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

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!

just wanted to echo the love for Society - amazing movie

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.

This is the key to the real horror of this movie, something overlooked by people that just see a relative lack of gore and murders. The scary part of this movie is the atmosphere it creates; it's otherworldly, it's surreal, it's kind of displaced from time and space. The Physical Cosmologies write up painstakingly details all the visual themes - subtle and infamous - that come together to create an atmosphere that is truly supernatural.

http://www.mstrmnd.com/log/802

http://www.mstrmnd.com/files/PDVD_076.jpg
http://www.mstrmnd.com/files/PDVD_102.jpg

Saw The Exorcist in a theatre tonight. Thirty-eight years after first seeing it, I still have to cover my eyes a lot of the time. What I like more and more is the between-scare-scenes stuff; Ellen Burstyn walking around Georgetown while Mike Oldfield plays is excellent. It was Friedkin's recut tonight, which I don't like as much as the orignal, spider-walk excepted. The extra inserts are clumsy, and I seem to remember a quiet, atmospheric ending--more Oldfield--instead of the title coming up right away, underneath thunderous music.

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

The Shining is the great film of the two, but I can think of few other horror film performances that pin me down as much as Ellen Burstyn's in Exorcist.

She's great. I love her awkwardness and embarrassment, and the way she phrases the question, when she asks "How do you go about getting an exorcism?"

https://soundcloud.com/i-was-there-too/the-exorcist-with-eileen-dietz

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/boogeymenslashers/images/1/14/Pazuzu.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120816194312

Face of Pazuzu was interviewed this week on I Was There Too.

otm re burstyn but all the performances far better in exorcist, but as stated upthread Kubrick wasn't making a human movie

nobody needs more of me on this, but duvall hugely underrated by boys with a narrow frequency tolerance. kid good too.

(i've never seen the exorcist, but that last perlstein book practically had a shot-by-shot)

I was trying to figure out what tacky-looking ripoff of The Exorcist the gay bar was showing with the sound off last night.

After about 10 minutes I realized it was The Exorcist.

lmao

I prefer it to The Shining tbh but that's probably cuz catholic

I lol'd a couple times, esp at BVM statue w/ monster bosom

"la plume de ma tante"

Still used as an epithet amongst the bros mac

The Exorcist again (posted about it above 12 years ago). Packed theatre, which was nice--part of a horror series, not the Friedkin series I mentioned in a different thread. When introducing the film, the manager asked if anyone was seeing it for the first time; surprisingly (university town), 20-30 hands went up.

I'm sure I must have realized this during some past viewing--it's so obvious--but Karras is Greek Like Me. Even says "Ti kanis" at one point (or his mother does). Performances all excellent, although I've always been on the fence about Jack MacGowran, the guy who plays Burke Dennings (dead by the time the film was released). Not sure if he's egregiously hammy or perfect. Probably both.

I think I'm finally immune to being frightened by the film, but something did spook me on the way home. Twice the GPS told me to do something, even though I'm quite positive I never programmed it to do so (no need to). It was like the clock stopping when Merrin's in Iraq. I thought, "God, what if it comes on again, only this time it's Mercedes McCambridge's voice?"

The Exorcist is currently on BBC iPlayer, after a screening on BBC1. Just struck me as amazing how a film that was long banned for home viewing of any kind in the UK is now streamable on the beeb's major online platform, and nobody gives a toss.

It's amazing in general that both The Exorcist and Taxi Driver have dodged the movement of history and continue to be shown on TV.

Maybe ... at the end of the day The Exorcist is a clearly pro-God, pro-church movie in a way that may as well be Going My Way

Isn't it??

If it comes to that The Passion of the Christ, say, is more in the Buñuel vein than The Exorcist.

The Exorcist is a clearly pro-God, pro-church movie

Oh, it definitely is (why Robin Wood hated it--which I don't think is ultimately the best way to evaluate horror movies), but it also has a 12-year-old saying things that would make Joe Pesci blush.

"I lied - you look like Sal Mineo"