CaptainHowdy.com The #1 Exorcist Fansite Since 1999
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The Fonda incident, iirc, is recalled directly by Blatty in his The Exorcist from Novel to Screen, Bantam 1974.
I can't evaluate it for you, but if mail is being a pain in the neck, I'd get it at the bookstore as soon as I was sure I could afford it…
A little more hint of the depth of friendship between Chris and Burke.
Dinner party: Mary Jo Perrin warning Chris about the Ouija board and Perrin's brief handshake with Regan, who is already weird enough to recoil from Perrin's touch – and presumably her knowledge.
Karras nostalgically watching the sun set over the river while he hears a harmonica play Red River Valley.
An explicit touch of kindness of some kind when Merrin pays the tea house manager in Iraq to establish Merrin's compassion as well as his already well-established scholarly expertise.
Chris placing a toy mouse in one of Karl's traps.
A disturbing scene of Chris finding Regan's furniture and clothing disarranged.
Regan's panic at “it smells burny” and Howdy's first attack.
A few lines of dialogue about the pornographic Latin sheet slipped into the altar card, later revisited when Kinderman covertly confiscates a sheet of paper typed on the MacNeil typewriter. A scene affirming that the paint from Regan's sculpture matches the paint on the desecrated Mary statue would without doubt confirm Regan's complicity in the church vandalism.
Having Jason Miller do a voice-over as Karras is reading demonology books that describe the vile practices of such cults. Hearing about such obscenties that occur off-screen, in our imagination, would have a nasty, subtle impact.
Instead of the Kinderman-Dyer new friendship scene which so many people object to, have the Dyer-Chris scene where she says of Karras, “I've never seen such faith”, and where Dyer suggests, “If all the evil in the world makes you believe there's a Devil, how do you account for all the goodness in the world?” Dramatically and theologically satisfying, in addition to resonating with Karras' and Merrin's prior exploration of evil on the stairway.
I think all editions are “about the same”. The only thing different is correction of a misattribution, in a section heading, of a scriptural citation to St. Paul, which should have gone to St. John.
Of course, now there is that new edition by Blatty in which he adds a new character to Karras' dream and may have also made some other minor changes.
Sof is resident expert on the book, maybe she can tell you more.
hatter76 said:
Granville you were around in the old days when I was actually active on this site,  glad someone around here who knows how to talk like a grown up.
ÂThanks for your kind words.
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LOL, I literally don't have the energy to waste on that crap.
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It IS a time-waster, but once in a while we do have to stand up and refute the most egregiously stupid claims, eh 🙂
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but I'll give him this, He sure knows how to empty out a garbage disposal,  he had some good questions and points in there, but I have to pick through a lot of grime to find them,  but that stuff smells like a septic tank, so I'm not try,  Im done with Kidney stones.
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Very good points, all.
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Good Health to You.
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Thanks – improved health to you, and a new abundance of stamina.
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hatter, Beelzebub is a bellicose jerk. Best thing is probably to do what I do – place him on permanent “Ignore” by not reading his garbage and not encouraging him by replying to him – that's like tossing cheese to rats.
I agree, Regan's response is completely baffling. First she agreed that ignoring BeelzeBUTT was the right thing to do, but since then she's been talking to him and now she's blaming you for Beelzebutt's bad behavior, as if you're both to blame, when in reality, all the crass bullshit is coming from Beelzebutt's side.
When I was still talking to Beelzebutt, I politely asked him to confine his replies to one post at a time, instead of flooding the forum with multiple posts. He's continuing on with this psychotic behavior, as you can see. But take heart: Beelzebutt is an intransigent jerk who does not deserve the courtesy of replies. You can cut him off quite easily and not bother yourself with his profound idiocy.
hatter76 said:
Granville,your pretty on the nose, Im not so great with words.
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I think you are good with words, and thank you for the kind words and insights into Dominion.
Pazuzu is specifically a Middle Eastern god. No such entitiy existed in Africa when Merrin was “stationed” there. – therefore Pazuzu does not appear as a character in Dominion. The demon never reveals its identity to Merrin in Africa. All that Merrrin knows is that, as the tribal elder tells him, the demon will be pursuing him from now on. Twelve years later in Iraq, Merrin gets premonitions that the demon he exorcised in Africa is now in very close pursuit, and that Merrin will once again “face an ancient enemy”. Director Paul Schrader, however, did make a nod toward the franchise by showing a sort of “African version” of a winged demon that is meant to resonate with the Friedkin film's Pazuzu. Dominion's demon sculpture seems a mere stick figure in contrast to Friedkin's giant statue, but it's there in the shadows, creating a kind of resonance between Schrader's and Friedkin's films.
Sorry to be the skunk at this garden party, and I realize that this post probably won’t win me many friends, BUT I find Dominion to be the superior film.
