So, here's the thing... I actually did not know that Turkey had a habit in the '70s and '80s of completely remaking American movies because it was cheaper than getting a print shipped over from the United States. That's just not something I ever thought would be that big of a problem, at least not so much that you'd have to completely remake the entire movie shot for shot, with all new sets, actors, and "special effects". Nevertheless, that's what they did, and it was also apparently an easy way to culturally appropriate motion pictures for the Turkish People so that subtitles wouldn't always be such a bother and so that they could have a slice of cinema that they could call "theirs", even though it was a blatantly obvious plagiarism at its very worst. This was done with tons of American movies, including Superman, Jaws, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Rambo, etc. And being the huge success that it was, The Exorcist fell into the category of movies that simply must be remade into a cheap ripoff and shown in every theater in Istanbul. They renamed it Seytan, which means "devil" in Turkish.
Now, one would think the first question that arises would be "How can a cinematic masterpiece like The Exorcist be completely remade"? Well, remakes happen all the time, and although it hasn't been officially remade...yet, The Exorcist definitely has more than its share of sequels and ripoffs. The biggest ripoff of The Exorcist that I've seen to date has got to be the movie Abby, a blaxploitation film made in 1974, the same year that Seytan was made. The Exorcist came out in 1973, so these people wasted no time cashing in. And though it's a very obvious remake of The Exorcist, only with Black people, Abby still has a sense of originality to it that Seytan has absolutely none of. While the demon in Abby got changed to a jive-talking sex demon and the exorcism took place in a discotheque, in Seytan truly nothing was changed. The priest was changed to a doctor but that was only the cultural appropriation at work. The Catholic overtones had to be changed to Islam in order for the storyline to be relevant I guess. Some of the more graphic elements in The Exorcist were tamed down and the language was a little less harsh, but I really think that was because it was just too embarrassing for the actors to recreate. How Linda Blair did it in the first place was a miracle in itself.
Even though it sounds like a boring endeavor with an equally boring product, and trust me, in many ways it is, it still has a cult following because of the sheer oddity of it. A curiosity piece that still has to be seen to be believed. The "special effects" that are recreated are a special treat. The head spinning scene was among my favorites. The vomit still looks like pea soup but has a tinge of blue to it. And the scene where Gul (simply Turkish for "girl") takes a leak at the top of the stairs had me in stitches because the little girls' legs were so hairy that I really thought it was part of the special effects, even though it wasn't. As of now, Seytan can be found on YouTube, but finding a version with English subtitles is rare. A copy was released on DVD in 2007 with English subtitles, but the quality of the print is downright deplorable. An English dubbed version exists but given the language that exists in the original, repeating toned-down versions of it just adds to the lunacy of what's being seen.
Much like when Abby was released, when William Friedkin found out that his movie had been remade/ripped off AGAIN, he wasn't happy, but like all things, a bell can't be unrung. Once a movie is made, it's gonna get out there, no matter who you have to sue to try and stop it. And now we can find it on free platforms to enjoy making fun of at our leisure. Honestly, if you've already seen The Exorcist though, you don't even need the subtitles, you already know exactly what's going on and will find every single scene completely foreign yet strangely it's exactly the same.
Sunday, September 22, 2024
I'd heard about this quirky little gem when searching for mockumentaries, and even though it was a bit hard to locate, it didn't disappoint. I always love a good backstory and this one has it in spades. It was meant to be just a bit of Halloween fun by the BBC, but it ultimately turned out to be a complete disaster. It caused quite a commotion when it was shown and as a result, the BBC hasn't aired it since. You see, even though it had all the hallmarks of a mockumentary and even had a disclaimer at the beginning letting everyone know that it was faked for entertainment purposes, a lot of people took it seriously and were subsequently traumatized by thinking that it was real and there were even a few fatalities involved. Apparently, most people tuned in a few seconds too late and missed the disclaimer, therefore believing that what they were viewing was the real thing. Having well-known BBC personalities starring in it made the film all the more believable and realistic, and being billed as a "live broadcast" it had audiences convinced that what they were viewing was happening in real-time, even having a working phone number that you could call into, therefore adding about as much realism that the BBC could come up with.
