s a movie like “IT” would have terrified everyone.

Idk OP. My nephew (he’s 12) watched this last Halloween with his dad and thought it was really disturbing. So maybe not scary, but still unsettling. The film is a masterpiece IMO, but especially the sound design. Very little since comes close to it.

UGGHH ... THIS THREAD AGAIN!!!!

OP = the Aspie Copycat Thread Thief re-heating a subject that has been DONE TO DEATH on Datalounge.

If you want to talk about the "Cultural Impact of the Exorcist," you can post on one of the MANY original threads you've already STOLEN YOUR IDEAS FROM, OP: "Desensitized," "throwing up," "panicking" and "Christian Conservative" are all here:

And here:

And here:

And here:

Cultural impact: Sales of pea soup plummeted 87%.

And here:

OP, this is one of the rare occasions when asking the ElderGays would be useful, because a lot of ElderGays would tell you your comments are ridiculous. The US wasn't any more conservative and Christian then than it is now (less so, I'd say). And lots and lots of people thought it was a ludicrous movie then, and still do.

People weren't more "innocent" then, they had higher standards (that was a time when movies like The Godfather were coming out) and expected a little more from movies than just being grossed out or terrified.

And here:

And here:

And here:

And here:

R32- Is the Anti Jamie lee Curtis/Anti Halloween/ Anti everything thread TROLL.

He also breaks into Old Folks Homes and eats loaded Adult Diapers.

And here:

And here:

Oh, that was just a weirdo group protesting that. Same crew that smashed Beatles records after their bigger than Jesus quip.

Valerie Bertinelli or Mackenzie Phillips on One Day at A Time non-nonchalantly announced they saw the Exorcist. No shocked audience gasps or anything. It wasn't THAT big of a deal.

And here:

Get a life, OP.

You can't just repeat stolen opinions for attention. You're annoying.

Ahhh Blocking R32 cleaned this thread RIGHT up!!!

No worries, R32, It will be dark in mere hours- get your mask on and get ready to feast!!!

You are a miserable human being. Get help.

Can the loser posting all Exorcist threads GET A GRIP?

Yikes.

Can the OP repeating all the Exorcist threads GET A GRIP???

The actual priest who played Father Dyer (the one Regan kisses at the end of the movie) has been accused of sexual abuse! His name is William O'Malley and he's now 87 years old. I don't know if the allegations are true. They may well not be. Everybody is jumping on the "I was sexually abused by a (fill in the blank)" these days.

Hurry, OP, go log into one of your separate accounts on a different browser so you can pretend to be another DLer cheering on your mental illness!

Halloween started the teen horror/slasher flick trend which escalated to show more sex and much more gory stuff than previously seen in the horror genre before. Beheadings, mutilations, blood spurting and villains that weren't just human, but were humans somehow imbued with supernatural powers to move much more quickly than possible IRL, to be in 2 places at once, etc.

The exorcist brought about the reign of the all-supernatural villain that uses humans to cause evil. Not Dracula or Frankenstein!s monster, who had once been human (or in the case of Frankenstein's monster, humans). The devil. Satan himself. Satan on earth. Satan infesting humans, threatening the whole of humanity. A crucifix might stop Dracula in his tracks, but in post-exorcist movies you had to seriously believe in that crucifix or it would do you no good. Non believers don't stand a chance. Satan is on the loose, not mental illness. The killer isn't crazy, he's not a scientist gone mad He's possessed by an evil being. He can slam doors, close windows, cause objects to fly across rooms --fly across any space -- to crush and cause humans, animals, cars -- ANYTHING - to explode into bits.

Unmmm Halloween came out 6 years after Exorcist.

[quote][R13], where was that? When I saw Dog Day Afternoon across from Bloomingdales in New York in 1975, the audience was silent and serious listening to Sonny dictate his will. When I saw it again in Yonkers on Central Ave a few months later, many in the audience laughed out loud.

This was in Central Mass. The first was a theater in Fitchburg. The second time in Leominster.

For a few years, at least, everyone who came to visit DC wanted to see the Exorcist steps at Prospect and 36th NW. I would walk them across Prospect and down the steps, then come back on M rather than walking up.

R54,it's funny because the demon in the movie was not Satan, it was pazzuzu (a Babylonian god). He was just trying to be cool by calling himself "the devil".

Ummm...Halloween came out 6 years after the Exorcist

Ummm...so? Just talking about how Halloween changed teen horror movies into something different from what they previously had been (The Blob, I Was a Teenaged Werewolf, Teenaged Zombies). Halloween made the teen horror flick a very bloody, much more gory and much more sexualized genre.

