CaptainHowdy.com The #1 Exorcist Fansite Since 1999
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
What a great-looking redesign! Kudos to Cap, and kudos to everyone who has remained loyal to his hard work over the years. It's good to see this site still going strong into 2010…!
The owners of the 3600 Prospect Street house felt overwhelmed by their home becoming a tourist attraction, and so they declined use of the location. As for the city declining a shooting permit: no answer has ever been made public.
Bill Blatty has a lot of pull with Georgetown University — hence his ability to dig a hole in the Jesuit cemetary and film an entire sequence there for E3 when no one is even allowed to walk on the grass. He graduated from the school, was and is friends with many of the faculty members, and lectures there regularly. So the fact that his request was well-received should not be viewed as any surprise.
The fact that IMDB lists Georgetown as a location is false. In fact, due to the fact that the production couldn’t film there, as well as the inability to shoot major sequences in Africa, there were a good many artisans pulled out of retirement to create these locations artificially.
It’s an understandable mistake, though — only one who has actually visited Georgetown or who studies the fleeting glimpses in THE HERETIC on freeze-frame will notice these tell-tale signs. I myself didn’t notice this until I’d visited the location several times.
The city of Georgetown declined the film makers’ requests to film on location, so Prospect Street was recreated on a sound stage.
While the production designers did an excellent job (particularly on the Hitchcock Stairs), one can clearly tell that this isn’t the actual location. Aside from the absence of sky in any shots, the differences are as follows:
– At the base of the stairs, the street is too close, and is a suburban location (trees can be seen) rather than the perpetually manic intersection at Key Bridge.
– The top of the stairs are level, rather than a ramp declining from Prospect.
– There is no intersection at Prospect and 36th Avenue NW. The Tombs and other restaurants on the corner are nowhere to be seen. Rather, Prospect Street is depicted as being a row of houses. This can be seen when Fletcher is running up and down calling for help at the end of the film. Compare this to the opening of EXORCIST III when Dyer is walking from the intersection to the top of the Hitchcock Steps.
Something tells me that certain posters are confusing WETA Digital and WETA Workshop. The latter does amazing make-up and prosthetic work.
And at any rate, anyone thinking WETA sucks needs to re-evaluate. Their work should not be dmned because you dislike the films they’ve been associated with.
Ryan: go into these objectively. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that Schrader’s film is all-good or Harlin’s film is all-bad (a common mistake on these boards, as well as at IMDB). Divorce yourself from the behind-the-scenes nonsense and you’ll find two film with plenty to love and plenty to hate.
Fans who are holding their breath for new features are going to be awfully disappointed. The transfer will be gorgeous, though.
“Chris inhaled slowly and then seemed to horde the breath. It was a while before she allowed it to re-enter the atmosphere, to commune and bond with new air molecules, shaping and reshaping into infinite new versions of intangible human fuel.”
“What violence had transformed her nethers into a haphazard nightmare of ruined flesh?”
Genius.
L’ANTICHRISTO is by far the best of the rip-offs. THE DEMON MURDER CASE is pretty entertaining as well, being based on the appalling DEVIL IN CONNECTICUT book.
I think we better understand why the score was dropped.
Nice vid. it offers a look at any alternate version of the film. However, it’s clear that it doesn’t work within Friedkin’s concept of cinema verite.
I set a forty dollar cap, and refused to go higher for a shooting draft.
I’m trying to unearth the original Goodhart script right now, which ought to be worth the time and effort.