The story is pretty basic actually. Just what you might expect from a ghost mockumentary. For those of you familiar with the Enfield Poltergeist Haunting, you'll definitely see some major similarities and Ghostwatch was surely inspired by the case. A family consisting of a single mother and two young daughters are being tormented by a ghost they call "Mr. Pipes", a name given to the ghost because it makes noises like the clanking of old pipes. The family has also claimed that the previous owner died by suicide in the home and whose corpse was soon eaten by his own cats. They claim that the bulk of the haunting seems to reside in the basement, said place of the previous owners' death and where he became Fluffy's dinner when the vittle tin went dry. Amazingly, this area becomes known as the "glory hole". No really, that's what they actually call it. Some other creepy stuff went down in the area too, something about a cult nearby, some unsolved murders, and I think even a baby farm.
The case has already gained much media attention and a TV station has decided that it would be a great idea to do a live broadcast of a ghost-hunting exhibition at the home on Halloween night. Showcasing all the cool equipment they have with infrared cameras and microphones that can catch the faintest of ghostly whispers, etc. The reporters are so sweetly innocent that you find yourself really wanting them to experience something terrifying that'll scar them for the rest of their lives and destroy their TV careers forever. Or is that just me? The main hosts of the show who are keeping tabs on everything from back at the station studio and a few of the reporters were well-known TV personalities, lending quite a bit of credence to the reality of this being an actual live broadcast.
In the studio along with the show's host is a paranormal investigator who gives us the lowdown on hauntings, poltergeists, and supernatural phenomena. She displays broken crockery that has shattered under extreme temperature change which apparently can only be done by a ghost and some other video tidbits proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that ghosts are a reality. And though presented with basic debunking facts, she insists that spectral apparitions are common and that the haunting being investigated by the TV station is real and will be proven so by this presentation.
The ghost watch starts off pretty tame with only a bump or clang here and there that is soon discovered to be something simple and harmless, but soon weird things begin to happen. A mysterious wet spot appears on the ceiling, the TV becomes staticky, and one of the girls starts behaving strangely. The TV crew is guided through the house and told gruesome stories about the history of the property when a loud clanging can be heard. Upon looking for the source of the sound though, it's discovered that one of the young girls is doing it on purpose and faking the ghost sounds, throwing the credibility of the whole haunting into question. But just when everyone is about to give up on the whole thing and all look pretty embarrassed, the oldest daughter ends up with mysterious cuts all over her face and has become almost catatonic. The enraged mother declares that this couldn't possibly be faked and that the haunting is real. With new evidence to support the case, the ghost watch continues and more unexplained creepy things begin to happen, each more inexplicable than the last, when finally in the midst of utter chaos, the studio loses contact with the crew at the house.
The situation back at the studio is becoming crazy too, with poltergeist activity occurring there as well. The paranormal investigator that has been co-hosting the show tells us that by having viewers call in and share their ghost stories they have formed a sort of huge televised seance where ghosts can now travel into the studio and possibly into the viewers' own homes through their TVs. Cameras at the station have begun to flicker, papers are flying around, and the main host appears to be just wandering around and possibly possessed. All of this is presented in a pretty realistic way and I can see how this would look convincing to someone who didn't catch the disclaimer at the beginning of the show that lets you know that this is most definitely for entertainment purposes only.
Anyway, the show was a hit, only not exactly as planned, or maybe too well planned depending on how you look at it. You see, the general audience can be quite gullible, and the people who freaked out over the War of the Worlds broadcast still exist, and pretty much the same thing happened here. Having actual well-known television personalities involved in the plot lent a huge amount of credibility to the broadcast and I'm sure that being shown on Halloween night added to the anxiety people already feel when just a little bit spooked. And a great many people in the audience thought it was all real. There was an actual call line that went with the show where people could share their own personal ghost stories, but instead, the line was bombarded with calls from people wanting to know if this was really happening or not. So much so that the line got clogged with callers and most people were redirected to a busy signal, adding to the panic already beginning to occur.
A public admission of the show's inauthenticity and an apology by the network couldn't contain the damage already done. Audience members lost their minds in the typical fashion and thought every pipe clank or board creak was a ghost, a poltergeist, a demon, or basically the devil himself. People sued for developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and there was even a suicide. A teenage boy suffering from mental health problems apparently seemed to prefer the idea of being a ghost himself and took his life citing Ghostwatch as the inspiration for his undertaking. The BBC has obviously never aired the broadcast again and doesn't even like to talk about it, considering it a true embarrassment. A documentary called Ghostwatch: Behind the Curtains was produced in 2012 and chronicles the making of Ghostwatch and the subsequent public reaction that followed. After watching so many found footage films that were done well and were quite believable due to clever advertising like The Blair Witch Project, it's hard to be impressed by one, but a film like Ghostwatch is actually better if you know the trivia behind the film before watching. When you know that it caused such a crazy reaction from such a huge amount of the viewing audience and that there were lawsuits and actual deaths involved, the movie itself carries a lot more gravity.
