- The Exorcist is a tremendously disturbing film
even today.
To see this angelic-looking young girl
transformed into this canker-sored,
vomit-spewing...
Profane...
- Your mother sucks cocks in hell!
- Violent...
Coarsely sexual...
- Let Jesus fuck you!
- ...monstrosity on the screen
is extremely, extremely unsettling.
All the more so when it premiered
more than a generation ago.
- The Exorcist was sold on controversy from day one.
Certainly, you're not going to shy away
from that kind of marketing.
And it lends itself well to the idea of a curse.
- Thinking of "The Exorcist" as cursed
adds to the legacy of the film.
If you're a fan of horror,
you're looking for these connections.
It's logical to look at some of the truly wild things
that happened on the set
and to people involved with the production
and say, this thing was cursed.
- There was a moment during production
when their sets caught fire.
It happened at night, no one was injured,
but most of their sets were consumed.
Regan's bedroom was mysteriously undamaged.
- I think it was after that
that they brought in a Jesuit Priest to bless the set.
There had been a number of people
either related to cast members,
or people who had been in the film,
or working on the production, who had died.
Linda Blair's grandfather died.
Two actors who were in the film died.
- Max von Sydow's brother dies on the first day of filming.
- A special effects expert,
who was supposed to keep the set cool, died.
- There was all of this information
about the movie being cursed.
We have a couple different things to address.
Number one:
Billy's a genius.
When you work with somebody that's a genius,
you're gonna go for a ride, let me tell you.
I'm laced into this piece of equipment.
It is literally manipulated by men.
In this particular take,
the lacing came loose.
I am... having my back pounded.
I mean, I'm crying, I'm screaming.
They think I'm acting up a storm.
It fractured my lower spine.
No, they didn't send me to a doctor.
It is the footage that's in the movie.
- William Friedkin is famously a two-fisted director.
He would fire a gun off behind somebody
to get them to jump if he needed them to do that.
- I mean, sometimes the things he did were,
were, were... pretty harsh.
What would happen if I shoot the gun?
So if I'd be in the bed and he's gonna shoot a gun,
he has to tell me because I'm not allowed to do that, right?
I can't jum-- the devil can't jump.
- That's done during the first time
they see Regan looking like the demon.
And I played that scene, so I was there.
Yeah, I was originally hired 'cause they felt Linda Blair
was too young to do...
what turned out to be the masturbation scene.
But then I ended up doing the masturbation scene,
the vomiting scene, the levitation scene,
and I played Pazuzu's face.
So it was a very, very long movie.
It was kind of like, uh,
who do you have to fuck to get off this movie?
- In every movie,
if it has anything to do with action and things,
somebody is always gonna get hurt.
- When Regan slaps Chris across the room,
that was achieved by putting Ellen Burstyn in a harness.
The first take,
it wasn't particularly brutal enough for Friedkin,
so he had a word with the gentleman
on the other end of the rope
to... give it to her -
yank a little extra hard on Ellen Burstyn's harness
to get her to fly across the room as needed -
uh, resulting in Ellen Burstyn being injured from that scene.
And that's the shot that's in the film.
- It's an agreement actors and directors
and productions make to get a performance
for something that entertains millions across the world.
And what's it for? For you.
- Certainly, if you're marketing that film,
you're going to tacitly embrace such stories.
- That's something that...
that's been happening since Hitchcock or before.
That's him building up hysteria around Psycho;
that you can't come into the film late,
and people were getting sick.
So, you see, Friedkin and the PR folks, uh,
who were handling "The Exorcist"
when that came out, helped people buy into the hysteria
of what the curse behind this movie is.
And it also sold a lot of tickets.
- A few months ago, I was listening to an old podcast
and they had mentioned that there was an actual murderer
who was in "The Exorcist".
There had always been, you know the, the stories
about the curse of "The Exorcist",
but this one... just seemed to be left out.
So it fascinated me
and I set out writing a report for Esquire.
In 1972, William Friedkin went to the...
NYU radiology department
and watched them perform a procedure
that was essentially taking pictures
of the blood vessels in somebody's brain.
It looked pretty gruesome
and he saw that, and, you know,
thought that it was perfect for his horror movie.
During my research, I spoke with a number of people
who were involved in filming that scene.
One of them was Barton Lane
who's actually the man in the film performing the procedure.
- Okay, you're gonna feel some pressure here.
Now don't move.
- I happened to be doing a procedure one day
when the Chief of my department came by with a visitor.
- At the end of the procedure, I was introduced to,
uh, Mr. Friedkin, and they said,
"We're gonna be making a movie here in a few months,"
and, uh, my Chairman said, "Would you like to be in it?"