Starting out with the trivial, first: just contrast the DVD cover art of the two films. Beginning has a “scary screaming demon face” suggesting straight horror, whereas Dominion has a thoughtfully-shot silhouette of Merrin with his Rosary, suggesting a tale of faith and spirituality. Both films proceed along the lines of these small details, and for me, Dominion comes out on top. Beginning’s only strong point is its reasonably short running time and fast pacing. Beginning is a popular-audience film. Dominion “feels” more like an art-house piece.
Dominion gets to Merrin’s spiritual center; Beginning does not. Shooting a film about Merrin’s first encounter with the demon without centralizing Merrin’s spiritual crisis and its resolution is a pointless endeavor. Yes, the crisis is there in Beginning, but it remains secondary to the spook-show and the Brits vs. the Natives War. Dominion delves much more deeply into Merrin’s character, and places much more emphasis on his redemption.
Even Dominion’s carefully honed soundtrack has a hand in explicating Merrin’s crisis: Merrin has a nightmare in which a long-haired, red-headed woman, presumably one of the witnesses to the Nazi officer’s shooting spree, confronts Merrin while on the soundtrack, a lone female voice is heard wailing a little tune: “Bring him back to me…” asking the guilty, impotent Merrin to bring back to her a child or some other loved one shot by the German troops. Beginning contains no such subtlety, even though it does tinker with sentimentality via the shot of the murdered little girl’s “ghost” who appears in the underground cave scene, but it’s not really very much in contrast to Dominion’s power.
Worse, Beginning seems to want to make a connection to the dreadful Exorcist II: The Heretic, where the elderly hospital priest tells Merrin that a person can be “brushed by the wings” of a demon. It’s as if Harlin, in an ecstasy of self-loathing, resurrected one of Heretic’s most ludicrous themes and grafted it into Beginning.
Dominion handles the possession itself with more subtlety than does Harlin’s film. Harlin’s script has a male child being possessed, but then for no discernable reason, the demon jumps from the kid into a female nurse, who (gag) begins to mentsruate, even though she is no longer physically capable of it. I mean: Jesus, this really is a pop horror junk movie. The possessed nurse then proceeds to rape Merrin (cowgirl position, Gee-HAW) while spouting some of the most foolishly degraded dialogue ever penned for film. Dominion’s demonic dialogue is virtual Shakespeare compared to Beginning’s tomfoolery.
On the other hand, however, Dominion, like the original Exorcist, has a single-person possession, but with a very interesting twist: the young victim, Che Che, is a severely deformed native whose condition, as the possession progresses, becomes increasingly improved, until, when completely possessed, is “perfection”. This reversal of the “possession makes a person really ugly and ‘demonic’-looking” is theologically apt, since after all Satan is supposedly an “angel of light” and is capable of manifesting as such.
Dominion contains a couple of “Blattyesque” themes, which commend it in terms of faithfulness to the original author’s intentions: Nurse Rachel, after seeing Che Che’s improvement under Merrin’s care, and after explaining to Merrin her imprisonment in a Nazi prison camp, tells Merrin, “Sometimes I think the best view of God is from Hell”, a typically Blattian piece of irony; the original novel’s ongoing theme of Merrin’s sinful pride is also addressed, when Fr. Francis lashes out at Merrin, scolding him for mocking in others a faith that once sustained Merrin himself. This theological view and depth is utterly lacking in Harlin’s film, which in contrast to Dominion, has virtually no “Blatty feel”.
Neither film, of course, is “great” cinema. The exorcism scenes in both – an exorcism that Blatty says went on for months and “damn near killed” Merrin – are ludicrously simple, tame and of course, sfx-bound. They should at least have lasted over a period of days … AND this prolonged format could have been the perfect place to have introduced Merrin’s heart condition. Having shown the exorcism nearly killing Merrin, certainly Dominion could have ended with Merrin’s conversation with Rachel handing him his new nitro prescription, saying, “Don’t forget to take this”, and Merrin replying with a smile, “Yes, we do need to keep my heart beating”.
There’s no accounting for taste. Mine may differ from yours, and vice-versa. I suppose which film comes out higher on one’s list depends on the expectations one brings to the Exorcist franchise. If you’re thinking of a fast-paced but pedestrian horrror flick, then you’ll prefer Beginning. If you’re thinking of a more studiously-paced theological character study appealing to more minority tastes, you’ll prefer Dominion.
Demons need no rules!
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That indeed seems to be the point of Blatty's novel. Even the experts don't really know what a demon is and even the Roman Ritual has no effect. We are left quessing as to how and why Merrin was able to expell “Pazuzu” twelve years earlier in Africa. He certainly wasn't making any headway in Georgetown. Then he died, leaving the outcome to Karras' combined compassion, courage, and anger. The demon doesn't seem to follow any rules, either in the book or in the film. It seems to be a malevolent, nonmaterial, temporarily incarnating (possessing) entity. It can't with any certainty be identified with a fallen angel, a djinn, the soul of a deceased person, a incorporeal alien, an interdimensional being. It's a complete “unknown”. Which only serves to make it that much more terrifying.