Monday, July 29, 2024
So I was browsing through some old cult films that had made their way onto YouTube and came across this little gem from 1979. I can't believe I made it this long without finding this film and making it a part of my collection here on Cultarama, because it truly deserves a coveted spot amongst the best of the best. It boasts a faded star in Chuck Conners, who had wanted to reinvent himself and leave his square-jawed cowboy persona in the past. A soon-to-be semi-famous, yet mostly topless star in Tanya Roberts, who for all her physical endowments and icy blue eyes cannot act her way out of a wet paper bag. And a young professionally trained actress named Jocelyn Jones, who has gone on to be what many consider a film industry treasure and has taught some of the most accomplished actors out there, in addition to being a #1 bestselling author. How she found her way into this freakshow of a movie is anyone's guess.
It begins as your typical "omg, we have a flat tire, guess we'll have to stop at some desolate location and get murdered" setup with your average group of young and pretty victims. Shortly before our new victims arrive, we get to see the bizarre murder of a previous victim who also picked the wrong roadside tourist attraction to attempt a call for help when dealing with a faulty car. He enters a room and is confronted with laughing mannequins and poltergeist-like activity with bottles being thrown at him etc, until a flying pipe finally seals his fate. Stephen King himself praised this terrifying opening scene in his nonfiction book about horror films Danse Macabre, and I definitely concur with Mr. King, it is truly intense and sets the tone for the next hour and twenty minutes.
As our attractive visitors make it to Slausen's Lost Oasis roadside attraction, they neglect to notice a sign that says the attraction is closed to the public. Despite this, when they arrive at The Lost Oasis they are greeted by Mr. Slausen who owns the place. After being caught skinny dipping in a small lake on the property, the female members of the group (why is it always the women who skinny dip, are men in horror films not allowed to do this?) follow him into the attraction where he shows them his collection of animatronic mannequins and other nightmare fuel he's surrounded himself with. He then pulls some dialogue straight out of Psycho by telling them that since the new highway has been built, no one comes to see his creepy collection. Yeah, that's why. When asked about the mansion behind the museum, he tells our young ladies that his brother Davy lives there and that he lives in the museum. Eileen, the sassiest of the bunch, decides that Davy is the better choice of a helper than Mr. Slausen, being that he lives in a mansion and all, strikes out on her own and is therefore the first killed. She is attacked by a combination killer that resembles the perfect marriage between Leatherface and Michael Myers with Carrie-like telekinetic abilities and finishes her off while all the mannequins laugh.
We then have Becky, played by Tanya Roberts, going to look for her friend, making her the obvious second victim. She finds Eileen but it appears she's been turned into a mannequin herself. Hard to tell since the entire place is jam-packed with them. Eileen turns around revealing her new plastic facade, scaring Becky in what is the worst jump scare reaction ever caught on film. You'd think instead of leaping towards her, she just turned around and was like "Hey girl, killer or something around, might wanna head for the car". She gets caught and is taken to the cellar and tied up, where Jerry the only guy in the group is also tied up along with a girl who's evidently been captured and tortured for some time now and is just praying to hurry up and meet her maker, cuz she's over it. "Plasterface" goes on about how he's Mr. Slausen's much more handsome brother, yet comes off completely gay about it. The doll mask and blonde wig he's wearing don't help. He's also evidently telekinetic and can move things.
Molly, the only girl left and the last surviving victim if there ever was one, escapes only to learn that Plasterface and Mr. Slausen are the same man with a split personality in yet another Psycho reference. In addition to Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is invoked many times as well. Both stories originate from the story of Ed Gein, and the similarities cannot be denied, only cheaply copied. There's even a scene with Molly (the blonde) running through the woods yelling "Jerry!!" which is a scene taken verbatim from Texas Chainsaw. Oh yeah, Becky gets killed with an ax, anyway...