I said, "Yes."
So here are some photographs that were taken
during the filming of the angiography sequence.
This first one is Mr. Friedkin and myself
and the make-up artist.
- Friedkin wanted everybody who...
was performing that procedure, that day
to be in his movie, and one of them included
a young technician named Paul Bateson,
and so he ends up being in the film.
- Paul was the Chief neuro radiology technologist.
I worked with him on an almost daily basis for four years.
- Regan, I'm just gonna move you down on the table, okay?
- I would characterize him as being quiet,
very nice to the patients.
- September 14th, 1977,
the body of a variety reporter named, Addison Verrill,
was found in his West Village apartment.
One Village Voice reporter named, Arthur Bell,
noted that this looked like an assailant
that the victim knew.
And Arthur Bell gets a phone call from an anonymous person
who says...
"I killed Addison Verrill."
This caller explained that he wasn't a psychopath;
that he was an alcoholic
and that this was a crime of passion,
and that he and Verrill had sex and did drugs
until early in the morning,
and then gone back to Verrill's apartment
where he hit him over the head with a pan
and then stabbed him in the chest.
He also had mentioned that if he gets caught
he would never be able to practice again.
The phone call eventually led police to Paul Bateson.
When they got to Paul's apartment,
he told police, "I know why you're here."
And they took him into custody
where he eventually confessed to the, the crime.
It makes sense for people to connect
this larger real-life horror
to this curse of "The Exorcist";
that these horrors are real, evil is real.
- In 1972, Pope Paul VI issued a proclamation
lamenting the loss of belief in evil
as a real entity,
as a real metaphysical entity,
and in the devil as a real entity.
And then it's after that that you get "The Exorcist",
which is trying to prove the existence of, of the devil.
"The Exorcist" starts actually in Mesopotamia
trying to show you that evil goes way back.
Not only goes way back,
but it can still intrude into a family
and disrupt their whole life.
- To say that "The Exorcist" is a cursed film
taps into the Catholicism of the people watching it.
It, it taps into the imagery in the film
of the guy digging up an idol and unleashing this demon.
- The people who made "The Exorcist"
definitely did their research.
The fact that the movie opens up with this excavation
at the site of Hatra in Northern Iraq,
is very much accurate
because Pazuzu does come from Northern Iraq.
- Pazuzu turned out to be the icon of the entire movie.
'Cause the way they did it -
they like to call it subliminal,
but it's not subliminal
'cause subliminal means that you don't see it,
but it certainly was that flash.
And people said, "Did you see that?"
"See what?" "You see that face?"
"What face?" "The face!"
- This is made out of bronze, so it's cast metal.
You might wear this if you were, say, a pregnant woman,
um, or you might put it as an amulet on a newborn baby
because Pazuzu's enemy Lamashtu,
um, was especially interested
in pregnant women and in babies.
That giant statue of Pazuzu,
while it looks great and it's terrifying,
it's much bigger than any images of Pazuzu
that we know.
Usually he's a small amulet
and it seems like a demon with his power
would be dangerous to make on a large scale.
- How does horror treat what is probably
the single most important meaning making system
that human beings have evolved over time?
Which is to say, how does it treat religion?
Horror is a really,
really powerful artifact
that speaks clearly and directly
to the fact that we are still concerned
with really important questions.
Which is why I call horror and religion cultural siblings.
You don't get horror building on religion,
so much as they are dealing
With exactly the same questions:
Where do we go when we die? How did we get here?
Does life have any meaning? Is there a God?
Why do we suffer?
Religions claim to have answered those questions,
but the answers are never
really very satisfactory
for a very long time.
- I have been working on a book project
on how horror is used as a missionary tool.
- I do not believe.
So, to recap, four words necessary to destroy
the forces of the supernatural, witchcraft,
superstition, psychic, et cetera, et cetera.
- There is a subgenre of horror films
where a character who's a skeptic
confronts evidence of the supernatural.
- ...and can only exist in an atmosphere of belief.
Belief is final.
- And in the process, the skeptic becomes a believer.
For example, "Night of the Demon,"
from 1957, I believe.
- Oh, but, uh, if I could make my point,
I could persuade you.
- I'm not open to persuasion.
- But a scientist should have an open mind.
- That's what investigations are for.
- All of those films,
uh, are meant to show you
that evil does exist.
At the end, for example, of "The Exorcist",
you have a message that the devil exists
and that the church and Christianity
is the answer to that.
- The good guys in this movie
were not the rationalists, the doctors,
the psychiatrists, the sophisticated partygoers,
but they were the figures of faith
who seemed to have the answers
and were willing to make the sacrifices.
