CaptainHowdy.com The #1 Exorcist Fansite Since 1999
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I thought I’d also mention that piece of music early on. That was the bumper music they had before commercial breaks on the network showing. They would fade to the Exorcist title card before the break.
The music there was shown at the end of the scene that the priest discovers the desecrated Virgin Mary statue. The movie version of the statue was replaced with a close up shot of the statue’s face, broken and painted on. I thought, along with the music, it was actually creepier than the theatrical version.
There's one now on Ebay for a bit over $30.
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It is interesting, they have an page open and it shows pics of Linda in makeup.
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I thought that Warner Bros forbid the use of pictures and clips of possessed Regan when the movie came out and I heard they even went after (I believe) Newsweek when they published a couple pics of made up Linda when they did an interview with her.
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It could be that AC got a pass becuase it was considered a trade magazine.
I know what you mean, whenever I see possessed Regan, I want it to be a planned and braced for sighting 🙂
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Steve Dunlap said:
I hear ya, Mego.
When I pop in a movie to fall asleep to, it has to be something serene. Now, granted, The Exorcist has a quiet enough opening, but it's the stuff beyond it that would likely wake me up and keep me from going back to sleep. LOL!
When I fall asleep to a movie, it's usually something like StarGate, Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith, one of the Harry Potter movies, Rob Roy, or one of the Star Trek movies.
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Funny story:
I have a screensaver I made up of a moving logo for Battlestar Galactica. So that was the only thing that showed up on my screensaver for my laptop. Well….I did my little Exorcist tribute, and a lot of the pics of the actors (especially Linda Blair, both pre-and full on possession mode) ended up on my “Pictures” document, which automatically became (unbeknownst to me) part of my screensaver.
Well, I don't know how the hell I did it, but I went to sleep one night, and every time I woke up, I always caught the Galactica segment of the screensaver sequence.
But one night I walked into my bedroom, and facing me on the computer was the demonic face of Regan…..damn near scared the bejeezus out of me.  So I quickly Exorcised those images from the screensaver segment, and placed them in a seperate document. LOL!
Steve Dunlap said:
As a kid, Exorcist II: The Heretic was almost as jarring an experience for me as the unparalleled original film. (I think largely due to the revisits of the demonic makeup for Regan…for years, that face just haunted me. I could not look at it straight on like I can now.)
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But I say almost. Part of what lightened the film up (aside from the nice score in the soundtrack) was some of the (as TV guide put it years ago) unintentional humor.
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One thing I noticed, between watching the DVD version of E2:TH and a televised version many years ago, was that some of the scenes played out differently….most noticably, when the teenage Regan returns to her bedroom on Prospect street, and she opens the door.
In the televised version of the movie, we see a quick flash of the younger possessed Regan shouting out her name at the older Regan, using stock footage from the original film, with “Regan” being overdubbed.  Apparently, this did not appear in the theatrical release, as I noticed it was missing on DVD.
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Nothing, however, beats the original film. I've seen all the sequels/prequels (and while they are entertaining, they just don't hold a candle to The Exorcist.) I've also seen other movies about demonic possession….and one film that surprisingly does give me a chill, despite it being a cheap knock-off, is “Beyond the Door”. But it still doesn't measure up to The Exorcist.
The DVD represents the original theatrical version. That version was quickly widthdrawn and re-edited when the film began to tank. It came back to most theaters in this second theatrical version. The Network TV version derives from that second theatrical version as does the early cable and video releases. So you can still find this version on older VHS and Beta tapes if you look around.
Some of the key differences between the first and second version include a recap of the events of the original movie at the beginning using voiceover and stills, the adding of 2 stock scenes of possessed Regan from the original movie to the climatic bedroom scene and Father Lamount dies at the end.
epicwin123 said:
Over the weekend I had a sleepover and my friend wanted to watch The Exorcist for the first time. I didn't say no. We started to watch it and I fell asleep at the party scene. The woke uo right at the “you know what she did?” scene, I gave my friend a fact about the book and movie. Dozed off again, woke up the scene when Karras first meets Regan, fell asleep. Woke up and it was the end! My friend asked how I could sleep though it and I just said “I don't know”
Have you ever slept though it?
I often fall asleep to old movies and i always make sure what I fall asleep to is light hearted. And The Exorcist doesn't quite qualify for that 🙂
Sofia said:
And another…When I bought these original stills off Ebay the seller told me that they were from a rehearsal. So, it could only be for the 'funny noises' cut scene. She's looking up at the ceiling in both stills.
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Those pictures are quite weird, her expression looks exactly the same in each of them. It looks a bit like a dummy or maybe they took all three angles at the same time
I think it's unfair to expect that any 12 year old girl could muster a voice of demonic menace whether she's a good actress or not. I thought she did fine but no matter what she did, it would always be that little girl voice.
I certainly hope someone here can get the reels, get them transferred and offer DVD's or post on Youtube.
I still have my copy. For the high school age film lover in the early 80's, the RCA selecavision videodisc system was the only thing I could afford. The CED system used a diamond tipped stylus to read the micro grooves of a hard plastic disc which had a lubricating coat of silicon. The packaging caddy was designed so that you never touched or saw the disc in normal usage. You would insert the caddy in the player and the player would grab the top tab disc frame and the disc and reinstall it in the caddy once you were done playing.
I had a player with stereo sound. Titles with a monoual soundtrack would have a white plastic caddy package. Titles with stereo sound would have a blue plastic caddy. But when CED discs were discontinued and they were trying to unload excess inventory, the color coding was disregarded and stereo discs also came in white caddys and vice verca. The Exorcist disc did not have stereo sound.
The quality was better than videotape but not better than laseridisc. And since, unlike laserdiscs which read the grooves with a laser, the disc would wear out, much like an old LP record would.
The wearing out would manifest itself in picture noise, audio noise and skipping. Opening up the disc caddys on your own (I learned how) subjected the microgrooves on the record to dust and fingerprints which also hindered quality and caused skips.
The Exorcist was one of the first discs I got. Side one ends with Lt. Kinderman telling Karras he looks like Sal Mineo.
I still have a couple non working machines. Believe it or not, there is a following for these and other defunct video formats and working machines do pop up on Ebay.
My oldest copy of the movie is a copy of the long defunct RCA Selectavision CED disc
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The audience I saw it with in the TVYNS re-release seemed scared enough by it. The only laughter I remember was a little nervous laughter when Linda Blair would swear. Curiously, the spider-walk scene got a bigger scarred reaction then the crucifix scene. That’s when I started figuring in the “familiarity factor”. The crucifix scene has been seen all the way back to 1974 and then on cable and video, people were prepared for it. They weren’t prepared for the spiderwalk (even those that saw the documentary since they used a different and less shocking take in that).