Mr. Slausen has by now taken a keen liking to Molly and wants her to replace his dead bride. Even though he confesses that he killed her and his own brother, cuz they were "whoring around" behind his back. Personally, I wouldn't miss someone like that, but that's just me. Mr. Slausen puts a doll face on Molly and smooches her pretty hard in what is a most uncomfortable scene before Jerry comes to the rescue. But has he really?
Molly cries out for Jerry to kill Mr. Slausen but he then gets his arm removed, then his head, etc, revealing that he too is another mannequin made to look alive by our telekinetic villain. While Mr. Slausen is enjoying freaking Molly out to the fullest, she somehow dares to grab an ax and hit him in the neck, effectively killing him and all the laughing mannequins, who with their creepy oversized mouths, FINALLY shut the hell up. The next morning we see Molly flying down the highway (guess she got the tire fixed, good for her) with all her mannequin friends in the backseat. A look of fresh insanity on her face as her ratty blonde hair flaps in the cool breeze.
The trivia for this film was abundant, but I'll only highlight the better ones. The score, which the director hated but used anyway because it cost an entire 1/6 of the film's total budget, was done by the composer who scored Carrie only a few years prior. Being that it's about a telekinetic misfit I guess is just a coinkinkidink. Horror scream queen Linnea Quigly makes a brief cameo as a mannequin, but being that they all look the same, I still have no idea which one was her. Chuck Conners insisted on using his kids' names in the credits for the actor who played Davy because no one wanted to give away the twist ending. All in all, I thought it was a great film. It had its flaws like every movie but the goofs were actually rather rare. The premise of the telekinetically controlled mannequins and dolls was a great touch when creating a film experience destined to give people nightmares for years. Yours truly included, I hate dolls.
Wednesday, July 17, 2024
So, we come to that age-old decision, is it camp, classic, and basically does it fit into the archetype cult film status that we've all come to know and love. Usually, big-budget films that were very popular and did well in the theater don't necessarily fit under a cult classic label, but some stories actually do it quite well. Dracula is a little different in that it's one of the few multilayered posts I've done, something that takes up a whole universe and has a mythos to it. Many horror movies with all their remakes, sequels, prequels, miniseries, and alternate storylines also have that air of existing within its own universe, much like the earlier movies by John Waters starring Divine had their own connected universe as well. Similar.
Anyway, I had just finished the Bram Stoker original novel and fondly remembered the fancy remake starring Winona Ryler and Gary Oldman, but how long had it been since I saw the original 1931 Tod Browning film version of Dracula with the vampire legend himself Bela Lugosi? So I gave it a rewatch and I guess you could say it was classy, but only by the standards of the time, otherwise it was quite campy. Movies in general were still relatively new and campy crap was always gonna sneak in there somewhere. From the cheap bats on strings to armadillos being used at Castle Dracula instead of rats (in Transylvania, seriously?). Having seen Bela in his most revered and prized lifetime role (in death too, he was buried in his Dracula costume and cape), it's not a far cry to see him drifting into cheap Ed Wood films. Even though we loved them for their absurdity, it was sad to know that it was mostly because of Bela's heroin addiction which had caused him to have to work well past retirement age while being in terrible health as the only real reason that he starred in them. Bela's Dracula/overlord role in Ed's Glen or Glenda, a movie that couldn't decide whether to be a horror movie or a serious attempt at explaining transexualism, is totally a treasure to behold. And for all his efforts to try and provide his idol and friend a job, Ed Wood tried his very best, too bad it always came out has his very worst. Even though Bela's acting isn't all that great in Dracula, it was just such a sexy role that I think most people really didn't care and it propelled him into super stardon, at least for a short while. When stars fall on hard times, some turn to drugs and alcohol, some turn to doing porn or Ed Wood films. Bela kinda did both...but with a completely alluring Hungarian accent.
Bela carried his own without a doubt, but when it came to acting Renfield stole the show. I mean that laugh was creepiness personified. The rest of the cast faded into the background. For as much a part as she plays in the book, I always expect the character of Lucy Westenra to be as over-the-top girlie girl as possible and for Mina Harker to be the quintessential woman of virtue, but the 1931 film missed these two character opportunities by a mile. The rest...meh. I much more enjoyed the culty camp factor, which was plentiful.