And The Exorcist changed horror movies by introducing a purely evil, purely supernatural satanic being as the villain.

Tbe Exorcist didn't need a logical excuse for murder ...it didn't need the excuse of human madness, or hubris; didn't need radioactivity or a military experiment gone wrong as the excuse for mayhem being committed. Just a devil, a supernatural manifestation of pure evil to cause murder & chaos.

Eventually the two types of movies coalesced to make the average horror move more sexualized, very gory, bloody and supernatural.

Is Michael Meyers pure evil? Is he the devil incarnate? Dr Loomis thinks so. Is Meyers supernatural? Kind of. What Meyers really doesn't like is sex. It sets him off. The devil doesn't like sex in The Exorcist -- the devil makes sex bloody and gruesome with a crucifix causing genital mutilation.

The Exorcist influenced Halloween and Halloween changed the teen horror flick. The changed teen horror flick and the changed general horror flick merged. Now we have supernatural, sex hating, mutilating, gory, explosive violence spattering our screens.

The Exorcist brought in the supernatural infestation of humans by a purely evil devil who used violent sex imagery. Halloween brought in sex imagery as a cause of brutal, gory violence.

Those two movies got married and produced the offspring that is the horror industry today.

One can say Scream changed the slasher genre even more.

Another good thread derailed by a looney toon

FUCK that piece of shit troll, R61-

And we can have as many threads on any subject as we want-

Carry on!

And it needs to be asked-

Do you KNOW what she did??

Your cunting daughta???

The Priest should have won that Oscar

r54 is completely ignorant of film and literature history.

HALLOWEEN and THE EXORCIST broke some new ground, but HALLOWEEN certainly didn't "escalate to show more sex and much more gory stuff than previously seen in the horror genre before."

You're ignorant of PSYCHO, the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis, BLACK CHRISTMAS or TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

And THE EXORCIST wasn't the first demon possession or exorcism movie at all. Maybe the best production values, advertising and Hollywood studio support than anything before it. But you're ignorant of movies like KING OF KINGS, MOTHER JOAN OF THE ANGELS, THE RELUCTANT SAINT or Jesus Franco's THE DEMONS.

Halloween didn’t even show gore.

There was killing with no blood.

r59 is also mistaken about THE EXORCIST "changing horror movies by introducing a purely evil, purely supernatural satanic being as the villain."

I’m not OP, but I’m tempted to start another exorcist thread so we can watch R32 continue to have her public meltdown.

Go for it R68! If I may suggest a topic: all the high strangeness surrounding the cast, and the sickness and odd coincidences that seemed to occur. Perhaps they're exaggerated rumours at best, but I find the subject fascinating, if not just a bit creepy.

R3 I'd be more scared by "Dirty Sally."

The hot blonde priest got #metoo’d this week

Bump

“I wish we still had that sense of innocence as a nation.”

I genuinely do not grasp nor do I understand people like OP, who want America to go back in time, specifically to a “time of innocence”.

By the time this film came out, we had a sitting US President who beat the living shit out of his wife, when he wasn’t engaging in corruption, causing national scandal and the demise of his political career. Not long before Watergate, another US President had been assassinated, followed up with the assassination of his brother, & MLK.

We lost around 60,000 Americans in Vietnam, killed millions of Vietnamese, while thousands of servicemen came back traumatized, injured, maimed, hooked on heroin, and unfit for employment.

Serial killers were running amok at an all time high, while crime rates were at epic proportions in NYC, and other metropolitan areas.

Women were marching the streets, demanding equal rights, equal pay, access to birth control, while burning their brassieres, while an American heiress named Patricia, ran around robbing banks.

Americans were sitting in their cars, waiting 2-3 before getting gas for their gas guzzling vehicles, IF they were lucky!

Racially driven riots were more common than not.

Gays were fighting tooth and nail for their humanity, too.

There was nothing innocent about America, or Americans in the early 70s. Anyone who believes that this was an idyllic time in America, due to a movie based on something that is pure fiction, is living in a cave, under a rock, or in the proverbial mother’s basement.

Hurts my heart to see the beautiful National Theater in Westwood, which is featured in Dirty Harry. It was like a Jet Age movie palace. Stairs, mirrors, orange rugs. Closed down in 2002 or so. Very sad. Kills me.

Was a great film despite the Catholic proselytizing.

I went to see Dominion in the theater (the origin story) wound up walking out, was SO bad! Shame as Pazuzu had potential to be interesting on film.

