CaptainHowdy.com The #1 Exorcist Fansite Since 1999
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Other than the mouse or rat ripping my book in a house that didn’t have mice or rats, I haven’t had a bad luck experience. However, it was creepy. I kept the book between a one-foot space on the floor between my bed and the wall. I had just finished reading another chapter and I put the book away in its usual place. I turned the lamp off. Right before I fell asleep, I heard the ripping sounds. I turned the lamp back on and picked up my copy of the book and it had 1/2″ to 1″ rips in the first part of the book even though I was reading a chapter near the end. Go figure. And, yes, I am blaming this on a mouse or rat because I refuse to believe anything else. Nice justification in my mind at age 13 and today! 🙂
Both great stories here. Second-grader Marianna D was scared shitless (if she really saw it) or she’s a good mockingbird! 😉
X – I think your parents are a little twisted to take a 4-y-o to see this film at such an impressionable age regardless of religious beliefs. (X, this is not a slam to you or your parents, but did they know what they were going to be seeing?). I’m sure you were scared to death by the visceral experience alone because you couldn’t possibly understand the storyline at that age.
I was 12 and my dad was irrational in taking me to see The Exorcist at such a young age. He obviously had no idea what he was getting us both into. It really didn’t impress him either way, but it sure as hell put an impression on this little Catholic boy! 🙂
You deserve the shout-out, drexul. I went to my local B&N and Borders and they don’t carry HorrorHound Mag in my area. Anyone have any ideas for online ordering of this one issue? Or, is not available yet?
I feel a song coming on from Elton John: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (now that would scare the shit out of me if watched The Exorcist on that stuff!).
You know the cash flow at concession stands would escalate like hell:
“Can I help you?”
“Yeah, I’d like the 40-cup popcorn barrel with a lot of that yellow oil called butter. Uh, the 85 oz. Mountain Dew and the 18-pack of Reese’s peanut butter cups … oh, never mind. Replace the Reese’s with a half-pound of the hash brownies, please. 😉
Good information on Michel here.
Maybe they will surprise us! Can you include an updated link for Horror Hound on here regarding this issue?
dsea, good point on the CGI “modeling effect” as that is really getting to the heart of our question. A small snippet from youtube on 3D facial modeling using one-shot 2D images is here. The graphic artists added teeth behind the mouths and facial expressions that worked their way into the cheek, jaw, and nose areas (of course, the computer does it at the command of the graphic artists, but it’s very effective).
In thought, making Linda R. Hager’s mouth the way they did (albeit it’s very short), CGI artists isolated each frame and increased the mouth to open with blood pouring from it. Watch the two scenes in slow-mo just as dsea did. You may want to turn the sound off as it is distracting when you’re doing an imagery comparison.
Also, just think about Forrest Gump and how they changed JFK’s mouth to look so real when he was giving the award to Gump. JFK is saying something entirely different than the line, “He said he’s gotta pee,” while they added Tom Hanks to the scene where he didn’t exist at all. (Probably through blue-screen isolation by melding the original film with the one already in existence.)
howdy, the snake-like filming was filmed, but it was after Linda R. Hager did her contortionist work. I wrote, “Oh, and the snake-tongue flicking out of Regan’s mouth was done after she (Hager) flipped around. IOW, after Linda R. Hager finished her scene …” Hager finished the flip and then the quick edits are put into place showing Blair with the snake-tongue flicking out of her mouth. Therefore, Hager was not involved in the snake-tongue scene because it would have looked like her instead of Blair.
The question that was asked by the 13-y-o in the posting I supplied from the Exorcist FAQ by William Friedkin is the one in which she asked Friedkin if there was an alternate spider-walk scene where Regan was slithering down the staircase in a snake-like fashion. That’s where Blatty responds with, “There was no alternate scene filmed.”
Also, I was “beta” member of The Exorcist’s 25th Anniversary re-release. On that official site, there is a statement about The Spider Walk:
THE SPIDER WALK
One of the most widely talked about “missing scenes” from The Exorcist is the eerie “Spider Walk” which appears in both Blatty’s novel and screenplay, but which was never included in the finished film. According to the director William Friedkin, “It was quite early in the story, and we hadn’t yet seen any of the massive manifestations that were to come. At that point in the narrative, I just thought it was too much.”The entire sequence was filmed however, on April 11th, 1973, as special effects man Marcel Vercoutere remembers:
“According to the script, Regan was supposed to be at the top of the stairs where she would turn over, like a crab, and walk down the stairs upside down, with her arms moving about like a spider. She would come all the way down the stairs, then run into the foyer, chasing after Sharon and Chris.”
“Well, one of the New York people said they had figured a way to do this scene using a fishing pole and a rig. He went out and bought this very expensive, deep-sea fishing pole with a big giant reel. Then they got this gal [Linda R. Hager] who was a contortionist, and they turned her upside down and strapped this thing onto her. I told them it wouldn’t work, but they didn’t believe me, so this grip stood on the landing with this fishing pole, and the poor girl went down the stairs, and she crashed and got rapped pretty good!”
“So then I took over. I made a rig that was in the exact same position as the stairs, but up in the overhead. Then I put a carriage up there, put the girl into a harness, and connected them with flying wires. That way, she stayed perfectly level as she went down the stairs, and all she had to do was to let me know how high to have her so her hands and feet would just be touching the stairs.”