- A lot of the development in horror film
has come as a reaction
to the fear of the loss of belief in God
and the fear of the loss of belief in the devil.
Horror films, at least some of them,
are there to counteract the secularization
that, uh, is perceived to be taking place.
- As a matter of fact, the Pope himself
is being quoted as part of the film's publicity campaign.
Demol-- Demonology, he said,
is an important part of Catholic doctrine
that really ought to be studied again.
- I've heard an interview with Blatty,
the author of "The Exorcist",
who said he heard Billy Graham say that the devil,
it's in the celluloid film itself.
- There were stories that projecting the film
would invite demons into your theater.
That's an urban legend happening right in front of you
for the movie that you've got in release.
There's a trailer that had to be pulled
because it was potentially seizure-inducing.
They were leaning very hard into the controversial nature
and the illicit and the taboo.
You're gonna be fucked up if you watch this movie.
- David Sheehan is with us tonight to talk about a movie
that has people passing out.
- The manager of The National Theater in Westwood
says that there indeed are at least a dozen people
who faint or become ill during every showing.
- I fainted like ten minutes after the...
first beginning of the movie.
- I passed out. - You did?
- In about the first half hour, yeah.
- "The Exorcist" was no longer
just the most successful motion picture in film history,
but had become an unquestioned sociological phenomenon.
- What made "The Exorcist" different,
it had the hook of the true story.
Billy Friedkin makes "The Exorcist"
based on this true story
that William Peter Blatty wrote about.
People who are Catholic
know that there is...
a thing called exorcism in the church.
They may not know anybody who's been a part of it,
but they at least know that
it's a part of Catholic culture.
- Some psychiatrists are calling "The Exorcist"
a dangerous movie
because it does give credibility
to a variety of superstitions,
including the devil myth and the power of ritual.
- There has been a significant uptick
of exorcisms recently,
and this is a fact.
Some of that might be fueled
by the great popularity
of possession-based horror movies,
all of which are sort of twigs
growing off the tree of "The Exorcist".
There are people in our society
who never would have heard of exorcism,
who never would have heard of possession,
were it not for "The Exorcist".
- When we look at the movie called "The Exorcist",
what, to me, that movie did
was bring it on the big screen,
the reality that an exorcism
can and will be successful
if done correctly.
An exorcism can look frightening,
but does not need to be.
It's not dangerous
as long as it is done biblically.
My name is Vincent Bauhaus
and I am an exorcist.
- Hi, how are you? - I'm good, how are you?
- Fine. Welcome back. - Good to see you again.
- You too. How are you? - I'm very well.
The people that we are going to meet are people
that have been the victim
of attack,
of witchcraft.
- Someone somewhere, he's monitoring me.
I don't know who, I don't know where.
They are always there attacking me.
- Mhmm. - So I don't know what it is,
and now I'm feeling they are inside of me.
- Yeah. - Like a python spirit is there.
- And then very interestingly,
we're gonna see a gentleman
who has played with a Ouija Board
on a daily basis
for four years.
- Hey, where'd this come from?
- I started messing around with a Ouija Board more
and even worshipping and calling upon the devil.
- Oh, you was worshipping the devil?
- Well, basically, it got to that point
because I felt like God, you know, has abandoned me.
He wouldn't hear me.
- And we're gonna see a person very wounded
by their childhood.
Have seat.
- Okay, let me turn my phone off.
- You got time, dude. I got a story,
it's like straight out of Hollywood.
- Once my dad left,
it's like all hell broke loose on me.
This thing wanted to choke me somehow and kill me.
'Cause I remember driving my truck
to go get another load
in the middle of the daytime
and I saw that seatbelt trying to get around me.
- We're gonna see those people get set free
from that terrible curse
that was placed upon them.
- Are we going to read the word of God
or what do we...?
- We're gonna pray. - Amen.
- Oh, thank you Lord Almighty God,
and loose the anointing upon Victoria.
Lord let that anointing
penetrate her right now.
There will be a healing of that broken and wounded soul
or wounded heart.
Who are you?
- Who are you?
Don't hide from me.
Say, I renounce... - I renounce...
- Witchcraft. - Witchcraft.
- I also renounce... - I also renounce...
- Opening... - Opening...
- My mind... - My mind...
- To the demonic realms. - To the demonic realms.
Smite it!
You...
whether you are python...
or religion.
Get out.
Get loose!
- Get out.
Loose Elena!
- Say "I lift." - Oh no... Lord!
- Say, I lift... Say, I lift...
I lift... - I lift...
- Lift the... - The...
- Curse! Curse!
- Say it! - Curse!
- We... - We...
- Lift... - Lift...
