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

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"

I love Lee J. Cobb's banter--he's so different than his Johnny Friendly in On the Waterfront.

And Taxi Driver is, ultimately, about all the things that Americans worship just as fervently as God: guns, misogyny and sociopathic individuality

didn't Kaufmann or Kael say it's the best recruitment tool the Church ever got?

(Yeah, Burstyn aside, Cobb's my favorite performance. A very leavening presence.)

I think Jason Miller is excellent. I saw him in another movie years ago--possibly The Ninth Configuration?--and he wasn't nearly as good...I think he was primarily a writer, no?

idk as a dude who outright hates religion I still enjoy watching the film. I brought my Pazuzu figurine with me when I watched it at the theatre the other night.

I hate possession horror in general, I think it's only a step above "torture porn" in the horror movie ladder. I think this one works because it creates such a sinister atmosphere.

the funny thing is the demon possession in these films never seems to have a goal above terrorizing everybody around the possessed person. real life beliefs of possession were more that demons could control weak-minded people and win them to their side, not have them throw up green shit and murder everybody that comes into their room.

Just checked that--yes, a playwright--and learned he was once married to Jackie Gleason's daughter! (And Jackie Gleason gets mentioned by Lee J. Cobb in one of his fake movie-castings.)

this movie, as a kid struggling with his faith as a teen when he watched it, did little to move me otherwise. granted, I wasn't Catholic, but all I could think was "it's pretty fucked up that demons can just do shit like this and the process to get them out takes like two hours and kills the people performing the ritual", like, shouldn't God have an emergency phone number ors omething to deal with stuff like this

The emergency phone numbers are things Chris M. doesn't allow in her house ... crucifixes, a father figure, etc.

film should always be paired with the exorcist iii bc i don't come away from watching both thinking they're pro-church, i come away thinking they're about the failure of systems to actually address the problem of "evil," and this includes the church, no matter how much more they're tapped into the source of regan's ills than like doctors or the cops or whatever

the exorcist on its own, yeah, definitely rhymes with the moral panic of the '70s where all these evil forces in society were seeping into our innocent children and only the church can save them!!!! but i also find the way this is conveyed in the film to be much more ambivalent in that absolutely everyone around regan is lost too

idk, i might be reading between the lines too hard, it's been a while since i've seen the first. the third one however is constantly being projected in my memory palace

I love miller in iii as well, he holds his own in the “monologue” with dourif

The book 1973 Nervous Breakdown posits the first one as an example of the inadequacy of systems.

is there an anti-exorcist where the horror comes from the church and/or its exorcists? that has the potential to get into some really dark shit that the original film can't touch

I hate both of these films but the exorcist is worse for boosting the church's flagging image and setting the stage for the satanic panic

come to think of it these are both films about women / girls being tortured by men (with or without supernatural forces) what's up with that why do people like these stories so much

Once scene made me laugh last night. (There was some laughter over Blair's language and gyrations...understandable, but for someone older like me weird.) It was when the two older priests meet to discuss who they want to pair up with Karras for the exorcism. You could take that scene, change the dialogue just slightly, and drop it into The Dirty Dozen or Reservoir Dogs.

think burstyn's is the performance i like the least tho tbh there's a certain amount that is simply baked in from the novel

I'm still surprised she earned a Best Actress nod.

is there an anti-exorcist where the horror comes from the church and/or its exorcists

maybe if jean rollin had ever gotten around to filming story of the eye

I'm still surprised she earned a Best Actress nod.

is there an anti-exorcist where the horror comes from the church and/or its exorcists?

Have you seen Witchfinder General?

I watched this a couple of weeks back (it's streaming on Max in the US) and the scene where Burstyn meets with the panel of doctors for the last time and one of them says, "You know, Catholics still believe in demonic possession...you could try that, I guess" as the rest of the doctors try to stifle laughter was great.

Apropos to many loose threads weaving throughout this latest revive:

“I guess the priests didn’t let me watch my daughter’s exorcism because of the patriarchy.”
Idk lady. I’d be a lot more thankful towards the priests who literally died saving your daughter. pic.twitter.com/w7zKx7yoWv

— Rolo Spooky (@PoorOldRoloTony) October 7, 2023

You didn’t happen to review who actually won the award that year, did you?
― insert nothing here (Eric H.),

I'm so sorry. Eve Harrington.

The Exorcist horrified me like no other film before or since. Even before I saw it, the idea of demonic possession (which was very much in the air at the time) would keep me awake and scared at night. It competed with nuclear war for top billing on my list of anxieties. So, it's hard for me to separate out my general feelings about the topic and the experience from the film itself, which, tbf, is terrifying.

The Shining feels much more like a set piece and a vehicle for Jack Nicholson, which is not a bad thing, but it doesn't reach the depth of fear that The Exorcist does, at least not for me.

agree with all that

I maintain that the fear engine of The Shining is that of a self-destructive failure both indulging in his own spiral and all too ready to blame his own family.

Although, even in saying that I recognize I’m positioning it as the flagship elevated horror

isnt it equally as easy to say similar about familial failure guilt but perhaps destruction is through proxy in the exorcist tho

I had a big fear of demonic possession when I was a kid. The posters for The Children of the Damned to me represented a movie so evil that kept me awake at night (I never did see it)

I watched The Exorcist with a first-term college friend in 1973 who was visiting me for Christmas. It was right around the time I was giving up my faith in religion. It was scary at first and then kind of hokey, but I thoroughly enjoyed it

The Shining was much colder, more mysterious and more frightening to me, with Danny's psychic visions of the past seeming like a foreshadowing of Jack's eventual madness

isnt it equally as easy to say similar about familial failure guilt but perhaps destruction is through proxy in the exorcist tho

Saw The Shining on my 12th birthday in 1980. It was terrifying and I remember that at the time the only other film that had frightened me as much was The Elephant Man with John Hurt. Which is odd, I guess. I don't think it was only Nicholson that scared me about The Shining, it was also the little twin girls and the general idea that the hotel was a haunted freak show.

I caught The Exorcist a few years later but I could more easily write that off as a Catholic paranoiac fantasy, and thus not as deeply disturbing.

The twins were, in my experience, the most terrifying part of The Shining. The first time I saw it, the flashes of their murdered bodies really chilled me.

I don't think the idea of possession is limited to Catholics, tho.