Linda Blair and the frenzy surrounding "The Exorcist"

Ahem, OP.

Let's remember who really made that performance...

Everyone remembers Linda Blair, but Burstyn jumped into that role with both feet. It’s Burstyn who makes the picture.

Bitches, I made that damn movie.

Then all that mess with the stunt double insisting she wasn’t actually a stunt double and instead was a costar. Eileen Dietz I think that’s how you spell her name.

It was all over for Linda when somebody commented "Look in the mirror Linda....for 14 you don't look so good".

More of a furor than a frenzy.

r2, until I read your comment, I didn't realize that you're totally correct about Burstyn in "TE" and how it's really her presence as Chris MacNeil that provides the tractor beam that sucks you in; you buy in totally from the get-go.

In the midst of the frightening, fantastical, the outrageous, the pure, earnest, skillful schlock (and I write that as a compliment) that is "TE", Burstyn never, at any moment in her performance, indicates shred of irony, hesitation or indulges in a self-knowing wink while acting as Chris MacNeil.

She's very naturalistic in the early scenes.

Linda’s folks were very open minded in the I’m okay, you’re okay sense of the term. Linda was sharing her bed with Rick Springfield by the time his pop hymn Speak to the Sky was climbing the charts in the autumn of 1973.

There was big hype about nurses at the premier and people fainting. Nobody I knew saw any of that. But, it was a big thing. It was THE scary movie of the year and EVERYONE had to see it. Things were much simpler back then and people actually snuggled at the movies.

"Linda Blairing" is what we used to call it when someone was conversing with you at a gay bar while simultaneously looking around for someone hotter.

It's hard to remember what a cultural phenomenon that movie was. I remember stories of people falling out of their seats in theaters and rolling around on the ground.

One theater in NYC even had a priest standing by in the lobby to help people who became psychotic during the movie.

I saw the director's cut on DVD about 10 years ago, and let me tell you, that is still one fucking frightening movie.

It's scary today on your TV screen. Imagine watching it on a huge screen in a dark theater.

I saw it on DVD in the 90s and I was thoroughly unimpressed.

R14, you weren't raised in a Christian household, were you?

I saw it for the first time when I was about 22. I was on a Greyhound tour bus, and the movie was playing on a 6-inch black-and-white screen above the seat in front of me. I slept with my lights on for a month.

Airport '75?

It scared me to watch it but not after I left the movie theater. I don't believe in Satan. The TV movie on the Manson Family scared the shit out of me because that was real.

Oh good. The puritanical hypocrites have descended from right wing heaven. I'm sure the scripted agenda about to play out will be entertaining.

Someone should tell them that faux outrage about The Exorcist, Linda Blair, Ellen Burstyn or anything else will not unravel democracy. Also, it will not pave the way for a Trump inauguration in August.

Troll thread.

Nope, R15. Jewish. Not the least bit squeamish about horror movies, either.

Screenwriter William Peter Blatty was a devout Catholic and a homophobe.

The fainting..

I just watched Linda’s shockingly overlooked-by-the-Academy “Savage Streets.” The opening montage—as tube top-clad Linda and her pals carouse down Hollywood Boulevard—is simply spellbinding.

R20 I thought not. The movie hits on a lot of Christian cultural memes that probably do not resonate with people raised in other religious traditions. I suspect it spooked Catholics worst. I was raised in a mainline protestant tradition, and while I found it to be frightening, it didn't affedt me afterwards like it did many.

the way she turned her head around like that is worthy of an oscar.

I couldn't eat pea soup for years.

I always thought it was so odd in the sequel that they cast Louise Fletcher as the doctor. She sort of looks like Burstyn. As a kid I'd sometimes flip the dial and watch a bit of the films (too scared to watch the whole things.) I always thought Fletcher was playing the mother.

(and there was that bad blood between them when Burstyn started that campaign to have the 1975 Best Actress award not given as a way to protest the lack of good roles for women. Fletcher was not happy.)

After the crucifix, the plunger was easy.