In the 1992 remake, both the original movie and the book were merged pretty seamlessly into a whole new film with the exception of one huge change. The secret romance between Mina Harker and Count Dracula. It may not have been anywhere in the book or original movie, but it made for a much more interesting love story, albeit an atypical one, but still had tremendous merit and made for some delicious dialogue and quotes that will live on in infamy. "I've crossed oceans of time to find you". You so crazy you coulda jus called. Personally, I really liked the remake and it's new plot twist. Something about turning Mina from a goody two shoes into a vampire slut cheating on her husband was much more appealing, especially since Jonathan Harker was a bit of a real estate bore anyway. The cinematography and costumes were well worth the overall effort, which I believe took away several awards for each.
Overall, I think the book was a bit simplistic, but it had a unique tone to it throughout. It's separated into three basic parts. Jonathan Harker's initial experience with Count Dracula in Transylvania, the death and resurrection of Lucy Westenra, and the final showdown between Jonathan Harker, Professor Van Helsing (plus a few extra henchmen) and Count Dracula. The ending is rather anticlimactic and the characters are a little one sided, but the imagery and symbolism are what make it a classic among classics. The baptism of blood sequence in the book where Mina drinks the spurting blood of Count Dracula, then bitches about how unclean she feels afterwards even though she seemed to enjoy it, just screams of regretted fellatio. And then of course in the days of HIV, the whole taboo of unclean blood received through a form of sexual pleasure takes on a brand new symbolism. It's metaphoric horror themes like these that make a classic endurable throughout the ages, and Dracula is one of the best. Campy, classy, and very cult, on many levels, both in writing and in film.
If you don't enjoy Mae West, you might as well leave this website, because she was the ultimate Queen of Camp, at least in her later years. This was a woman who basically saved Paramount Studios from complete bankruptcy and single-handedly brought feminism to its height of appreciation. She didn't need a man, but constantly talked about them anyway. "Men are like linoleum floors, lay 'em right and you can walk all over them for years'. Her quotes are as funny as they are timeless, and she had a million of them, all of which she wrote herself! "Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?" Miss West definitely had her time in the spotlight, making hit after hit while in her heyday, but after a while, she'd basically had enough and lived quietly in the apartment building (that she purchased simply because the manager didn't care for her type of friends) called The Ravenwood. She even bought the building across the street because she didn't like the color and after buying it, she had it repainted.
Anyway, after years of being in retirement, Mae West was drawn back out into the spotlight to star in the camp classic Myra Breckinridge. A movie that even though it had Mae West, Raquel Welch, Farrah Fawcett, and a young Tom Selleck starring in it, tanked worse than most of the movies ever made at that point (1970). And even though it really isn't that great of a movie, it's still enjoyed for its trashy campiness and unbelievable storyline, not to mention the bad acting. But most of all, we got to see what became of the powerhouse we all knew as the incomparable Mae West, who was the real star of the film even though she probably had the least screen time of all the actors in the entire movie.
Even after the disastrous Myra Breckinridge had completely tanked at the box office, it still reminded Mae West that she was a star and had reignited her desire to be seen in films again, even though she was over 80 years old at that point. So she dug out an old play that she had written almost 20 years prior, that people had told her could never be filmed due to its sexual overtones, but it was now the late 1970s, and scripts like the ones Mae wrote were no longer seen as jailable offenses. Mae was always ahead of her time. I mean, this was a woman who wrote a play all about gay men, simply titled "Sex"...back in the 1920s!
So Mae West dug out an old script, revamped it, and hired literally EVERYBODY to star in it, and I do mean EVERYBODY. Timothy Dalton, Dom Deluise, Tony Curtis, Ringo Starr, Regis Philbin, George Hamilton, and Alice Cooper, just to name a few! And these were just the people who accepted a role in the film, dozens of other actors were offered roles and (wisely) turned them down. And even though it still had (almost) every star that was somewhat popular at the time, it STILL tanked at the box office, shockingly worse than Myra Breckinridge did, which people didn't think was cinematically possible. Proving that no matter how many wonderful actors you insert into a film it can still be a piece of crap.
