CaptainHowdy.com The #1 Exorcist Fansite Since 1999
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Yeah, those remarks are bull. They're sad little people who know Blatty wrote the screenplay, so have tried to criticise the novel as being too like a screenplay.
If anything, given Friedkin's ditching of Blatty's quite different original screenplay and closer adherence to the novel, the movie is actually more episodic and 'book-ish' than the book screenplay-like.
Silly remarks by people trying to be clever!
Extremely good news. Better we have to wait a year for a definitive release with stonking extras rather than a re-release of TVYNS and a bunch of SD extras ported from the DVDs (not to say they shouldn’t be included in a Blu-ray set as well!!)
I’ve certainly been sold on the merits of Blu-ray and full-HD TVs. I saw ‘Let the Right One In’ the other night and it looked amazing!
Roll on a complete Exorcist saga set with a Legion ‘Director’s Cut’ (we can but dream!)
So, Warner Home Video has confirmed that The Exorcist: TVYNS will be released on Blu-ray on August 9.
Still disappointed that the original version isn’t getting released. Given that Blu-ray has the option for seamless branching, both versions could have been encoded on the same disc, the same way you can choose which of the three versions of Close Encounters of the Third Kind you want on that Blu-ray! Still, a definite must-buy for me as I just bought a Blu-ray player and full-HD TV!
A New York titlecard when Karras visits his mother would certainly be very handy! Not everyone outside the US would pick up on the change of location.
I just wish we were getting the option of seeing the original cut! >:(
Hi Ryan. I guess it depends on where the footage you’ve grabbed comes from! It could be from the archives of the company who made the behind-the-scenes doco, rather than where Morgan Creek or Warners keeps its film elements.
Hi demonregan.
Mark Kermode said he saw it many years go, but I read somewhere on this site that it no longer exists.
As for the footage ever being found, it depends on what happened to it. I would be surprised if it had been outrightly destroyed and only Universal seem to have fires in their storerooms, so my best guess is that it’s been misfiled. And when you’re talking about the sheer mass of film elements, you’re talking about a needle in a haystack!
It might well be in storage somewhere, but short of a major time-consuming search, I’s say chances of an imminent find are pretty slim!
Remember, it took something like 80 years to get all of Metropolis’s footage back together!!
Disappointed to hear they’re using TVYNS (a misnomer if ever there was one!)
Realistically, in a hybrid version, some of the earlier doctor consultation would be nice and adding the Karras/Merrin stair conversation would all the extra I’d be looking for. Oh and a ‘1973’ caption at the start of the film and a New York caption when Karras goes to visit his mother.
But, basically, the 25 anniversary version nailed it for me. Anything else is nice, but unnecessary!
As for the colour, I’m intrigued to see the new transfer and a thorough modern colour grade! I hope the wires get painted out too!
I just wish they hadn’t gone all George Lucas and buried the original film!
There is no coincidence . . . merely destiny . . .
Iraq. The present day, where death is a mere heartbeat away. Mary McNeill (Linda Blair) is a 50-year-old Catholic missionary who, inexplicably, is the lone survivor of a roadside bombing.
Rescued and taken to a medical camp, she meets Father William Merrin (Stellan Skarsgård) a Catholic Padre and the son of Lankester Merrin’s illegitimate child, born before Lankester took Holy Orders.
A series of grisly deaths profaning both God and Allah forces Mary and William accept the possibility that they are dealing with more than just human violence and that the demon Pazuzu is at work again.
William and Mary each have dreams of Lankester Merrin (Max Von Sydow) urging them to face the demon on its home turf.
Ultimately, they must risk all to face their destiny in the ruins of Nineveh and drive out the demon once and for all.
Father Merrin knows his grandfather lost his life fighting Pazuzu. And Mary knows more about God and the Devil than she’s saying . . . but that was in another life when she had another name!
Tim Burton (even though I’m a fan of his work!)
A good director would be someone like Christopher Nolan!