R73, it's just more proof that nostalgia is pointless. What's interesting is that most people who have this nostalgia are those who weren't there in the first place. Hence, hipsters and the like.

It’s nuts that people would wait on line for 10 hours to see a movie back then.

On one or another of the many, many, 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑦 threads on this film, it has probably been suggested and discussed, the possibility that Frs. Karras and Dyer might have been in a relationship with one another.

What do you think, DL?

I remember going to Westwood to see this movie shortly after it opened. The lines were wrapped around the buildings, insane! I thought the film was disappointingly stupid. Not being religious contributed to that I suppose. It was NOT worth the wait.

I've watched the movie many times over the years. When I was younger, I found it both scary and sad. I think the tone of the movie conributed to that feeling.

Karras seems very butch what with the boxing and all. I don't get any homoerotic undertones from the film

Boxing isn't homoerotic, R81? 𝑅𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦?

How about Fr Dyer drinking with Karras in his room, putting him to bed, removing his shoes, telling him "Goodnight, Dims," and turning off the lights? Interlocked fingers at the end?

[quote]No sport is more physical, more direct, than boxing. No sport appears more powerfully homoerotic: the confrontation in the ring - the disrobing - the sweaty, heated combat that is part dance, courtship, coupling -the frequent urgent pursuit by one boxer of the other in the fight's natural and violent movement toward the 'knockout.'

the boxing in The Exorcist wasn't homoerotic at all. I don't remember the putting him to bed part. Who's fingers were interlocked?

Jason Miller gives no gay vibe. I guess maybe I'd be more apt to believe the other priest was in love with him but I don't think it was returned.

My cousin's husband was a teenager when it came out. He lived down the street from a theater and he said the movie really freaked him out and he ran home from the theater.

[quote]the boxing in The Exorcist wasn't homoerotic at all.

I never said that it was. (I think Jason Miller was an unattractive man.) R81 introduced the topic of boxing as evidence that it wasn't homoerotic, and that's not true of boxing in general.

[quote]I don't remember the putting him to bed part.

Then perhaps you ought to watch it again. It's from 40:07 to 41:51 in the Theatrical Version, immediately preceding Fr Karras' dream. During the segment, a different movement from Mike Oldfield's 'Tubular Bells' is playing, very subdued, in the background, as though from another room (it gets a little louder when Dyer opens the door to the hallway).

[quote]Who's fingers were interlocked?

'𝑊ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒.' Dyer's and Karras', when Karras lay, apparently dying, at the bottom of the stairs, as Dyer administered the last rites.

Dyer likes playing as though in a piano bar, and the priest who portrays the character, Fr. William O'Malley, is apparently gay in real life.

Sometimes extensive hype, along with snowballing word of mouth recommendations, make a big movie a "must see". The studios can shell out for the first with blockbuster marketing budgets, but they can't count on the word of mouth to create genuine buzz and excitement. "The Exorcist", "Jaws", "E. T.", "Pulp Fiction", "The Sixth Sense". Others?

I saw it recently on the big screen. Friedkin was there and spoke beforehand. He said people were hysterical with fear over it back then but even if you hadn't seen the film before it probably won't scare you since we've become so used to horror.

Funny thing the one part that got the biggest scare from the crowd is when Karras is listening to the tapes "I am no one...." and the phone rings and scares him. That scared the audience.

Here's another one: just as there's actually no 'daughter' per Lt. Kinderman's request for an autograph, I also doubt that there's a 'Mrs Kinderman' who won't accompany her husband to the movies. I think Lt. Kinderman is a lonely gay man looking to persuade men to go out with him to the movies, perhaps hoping it will develop into more.

In the 'Version You've Never Seen,' the new ending has Kinderman and Fr. Dyer hooking up to go to the movies. ;)

Nah r88. Kinderman is attracted to Burstyn.

R89, he didn't ask ℎ𝑒𝑟 out to the movies. ;)

Eldergays, was it really that big a deal?

The primary cultural Impact of The Exorcist was to introduce the genius of Mike Oldfield to the majority of people who weren't then listening to late night FM radio.

This movie came out when I was in college. There was unbelievable hype around it - newspaper articles, evening newscasts, the Sunday news shows, cover of Time, vocal condemnation by the Catholic Church, etc. It was far above the usual buzz a film normally received. I went with friends to see it. Our mistake was getting really stoned beforehand. The fact that I still recall that day and who I was with all these years later speaks to how much of an "event" it was.

Scary movie. Great acting.

Interesting.

I wish I experienced this