CaptainHowdy.com The #1 Exorcist Fansite Since 1999
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Good find, but isn’t the photo the scene where Merrin and Karras are restraining her, not the crucifix-rape scene? No big deal – it’s a good article.
That’s a vivid scene alright, but I would tend to take issue with the “Dennings as pedophile” implication vis a vis touching Regan, for these reasons:
1) Blatty shows Dennings only as a good friend of the MacNeils, including Regan, toward whom he is consistently kind-hearted.
2) Blatty shows Dennings as a considerate person while sober, but rude and aggressive while drunk. Your scene has him drinking, which is consistent with Blatty’s description. However, Blatty’s Dennings is not a sexual predator when drunk. He is merely insulting. So molesting Regan is out of character for Dennings as Blatty has written him.
A likelier scenario – likelier in the sense that it keeps to Blatty’s characterization of Dennings – would be for Regan to wake up and taunt him. This could be Regan-the-sick-kid taunting him, or it could be Regan-the-mouthpiece-of-the-demon who taunts him. Then, already tipsy from sampling his flask, Dennings might start to slap Regan around, while in response she kills him. That’s still a stretch, since I can’t picture Dennings harming a little girl no matter how drunk he is. I just mention this scene as an alternative that at least is somewhat consistent with Blatty’s description of Dennings’ negative side.
3) Your scene, unlike Blatty’s novel, gives both Regan and the demon a _good_ reason to kill Dennings – which is clearly against Blatty’s intention, which is to show a demonic attack “out of the blue” and motivated only by evil. Your scene which has Dennings starting to molest Regan, gives her a good reason to attack him; and it gives the demon a “good” reason to be jealous and kill Dennings.
I hope you don’t think I’m being overly critical, but the “Dennings as molester” theme has been kicked around here recently, and it would seem that this theme is a projection of current social concerns about child abuse onto an original characterization that does not really support it.
Oh, duh, I get it now… okay, I’ve seen the movie but it’s been sooooo long ago that I can’t recall the details. Probably a good time for me to view it again! I’m sure your observations will enhance viewing it again.
I hear ya. I didn’t know that Carrie survived in the remake!
Who would you like to see play Kinderman in a new Exorcist?
Yes, actually showing Denning’s demise would be an interesting scene. It would have the shock-advantage of showing the viewer, whereas the novel and Friedkin’s film don’t show it. It could be very creepy. After a brief, casual conversation where Sharon asks Denning to stay while she gets the prescription: Dennings now alone in the house. The noises. Maybe a demonic rumble. Maybe a “Please help me!” from the upstairs room. Dennings makes his way up those frightful stairs, flings open the door – and then…! Yeah, this could be very effective.
Yeah, no second head-revolving, please. That scene started grating on me about the third time I saw it. Yes, the first one works just after the crucifix-rape scene, because it’s from Chris’s POV, and it could be (as the book offers) a momentary shock-hallucination. But when it happens a second time and is witnessed by both Karras and Merrin, it just strikes me as overkill and unrealistic.
That may be a grisly synchronicity between fiction and real life, but it doesn’t work thematically for the film, since Sal Mineo had not yet been murdered.
