[Jagged]

Nearly as intelligent as some of the choice interpretations littering the IMDB.

[SLAM234]

Yes, that was a stupid review. I will say however that I always did object to the violent scene in which Karras “beats the devil” out of Regan. I mean just a few minutes earlier he was checking her heartbeat and worried about her battered body going into a coma, and then he goes off and beats her ass. Even in 74 I thought it was cheap and sensationalistic, and completely different from the book. One of the changes Friedkin made that I never liked. In the book its much more psychological. Karras challenges the demon to take on something “bigger and stronger than a little girl”, without ever laying a hand on her.

[fatherbowdern]

I wonder if that change from novel to screen wasn’t a big influence from Friedkin. I guess the culmination of Karras’ own “torment” throughout the exorcism could be viewed as the final straw when he sees Merrin lying dead on the floor and the demon laughing. Maybe the scene was shot to influence our thinking on how Karras erupted without much thinking … a knee-jerk reaction that he held so deeply in many instances. After all, they only showing him jabbing punches into the boxing bag and not the actual fight itself. The fight is the one in the book where he needs to make money from his former career as a boxer to help pay for his mother’s care. It’s right after the conversation at the hospital with his uncle about who’s going to pay his mother’s care.

[SLAM234]

Yes FB I think your right. It was really the moment when Karras’ snapped, and right after his faith has been restored. Its a gratifying moment of course, becuase its a decisive choice to avenge Merrin’s death and Regan’s torment and challenge the demon with his own faith. But by beating her??? I know it was Pazuzu he was mad at, but it was her body. I just thought the idea of beating her was gratuitous, and the book handled it so much more intelligently.

[Jagged]

As Friedkin said, we don’t know what exactly happened in that room, we can only surmise from the sounds heard. He couldn’t film that, it would have been a massive anti climax after all that went before.
So he shows us Karras breaking down and losing it. He didn’t see the girl, he saw only a murderous, foul demon. He attacked it, taunted it, took it into himself and sent it packing with his final sacrifice.
I don’t see anything gratuitous there. Under the circumstances it’s a perfectly valid reaction in my book.

[fatherbowdern]

Jagged, you’re on a roll! Good points … all of them including Karras only seeing the demon. I think Karras knew he was losing the battle and he was the last soldier standing. If we think about what the demon had already done physically to Regan’s body (in the book the massacred vagina is vividly described during the crucifix scene), one more assault by Karras is extremely minor in comparison to him throwing the demon (not Regan) on the floor and beating the shit out of him. Hmmm … puked on squarely in the face; harsh reminders throughout the exorcism about his mother’s death using her image and voice; being hit on the head with double fists that are so hard that he hits the ground; dead old exorcist on the floor; demon taunting him with laughter. I’d beat the shit out of the demon to make him enter me if it means saving Regan. Just some more add ons! 🙂

[fatherbowdern]

I never read this article before and it makes my blood boil … this person obviously didn’t make it too well as a critic because he obviously sees cats as dogs and airplanes as birds!

25 Years Later: Author Peter Biskind’s 1998 book “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drug-and-Rock ‘n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood” features filmmakers of the ’70s. One of those was William Friedkin, who directed “The Exorcist.” An one point, Biskind gives his analysis of the movie:

“It is easy to see why people, especially women, detested the picture. It presents a male nightmare of female puberty. Emergent female sexuality is equated with demonic possession, and the men in the picture – almost all of them celibate priests – unite to abuse and torture Regan in their efforts to return her to a presexual innocence. Having Regan thrust a crucifix into her vagina is intended to be a fiendishly inventive bit of sacrilege, but it is also a powerful image of self-inflicted abortion, be it by crucifix or coat hanger. ‘The Exorcist’ is filled with disgust for female bodily functions; it is perhaps not too much of a stretch to see the famously gross scene in which Blair vomits pea soup as a Carrie-like metaphor for menstruation. Indeed, ‘The Exorcist’ is drenched in a kind of menstrual panic.”

Blatty responds: “I heave a sigh of exasperation when I read things like Biskind’s analysis, and mentally place them in the same drawer where I keep interpretations of the intended ‘meaning’ of the film as a ‘metaphor for the problems of parents dealing with teenage rebellion.’ I once wrote a modest little comic novella supposedly written by the ghost of William Shakespeare in which the ghost ‘proves’ that Queen Elizabeth was the true author of his plays, and I take the Biskind analysis in much the same spirit. I mean, speaking of ‘menstrual panic’ . . .”

[granville1]

It’s also the point of his full “awakening to faith”, albeit darkly. All psychiatric and religious doubt is now gone – Karras knows the demon is real.

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