Taking Sides: William Friedkin's "The Exorcist" vs. Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining"

From The Kubrick Site ( http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/ ):

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0052.html

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0021.html

The original, famously banned 1973 trailer for The Exorcist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u15h02Y0MDY

Still one of the scariest things ever.

By the way, I don't really get the opposition made upthread between The Exorcist and movies like Night Of The Living Dead or Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
All these films truly belong to the golden era of the American horror - intelligent, cold, brutal, terrifying.

Agreed.

I was surprised to read this thread and find my 5-yrs-younger self so invested in it.

The original, famously banned 1973 trailer for The Exorcist

Banned for what? Giving Japanese children seizures?

Apparently it was considered too scary and excessive.
I still find it somehow disturbing.

admittedly i'm coming from a position of thinking the movie's the most terrifying thing i've ever seen - but yeah that trailer's pretty fucked up.

The trailer needs more of the sound. The movie borderline sadistic toward the audience, but the sound may be the cruelest thing of all. And the best thing, obv.

I'm surprised, but the site I linked upthread is still online. It's filled with movie sounds, in all the most unnecessary places. I've still never come across a website that's better to not only annoy your roommates, but actually make them feel like they need to call their parents to tell them they love them, for reasons they cannot explain.

http://theexorcist.warnerbros.com/cmp/thefilm-fr.html

"The trailer needs more of the sound. The movie borderline sadistic toward the audience, but the sound may be the cruelest thing of all. And the best thing, obv."

Great soundtrack: Penderecki, Webern, it also includes a short track from one of the weirdest album of the 70's, Wind Harp's "Songs from the Hill". And that Tubular Bells excerpt, of course.

From that site, a very interesting page. Presented here without the frame, and so without the sound, which otherwise plays on a random loop forever, and never gets less unsettling.

http://theexorcist.warnerbros.com/cmp/silencebottom.html

Considering that Mercedes McCambridge had also one of the scariest faces ever, everything comes full circle!

http://flattland.com/images/giant_6.jpg

Can't find any picture of her demonic uncredited cameo on Orson Welles' Touch of Evil.
She was an incredible actress.

Especially when tied to a chair, apparently.

it also includes a short track from one of the weirdest album of the 70's, Wind Harp's "Songs from the Hill".

wow thanks -- some quick googling makes this record sound totally fascinating

I find the exorcist pretty hilarious. Impossible for me to conceive of it scaring anyone. I'm catholic btw.

do you find any movies scary and if so which ones

wld love to front but exorcist scared shit out of me, and prob still would.

shining doesn't tho.

i love the exorcist so much it hurts

best thing about the exorcist is the old cop tho.

shld have been him and von sydow in the bucket list for ultimate win

I occasionally find films scary. More usual for me to find a film a little creepy. The shining has its moments in that respect.

Holy crap that page with the looped sound effects. DISTURBING.

I enjoy the Exorcist, it's a great movie, but I've never found it particularly frightening/scary, even as a kid. I dunno if this is just because I don't identify at all with all the Catholic/Satan silliness (I'm Jewish) or what. The Shining, on the other hand, is truly menacing and seems to resonate on a deeper, more profound psychological level. Like, there's nothing in the Exorcist for me to be afraid of - this is the worst the Devil can do? Make a little girl levitate and vomit guacamole? what's so threatening about that? Satan's kinda a pussy if that's all he can manage... by contrast, the Shining is about a building that basically eats people, about family members becoming murderous nutjobs etc.

Agree that the music in both of these is really key to their effectiveness tho.

Hey I've never seen the Exorcist. I know there are a number of different versions out there. Which would you recommend watching first?

They're both kind of shit, The Shining isn't a patch on the novel, I quite liked the song at the end though. The Exorcist is hilariously dated to watch now. If you want a horror film that is dated and still has the capacity to fuck with you long after you've watched it, check out Brian Yuzna's Society.

xpost to Shakey:
The theological stuff doesn't really get me either (or seem terribly important to the movie as much more than a plot device), but not being a Catholic or religious I can't really say anything about it. I'd love to hear/read more from a Catholic perspective though. But what does work for me is the psychological angle- seeing someone you know and love become a totally different person is some seriously frightening shit. Anyone who's ever lost a loved one to mental illness or Alzheimer's can tell you that. And it works on a lot of parental anxieties as well; even though I'm just as far from those as for the religious stuff, the hospital scenes are heartbreaking, and the bit at the dinner party ("You're going to die up there") is somehow way more upsetting than the overtly Satanic stuff (mother, cocks, hell etc).