- The... - The...
- Curse. - Curse.
- All in the name of Jesus Christ, get out of him! - Oh!
- I'd wanna be very careful
that the individual, who may be very earnest,
is not riffing off of something
that had its point of origin
from a horror movie.
- What you notice is a lot of the language
sounds very much like
late-night television... uh, language.
Like, uh, my name is Legion, or I am Lucifer.
- Who are you?
- There's this principle called the availability heuristic.
It basically means that the more easily that we can draw
an example of something to mind,
the more likely we are to think that thing is true
and to kind of use it to fill in the blanks.
When an exorcist says, I wanna speak to the demon,
you're gonna give that person a demon
in the only way you know how.
Whether you got it from late-night television...
or some dimly remembered experience
at the theatre,
you're gonna fill that in
with the information that you have.
- Severed.
The evil spirit will no longer be able to hide
in that pain or in that trauma.
Loose! I command you!
Loose the anointing upon you!
Now leave!
- Fire!
Fire!
Loose! Out!
Snake, get out!
In the name of Jesus Christ,
that's witchcraft... coming out.
When is a horror movie a problem?
It is very dangerous
and it's a very real possibility
that a child could definitely develop
a spiritual problem
with evil spirits, with demons,
if it's watching a horror movie.
- Linda, there's are various rumors
that you were affected psychologically by the film,
which are, no doubt, untrue, but what is the situation?
Didn't it disturb you in any way?
- No, it didn't at all.
So the movie comes out
and journalists were asking me, like, are you okay?
Are you mentally ill?
I don't think there's many young people
that could've survived it.
It was hard.
People, they would run.
People were so afraid of me.
- One of the problems with these ideas of curses
is that perhaps we could be projecting
onto an actual person after they're done filming.
If you look at someone like Linda Blair,
the studio had to get bodyguards for her
because people actually thought that she might be evil.
If you can think back to being a young teenager,
could you imagine being seen as the devil?
- I won't talk about it.
- No, there's stuff that I don't talk about.
Um... so what's another one?
- The kid from "The Omen" didn't need bodyguards.
He didn't get stigmatized the way she did.
And, in a weird way, she's a victim in this movie;
she's not the demon,
but the female character gets branded as evil
and, and, of the devil
and, and that kid gets to sort of slip back into anonymity,
which I find curious.
I think it's somewhat telling
that she has now kind of walked away from all of that
and, in fact, spends her time saving animals.
It's a very interesting coda to what she's been through.
- Sure, there are things that happened I wish didn't,
but it's what, it was what's made me, me.
Look at me, look at me, look at me.
♪ Do-do do do-do do-do do-do ♪
♪ Da-da-da da, da-da da... ♪
What did Linda want in life? Linda, at a young age,
wanted to be a veterinarian.
But one day we got a call for a movie
and it was called "The Exorcist".
- "The Exorcist" had long been awaited
but no one, no matter how close or deeply involved in the film,
could possibly have anticipated
what was to happen at every theater
where this film played.
- Warner Brothers did not believe this movie
was going to do anything.
And there's a certain PR person - um,
and she divulged to me years later
when we became friendly as adults -
and she said she was told
to create this whole fear
around the movie
to try to bring in an audience.
You know, pregnant women shouldn't go.
People are throwing up.
They parked the ambulances outside the theaters.
A lot of this was PR.
- Is this really real?
As an exorcist,
all I can say,
is that an exorcism proves
that there is evil.
If there is evil, there must be a devil.
And if there is a devil, there certainly is a God.
- Someone who requests an exorcism
might be very sincere,
but they haven't asked themselves
Where's this idea really coming from?
And who is this so-called Exorcist
who's coming along to help me?
Does this person have any sort of church
or organization,
or oversight at his or her back?
Or is this just sort of a, uh, religious troubadour
who's charging money?
- Before I became involved in performing exorcisms,
I... used to run a furniture company.
You don't live too far from here,
so it's good I'm here very regularly.
- Okay. - And I think we're gonna do
a bit more on the, on the, on the, on the, on the...
the FaceTime thingy. - Okay.
- People are probably not gonna wanna hear this.
I think we bring upon our own hell
and our own heaven,
and we bring curses upon us.
Otherwise, you have to believe
that there are really demonic forces out there.
- So we're good, right? - Yeah.
- Awesome! Great, man!
I'm just a simple guy. I just...
wanna be able to, you know,
live my life here.
One...
I don't have a house, I don't have an apartment,
I don't have anything.
Four, five... I'm glad to do this.
It's like the money comes through one hand
and goes through the other.
- Maybe we are disturbing the forces.
I went to work every day
and I said, "This is just a movie."