CaptainHowdy.com The #1 Exorcist Fansite Since 1999
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Thanks for your comments, St Michael. I think you’re correct – Warner, Peck and Remick were still bankable and very respected at the time of release. Which means their accepting the contract wasn’t some last-ditch effort to revive their careers. Yes, the “weekend blockbuster” sets the tone for The Omen, whereas The Exorcist was in a totally different league. The only hugely-known actors in it – Lee J. Cobb, Max Von Sydow, and Jack McGowern – though respected and bankable – were not the “stars”. Instead, Friedkin got grand performances from his main actors who were not generally recognized as “movie stars”, and this gave the Exorcist another unique feature.
Fr Fletcher, thanks for your input – yes, if I find anything new on the original Legion film I’ll post it. Thanks for your helpful data on the McCabe book.
Ken, yeah, it would be nice for Blatty to have another go at Legion – or at least to somehow locate _all_ the “lost” and/or unused footage and re-stitch it into a new film. But yes, how could a new film be done without Jason Miller? He put an indelible stamp on the Karras character and who else could fill his shoes? E.g., Lonesome Dove’s Captain Call, played by Tommy Lee Jones, was the _definitive_ Call. Jon Voight later did a very creditable job with the Call character, but still it wasn’t the same as Tommy Lee Jones. Ditto for anyone playing the Karras role…
1973 “the Devil has neither won nor lost” I always thought he lost: He failed in his aim to clinch Karras’ loss of faith, he failed to force Willie to realize that Elvira still alive as a drug addict, he failed to make the witnesses of the possession succumb to self-loathing, he failed to make Regan MacNeil die while possessed, he failed in his attempt to possess Karras. As Karras said, he’s a big-time loser.
M.I.K.E. thanks for your input. I’m not sure why E-3 cntradicts the original, especially in relation to Miller’s presence. The Legion novel calls for Karras’ re-animated body and I presume Blatty’s screenplay required the same. Apparently Dourif played Karras’s last moments in the exorcism to establish that Dourif is now to be thought of as Karras. But to me, that’s far more confusing than just having Miller – who thousands recognize as Karras – come back in the Karras role.
Granted, the contradiction between Blatty’s original concept and the Legion movie is that in the original, it was only Karras’s _body_ that was required to create “the scandal”. In the original, Karras as a personality had gone on to his reward. But in the final cut of Legion, Karras is present body and soul – his soul having been captured by demons and kept prisoner in its re-animated body in order that Karras be tormented as his body commits atrocities. Still, given the contradiction, I would think that Karras is fundamentally identified thru Miller, and thus Miller is less confusing than Dourif in playing that role.
Except that the “agnostic” Chris MacNeil ends up believing in the Devil, who “does commercials”, and when Dyer asks her if all the world’s evil makes her think the Devil exists, then how, consistently, would she account for all the world’s goodness, Blatty has Chris take the point to heart. Doesn’t mean she converts to religion, or to Christianity, but clearly Dyer has scored a point for belief, and Blatty does not leave us thinking that Chris is still the same “agnostic” she was before witnessing Karras’ faith, of whom she says that she’s never in her life seen such faith.
So I think Blatty is leading us toward thinking that Chris will consider religion with an open mind, and possibly accept it. I don’t think he wants us to think of her as a mere agnostic any more.
And while your analysis of “living” and “dying” may work in a mainstream Christian context, I don’t think it applies to Blatty’s own theology. Not once does he appeal to your presentation of “either-or” acceptance of Christ’s divinity as a salvific issue. Instead, for Blatty salvation is a matter of love, especially love of self as creature of God. Divine intervention was noticably absent in expelling demons from Regan: instead, it was Karras’ Christ-like self-sacrifice that accomplished the “demonicide”.
Nor is Blatty’s theology mainstream or orthodox, as is clearly delineated in Merrin’s Teilhard-like musings in the original novel, and particularly in Legion, which resembles nothing so much as a Gnostic myth, with a split-off part of God willing itself to “become” the created universe, and then struggle back to union with the transcendent deity.
So while your “either-or” salvific construct of redemption via acknowledgment of Christ’s deity may be correct in an orthodox sense, I don’t think that Blatty had it in mind at all – quite the conrary, from his admiring treatment of Teilhardian and Gnostic material, it is clear that Blatty’s notion of redemption is not orthodox.
Yeah, a guest –
Stepping into Jerry Goldsmith’s shoes would be a huge task for any film composer. So far, I’ve only heard bad things about the new musical score – it’s been called not scary and mediocre. I like to see new music for new movies, but in this case maybe Jerry’s original themes should have been used. Apparently that’s what’s with the new Superman movie – the new composer is using John Williams’ original themes for the new movie.
The nosey old lady was Ruth Gordon. For the kind of film it was – satire and suspense – I thought it was successful. John Cassavetes played a perfect venal self-absorbed jerk…
I may be in a minority around here, but I despised the original Omen. First, it wasn’t scary – it was peopled with junk horror cliches from the get-go. Reliance on gore – a cross impales a priest, David Warner gets decapitated, a big scary (not) dog, unbiblical nonsense about daggers of Meggido. The second was even worse with its stupid scarey (not) ravens and a Leo McKern too embarrassed even to have his name listed in the credits. Not only does it not measure up to The Exorcist – it’s not even in the same ballpark. Fo me, it failed in two of the most crucial pillars of true horror – suspense, and…ummm… horror.
I only liked the fleshing out of Damien’s character in O2 – it was the only meaningful, interesting thing in the whole trilogy – Damien discovers he’s the Antichrist and he’s not happy with the news.
O3’s only redeeming characteristic imho was Jerry Goldsmith’s lovely religious-sounding musical score – a departure from the “creepy” style of the first two films.
Thanks for your comments, St. Michael and Fr. Fletcher. Sorry Fr. I can’t answer your director’s cut question. Maybe the marketers equated the insertion of the unused footage as something Friedkin wanted and especially liked. History of course says differently – Friedkin had left that stuff out because he didn’t like it and/or because he thought these scenes were “show-stoppers” in the bad sense of the term.
Fr. Fletcher
Good commentary. One thing I liked about TVYNS was the addition of Karras listening to audiotapes of the pre-possession Regan in the language lab.
First, it shows the huge contrast between the possessed Regan and her normal persona, and it shows Karras deeply involved in absorbing this dichotomy.
Second, it forms a perfect bridge to the next scene where Karras is celebrating Mass. It is obvious from his inflection and his eyes that the Regan tapes have put the hook into his crisis of faith. He almost looks with a dawning wonder at the Eucharistic elements. The tapes have put a new hope into his soul: perhaps the colossal difference between normal Regan and possessed Regan means that the possession is genuine. This intuition gives an entirely new connotation to the Mass’s words as Karras says them, “This is the cup of my blood, the new covenant… THE MYSTERY OF FAITH”. Faith stirs in Karras because of the tapes – something that is not obvious in the original film.
Yeah, Greg, in ref to E2, I was never sure what “terms of achievement” it was aiming for. It didn’t scare me, it made me laugh inappropriately, it ruined Blatty’s ideas and characters. It did have about sixty seconds of interesting stuff from Merrin (“does goodness draw evil to itself?”) and the color and photography were top notch. But it didn’t have a message beyond “Regan’s possession was not unique, Pazuzu is trying to destroy these New Holy Kids thru possession…”