Plus, Friedkin's way less patient than Kubrick and more willing to OH HOLY SHIT BEHIND YOU IN THE THEATER BLARGH

note to self: thesaurus. "stuff" three times, jesus H

Oh and Society! Yes! Nice to see someone else remembers that movie, it deserves way more attention than it ever got.

Hell yes! Seriously couldn't eat anything wet looking for days after I saw that.

by contrast, the Shining is about a building that basically eats people, about family members becoming murderous nutjobs etc.

Exorcist is also about family members becoming murderous nutjobs tbqf. Little girl straight-up murders Burke (director of mom's movie) by throwing him out a window.

I'm completely a-religious, but you don't have to believe in the devil to find some kinds of evil scary, and to me the movie is just incredible in the way it shows a personification of pure, distilled, absolute and absolutely terrifying evil. And Shakey if one of your family started levitating and vomiting guacamole i'm willing to bet you'd be pretty terrified. The things that happen are not just a bit weird or unnatural, they are an absolute violation of the natural order of things. Ya cannae break the laws of physics - but this entity can. Admittedly for it to just focus on a suburban family rather than fucking up the whole world seems a bit odd - but even that oddness, that unpredictability, is disturding in itself.

Damn it's bedtime now and i've got this film in my head ;_;

"Do you know," he said, "you interest me immensely? You think, then, that we do not understand the real nature of evil?"

"No, I don't think we do. We over-estimate it and we under-estimate it. We take the very numerous infractions of our social 'bye-laws'--the very necessary and very proper regulations which keep the human company together--and we get frightened at the prevalence of 'sin' and 'evil.' But this is really nonsense. Take theft, for example. Have you any horror at the thought of Robin Hood, of the Highland caterans of the seventeenth century, of the moss-troopers, of the company promoters of our day?

"Then, on the other hand, we underrate evil. We attach such an enormous importance to the 'sin' of meddling with our pockets (and our wives) that we have quite forgotten the awfulness of real sin."

"And what is sin?" said Cotgrave.

"I think I must reply to your question by another. What would your feelings be, seriously, if your cat or your dog began to talk to you, and to dispute with you in human accents? You would be overwhelmed with horror. I am sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang a weird song, you would go mad. And suppose the stones in the road began to swell and grow before your eyes, and if the pebble that you noticed at night had shot out stony blossoms in the morning?

"Well, these examples may give you some notion of what sin really is."

(Arthur Machen, The White People)

GODDAMNIT I just had to clean my teeth turned away from the sink 'cause I was too scared to have the door of the bathroom behind me! I saw this movie once! When I was 21! 15 years ago!

despite a background of a kind of piecemeal protestantism / agnosticism, The Exorcist hits me right in the fear core like The Shining doesn't. I thank an obsession with books on 'true life' paranormal activities from age ~10-13. The tale of the possessed guy who had to stop his car in the middle of nowhere because his personal demon was urging him to kill himself by crashing it gives me a funny little tingle still.

The Overlook Hotel is not really populated by humans. Everyone in the movie feels a bit spectral. There's no one to latch on to.

I know, I know... rote criticism of Kubrick. He's too cold, he disregards the actors in favor of his screenplays, and yada and yada. But The Shining is probably the best argument for this POV that is so often blanketed over all of his films.

OTOH, seen from a detached POV, The Exorcist is hilarious. The acting is so hammy, it should be glazed in honey and served at Christmas.

that, and the fact that we're secretly all crossing our fingers that shelley long gets the axe before the movie's even half done

The Shining is great. Always found The Exorcist sorta boring.

They're both kind of shit

I mostly agree with this :/

burstyn's over-acting grates a little, but all in all the performances in the exorcist are pretty good imo.

I suppose it's hard to fuck with Max von Sydow. Agreed.

Then again, putting him in it in the first place seems like a cheesy move. Like Friedkin assumed (correctly) that he would be automatic gravitas.

Hey I've never seen the Exorcist. I know there are a number of different versions out there. Which would you recommend watching first?

The original theatrical release. There's also "The Version You've Never Seen", which came out in 2001 I think, but don't see that first. It adds a couple of good scenes, like Megan in the Drs office and a theological conversation on the stairs between the two priests. But it really blows the ending.

Friedkin assumed (correctly) that he would be automatic gravitas.

well, y'know- casting is casting is casting

Casting Hackman as Popeye Doyle took a lot more stones.

casting popeye's girlfriend in the shining bringing us back full circle.

HA!