“We shot it that way, until she got to the landing at the bottom of the stairs, then all I had to do was release the rig and let her loose. I would let her go at just the right moment, and she would turn over, out of the rig and then finish the shot the right way up. We did it quite a few times, and as I remember, every time we shot it, it came out pretty good.” [Ahh, a repeat of the same scene, no blood, Mr. Vercoutere? 🙂 ]
In going back to Vercoutere’s original statement in his 1986 account about things getting “kinda bloody,” he doesn’t mention the blood in the re-released version nor in The FoG. Everyone is entitled to a brain fart! 🙂
Now, maybe WB will go back and fix Linda’s mouth when she says to Karras, “Your mother sucks cocks in Hell,” because the mouth and vocals don’t even come close! 😉
dsea, good point on Hitler! Pazuzu may be called “fictitious” just as he is in the game Dungeons & Dragons. But they all point back to the mythological deity.
Best bet: I’ll read Ben’s theories and let you know! 🙂
Good point again, Ben:
“The story of Saul consulting a medium to bring up the spirit of the dead Samuel resulted in his death ‘because he was unfaithful to the LORD; he did not keep the word of the LORD and even consulted a medium for guidance’ (1 Samuel 28:1-25; 1 Chronicles 10:13-14).
I think, dsea, as time evolves along with man’s latest “devices,” this is still a part of God’s ultimate plan. EVP is just another form of masquerade much like the exorcisms of the “self-proclaimed exorcist,” Bob Larson (hair plugs and all). If you don’t know Larson (I did a post on here somewhere already), then you need to watch this video.
Larson is a symbolic embodiment of “EVP” and could not be more phony … and he’s getting richer and richer doing so. He’s performed over 6,000 exorcisms on a public scale. Exorcism is a private ritual. It’s not one in which the “exorcist” sells goods and services that rake in profit during free conferences. According to Larson, 50% of the population is possessed and public exorcism is a necessity. Huh? 50%? That means that I, as the writer, or you, as the reader, is already possessed! Dear God, call Max von Sydow! “Me thinks Larson is full shit instead of the spirit.” I do hope you’ll watch the video above until the end where Larson squirms over the, “gotcha journalism questions!”
In this short piece, you will hear Fr. Thomas Rausch of Loyola Marymount University give the best description of possession and the best rationale, in my opinion. Okay, my science philosophies play into this opinion. But, when a priest says it too, I can’t help but agree that the very vast majority of possessions can be attributed to a somatic and/or psychosomatic condition while psychological issues play out as well.
drexul, to some degree, yes. What I’m saying is that Linda R. Hager’s mouth was created opened through CGI with the blood pouring out. Two reasons: 1. Blatty said there was never an alternate filmed (i.e., no bloody one; no snake-like one); 2. CGI artists have been able to create the entire mouths of animals and humans for years now on moving faces. Look at Eddie Murphy’s version of Dr. Doolittle.
As far as the painstakingly frame-by-frame painting of the vomit coming from Regan’s mouth, Friedkin knew after he saw the dailies of Dick Smith’s device on Eileen Dietz that he didn’t like it. Therefore, he filmed that singular scene of Blair with her mouth open simulating the vomiting action then. (In The FoG, Smith said he never knew that his device was not used for the entire scene until the premiere). We know we see Eileen Dietz in the apparatus for that one split second at the end. This is perhaps because that quick spot worked. However, if you freeze-frame that scene, it doesn’t look a thing like Linda Blair, so you know the entire scene was probably a dud and Friedkin acted on it then. In post-production, Friedkin said the vomit was painted in coming from Blair’s face because it just did not work on the Dietz version.
Which leads us back to the Linda R. Hager scene on two levels. In 1973, you really needed to have the actor with the mouth open to add that special effect of vomiting (the Blair scene). Today, CGI can fake most anything … including drawing in the whole mouth with blood pouring out (the Hager scene sans an open mouth).
Finally, I can only go by the FAQ from the snarky William Friedkin. Plus, other facts from books and online references don’t expose another filming with blood. No other scene existed. So I am convinced that CGI was employed that opened Hager’s mouth with blood pouring out. I have been studying this film for over 25 years on some level because it made me think hard about religion and Catholicism. I am both religious and a Catholic, but my work is in science. So, I try to have a balanced approached on my views and seek the reality versus the fantasy. Yet, The Exorcist is exactly that … a fantasy escape written by this society’s Edgar Allen Poe.
Oh, and the snake-tongue flicking out of Regan’s mouth was done after she (Hager) flipped around. IOW, after Linda R. Hager finished her scene. Someone on here has already mentioned that. If you watch the snake tongue flicking out of Blair’s mouth it is hardly plausible and tremendously laughable. And the clincher is (I’m repeating myself), where would the blood from Regan’s mouth have gone after she flipped around and started doing the snake tongue flicking? It doesn’t make sense to have Blair without the blood on her face and doing this snake tongue flicking thing. Continuity would have been shot down the tubes.
Watch the scene the way it was shot and edited in its entirety (the only one that exists). The original was intermixed with the side view and the front view. It’s here. By comparison, watch the scene that has been severely cut. That scene features only two shots: one in which Hager climbs backward all the way down with only the last few seconds devoted to the “bloody-mouth spewing.” That scene is here.
drexul, I too enjoy our quid pro quid blogs. It’s fun to be able to share information on here, ya big ole “snarky” friend of mine! 🙂