That's Lou Grant's daughter in the photo at r27 on the right.

Just watched that episode tonight! (Edie Gets Remarried.)

Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair were both phenomenal. Down right shame neither got an Oscar.

How did Burstyn lose? That year is the oddest Best Actress one ever. Glenda Jackson (A Touch of Class) the only one who nobody thought stood a chance won...and she had just won a few years before.

"Your mother is getting fucked in Hell Damian!"

Her acting career was derailed by the success of this film. One of my favorite films but it's an ugly film. No one could see her as anyone other than the vomiting demon possessed Regan.

Jason Miller was excellent in this.

No, R32. Her career was not derailed by The Exorcist. She worked constantly in TV movies (when they were more prestigious) in the 1970s. What derailed her career was the fact that she couldn't act for shit.

I wonder if Ryan O'Neal paid Eileen Dietz to go around spewing untruths, so Tatum would have a better chance at BSA? You know it's something he'd do.

No it isn't. Ryan only wanted Ryan to succeed.

[quote] Bitches, I made that damn movie.

[quote]—Pazuzu

Bitch please, don’t you realize there’s no U in Pazuzu?

Ellen Burstyn is great in so many roles. What I want to know is how Friedkin ever landed Jeanne Moreau.

R31 that demon was a real potty mouth!

[quote] She worked constantly in TV movies (when they were more prestigious)

You mean like Born Innocent?

R30 repeat winners, even years close together, are fairly common at the Oscars. Most people were predicting Streisand or Woodward with Burstyn as an outside chance. Streisand hadn’t won any precursors, but TWWW was popular, Woodward won the NY Film critics best actress, Jackson had won the comedy globe while Mason won the drama one, but she was new to film and an unlikely candidate to win considering her competition. Burstyn won no precursors either, TE was huge, but horror film performances rarely win (maybe Ruth Gordon in RB but she was more comic relief in that film). I think what gave Jackson the edge was she was English, respected, and in a best pic nominee. Rumor was the vote tally was razor thin.

[quote] You mean like Born Innocent?

Yes, Born Innocent, Sweet Hostage, Sarah T. Portrait of an Alcoholic. All of those TV movies were seen as hard hitting dramas back then with good casts and well written scripts. They may seem campy today, but it's not how they were regarded back then.

And TV movies in the 70s were certainly more prestigious than what has counted for a TV movie the past 20 years (not counting cable).

She was quite slutty in her teen years, busted a couple of times giving head in the restroom of Hamburger Hamlet and Carney's.

Ellen is still working and has 4 movies coming out (according to IMDB). Bitch is going to die on a movie set someday.

Blair did have a pretty good teenage career better than Tatum.

But she started having drug problems and acting out and that ended it for her.

She must have had an odd life. I've read she was hounded by satan worshippers who thought she was really the anti-Christ or some other evil figure they wanted to follow.

Ellen's new movie is Mean Girls in a nursing home. Can't wait to see it.

I loved the horror flicks she did post-Exorcist. Summer of Fear and Hell Night are both great, campy fun. Hell Night also had a young Vincent Van Patten, who spends half the film looking hot as fuck in skimpy boxer shorts.

It blew my mind when I discovered a few years ago that Linda Blair played Joni in S Club 7's CBBC sitcom, LA 7.

Today's audiences would probably find made-for-tv movie "Sweet Hostage" more shocking than The Exorcist.

The Movie Channel showed it this past Saturday night and since I hadn't seen it in many years, I watched. It was nominated for Best Picture but the academy voted for The Sting. Blasphemy!

Rumors have swirled for years that the Glenda Jackson win for Touch of Class was not just razor thin but only a few votes separated 1-5.

Didn't Blair and Burstyn sue Warner Bros. for injuries they incurred during filming the movie?

[quote] Linda’s folks were very open minded in the I’m okay, you’re okay sense of the term.

Were this today Rick and Linda would have a reality show together.

[quote]It was nominated for Best Picture but the academy voted for The Sting. Blasphemy!