Some goodies from Japan, China, South Korea and Thailand:
A Tale of Two Sisters
Audition
Dumplings
Three . . . Extremes
Three (aka Three Extremes 2)
The Whispering Corridors series: Whispering Corridors, Memento Mori, Wishing Stairs and Voice
Jian gui (The Eye)
Jian gui 2 (The Eye 2)
Juon: The Grudge 2
Into the Mirror
Pulse
Bangkok Haunted
Phone
Rinne (Reincarnation)
Ryeong (The Ghost, aka Dead Friend) although be warned it’s like a compilation of all the best bits of all the other films listed here, so see it further down the line!Check out the Snowblood Apple website
http://www.mandiapple.com/snowblood/index2.htm
for tons of useful info! After reading a review and deciding to try a film, though, check a couple of DVD news/review sites to ensure the DVD release is of decent quality: there are some terrible transfers out there!
Also be open-minded: Ringu got me interested in J-horror, which led me into K-Horror, the Chinese and Thai Horror and and also into dramas, epics, samurai films and comedies. Asian cinema is a breath of fresh air for those of us jaded by Hollywood and its remake factories!
Merrin survives. Regan dies. Kinderman arrests Merrin, Chris and Karras. The result is a massive media frenzy and a major trial, which drags in every echelon of the Catholic Church and the whole of the entertainment media.
Chris’s career is destroyed and she ends up penniless after all her legal fees bankrupt her. Karras is made a scapegoat, is thrown out of the priesthood, struck off the medical register and imprisoned for five years. Merrin is judged to be in too ill health to stand trial, especially after allegations of an incident in Holland in the 1940s where he ‘helped’ Nazis slaughter the population of a village.
The Catholic Church quietly retires Merrin, who dies before the case comes to court.
Karras, driven to despair after three years, commits suicide by throwing himself off the roof of the prison building. Rumours persist that it was murder, but other than a small story in the papers, the death is glossed over.
Karras’s body is returned to Georgetown, as the Church quietly agree to bury him as one of their own. An elderly priest is sent to pray over Karras before his burial and disappears shortly thereafter.
About fifteen years later, Kinderman investigates a number of killings bearing similarities to the modus operandi of the Gemini Killer.
In a mental hospital in Georgetown, there sits a patient, who was found wandering the streets years before with a severe head injury, who claims to have knowledge of the murders . . .
‘Cult’ tends to imply something that never hit the mainstream, but has a small dedicated following. The Exorcist was and still is huge.
It’s still a late night cinema Hallowe’en favourite and viewing it still a kind ‘rite of passage’ for teenagers.
It’s popular because it’s a beautifully constructed film, based on an excellent script.
I still prefer the 25 anniversary release in terms of structure. Other than Merrin’s and Karras’s conversation on the stairs, I think Billy Friedkin did the right thing trimming the film.
The bit that WPB goes on about – the doctor saying Regan is stressed being cut – never bothered me. I always assumed that after Regan peed herself, Kris called a local doctor to check Regan out!
I don’t think it’s religion doing the warping: their minds were already warped long before they started hijacking God’s word to spread their sick, perverted, fundamentalist parody of Christianity.
If they really want to fight ‘Satan’ maybe they should start by looking in a mirror!
I’m actually even more convinced now that these are the freaks who keep hacking this site!
The problem is, at least in the UK, the only way any of us got to see the film was at drunken midnight showings of knackered old film prints, because the British Board of Film Censorship/Classification had banned it from video release!
Usually people had been to a Hallowe’en party or some such and really were in the wrong mind set to watch the movie! However, the benefit of wrecked old prints was that the wires were far less visible. Even on VHS the wires weren’t too much of a problem.
Now, however we’re getting used to high quality picture and sound on our progressive-scan DVD players and upscaling Blu-Ray players with actual 1080p discs on the way.
Because of this, there’s detail showing up on screen that wouldn’t even have appeared in cinema prints when movies came out.
There’s actually a need to be careful in the clean-up of old movies because new technology is getting to be too good!
The wires weren’t intended to be obvious in the original release of the Exorcist, so for a release in a new HD format meticulous removal of them will be vital.
At the end of the day, though, people will laugh at this film if they really want to.
Horror is at its best when it treads the line of going OTT. The Exorcist treads this line very carefully and succeeds because it just about shies away from overt silliness.