That blasphemy supported my coke habit for years!

I never saw The Sting until about 10-15 years ago. I thought it was boring as hell and nothing special. I cannot believe it won over a truly groundbreaking and excellently made film such as The Exorcist.

She couldn't act, but she sure could boogie!

R48, yes!

Soooo cheesy but fun. Paul Cattermole's beach bod and some of the worst acting ever.

Has anyone seen Linda's movie WITCHERY that also stars David Hasselhoff? It looks so damn good.

R55 a strong, controversial film like the Exorcist was never going to win best pic, especially 47 years ago. Blatty won that night for adapting his novel. Plus he was up for best pic as the producer of it and when the Sting won, he said the Academy should fold up its tent and go back to making Apple strudel. Lol pretty funny. Totally agree with you. The Sting is a big Hollywood star vehicle but the Exorcist is a masterpiece of skill and ingenuity. Friedkin was anal about every detail of that film and it paid off.

[quote] Friedkin was anal about every detail

Ironically, that's where Pazuzu was fucking Father Damian's mother.

Blair will be a Convention Hall of Famer for life, mostly for this film, but she has so many cult films like Roller Boogie, Hell Night and Savage Streets, that she can work Comic-Cons and other conventions for life. Easy money.

It caused - or accentuated - a rift in my family, back in '73. My uncle (not 'Booger-bear' and 'the Shriek Owl', for those who've read my occasional family narratives) and his wife's sister* had gone to see 'The Exorcist' and had come back bubbling about it, urging it on my mom and dad, 'Booger-Bear' and 'Shriek Owl,' and my grandmother. What was unusual was the almost evangelical fervor with which they urged seeing it, and the shade they threw at the rest of the family's reluctance to have anything to do with it; that they weren't sufficiently sophisticated or intelligent to appreciate it. For my family's part, they decided that 'Uncle' and 'Wife's Sister' were ill, probably spiritually so, and diminished subsequent contact with them. It was a kerfuffle. I was nine, and my seeing it was completely out of the question. I myself didn't watch 'The Exorcist' until the 80's, when I was twenty or so, and had sufficient autonomy over what I chose to rent on VHS ('tho my mom raised quite a bitch over my bringing it into the house). I merely observed the conflict in '73 with mild interest.

Not long after, 'Booger-Bear' and 'Shriek Owl' went to see it, and came back saying 'it wasn't all that,' 'it was stupid,' etc., which was probably more a reaction to what his elder brother had said than to the relative merits of the film.

*Yes, this was considered heightened levels of inappropriate, not just because of 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 they had seen, but in whose company they had seen it. This particular uncle, eldest of my grandmother's three kids, was said to have been going to porn shops/theaters with his wife's sister, while sidelining his wife. Around this time, the wife committed suicide, and I've always wondered if it really was suicide, or if 'Uncle,' who was then training for law enforcement, had done it and made it look like suicide. Anyway, 'Uncle' and 'Wife's Sister' were soon married, and at this distance, I cannot recall if the 'suicide'/subsequent marriage was before or after they went to see 'The Exorcist.' But that was the context underlying the family kerfuffle at the time.

r62, christ, what back woods holler did you grow up in?

The primary value of "The Exorcist" is that it introduced Mike Oldfield's genius to the world. Oldfield played more than twenty different instruments in the Tubular Bells album.

Linda Blair is a cunt. Treats her fans like crap that pay for her photos and autographs at various comic cons.

[quote]R9 Linda’s folks were very open minded in the I’m okay, you’re okay sense of the term.

She had also been working professionally as a child model and actress for years, so it’s not like her parents pulled her out of Sunday school and said, “Have we got a surprise for YOU!”

[quote]R62, christ, what back woods holler did you grow up in?

In the 12th largest city in the US, R63.

What made you think it was backwoods?

Really? No mention of Repossessed? One of the only times a “serious” actress returned to a role for a campy comedy. It’s actually very entertaining and fun for what it is. Any fans?

R65 please elaborate

r65 is Eileen Dietz.