Even though the plot is paper thin, and the acting is horrendous, I still loved it. Just to see how good Mae West still looked at 84 years old. Speaking of the plot, it was obviously geared to function as a showcase of stars instead of an actual movie. The entire story revolves around a woman named Marlo Manners (Mae West) who has recently married Sir Michael Barrington (Timothy Dalton) and no one even bats an eyelash despite the 60-year age difference between them. It just so happens that there is an international conference happening at the very hotel where Marlo and her new husband (#6) are now spending their honeymoon. Husbands 1-5 are all there and one of them, a Russian delegate I think, decides that he wants one last fling with his old flame Marlo. Meanwhile, her current husband spends the entire movie in an interview trying desperately to prove he's not gay ("Where's my husband? He's downstairs trying to save his reputation. Oh, well he should be up here with me trying to ruin it")
Madness erupts when it's discovered that Marlo has made a cassette recording of all her scandalous affairs, that her manager is trying to destroy but it keeps slipping through his fingers and makes its way all around the hotel in various sorts of mishaps. This little pink tape ends up everywhere from being stuck in a muscleman's pecs to one of the building's gargoyles. Not such a long story made even shorter, he gets it back, and the world (and Marlo's reputation) is saved. Not that she really cares. She's too busy trying on new outfits in her hotel room the entire time.
Most assuredly a movie that has more trivia than it does storyline. Mae West was basically blind, deaf, and senile when the movie was made and apparently needed an earpiece hidden in her wig to help her remember her lines. Sandbags were placed on the floor so that she would know when she'd hit her mark since she couldn't see two inches in front of her due to having severe cataracts. Such a terrible movie, but it does fall into that wonderful category of "so bad that it's good". And even though it got awful reviews, hardly made a dime, and was a temporary demise for many up-and-coming actors, there isn't one person who says that they had less than a marvelous time making it, proving that even when she was already half dead, Mae West could still be the life of the party.
I can say that I personally really love this movie. It was SO not what I thought it was gonna be when I started watching it. I can't even remember where I originally heard about this film, only that I managed to find it on YouTube and thought it was wonderful. Strange as it is, I think it's actually really well done and the premise is completely original in so many ways. Made in 1973, it took a while for this film to catch on cuz it was just so damn weird, but it had at least one famous actress in it and a few then-unknown actresses in it that would become semi-famous down the road. Ruth Roman had been in a hundred different movies by the time she made The Baby, mostly Westerns and several TV shows like The Outer Limits, I Spy, and Mission Impossible. But I think by the time she made this film, she was just trying to pay the rent. Anjenette Comer had done some television before making this film but gained a decently respectable resume' after starring in The Baby. Susanne Zenor didn't do much during or after this film but she was the original actress chosen to play Chrissie Snow on Three's Company but lost out at the last minute to another blonde bimbo named Suzanne (Somers). She eventually did get to have a brief walk-on part in Three's Company as a character named Samantha. Shame though, I think she would've taken that role to a whole new interesting level.
Anyway, on with the story. Ann Gentry (Anjenette Comer) is a social worker who is looking for something, a particular kind of client, at first we're not sure why yet, but the reason is definitely there. She meets the Wadsworth family, an odd bunch of ladies consisting of Mrs. Wadsworth (Ruth Roman) and her two daughters, Alba (Susanne Zenor), a suspiciously happy girl (at first) who gives tennis lessons in the afternoon, and Germaine, who looks like an Elvira knockoff with a devious glare that sets your nerves on end the moment you see her. She obsessively cleans all day (and occasionally does TV commercials). But when it's time for Ann to meet her client though, the weirdness picks up pace.
Ann's client is a grown man who is completely infantile, sleeps in a giant crib, sucks on a pacifier, can only utter the occasional gaga and googoo, and is always simply referred to as "Baby". Although Ann seems taken aback by this, she doesn't shy away from it and takes a liking to him almost immediately. In fact, Ann starts to become a little bit obsessed with Baby, showing up several times a week, way more than the typical social worker who may drop in a mere three to four times in an entire year. She attempts to get Baby to improve beyond his infantile state by trying to get him to stand on his own, possibly even walk but is suspiciously held back from doing so by the entire family.
After one of Anns attempts at getting Baby to "grow up" a little, we find that behind closed doors, the entire family is keeping Baby in his infantile state by torturing him with cattle prods and other evil tactics when he shows any sign of improvement, therefore making damn sure that he is never anything more than a "baby". But Ann is smart and though she doesn't witness the abuse firsthand, she definitely has figured out what's going on. She tries to get Baby put into a hospital for the mentally delayed but the Wadsworth women are not interested. It seems that this family of women is pretty hateful towards men, especially Baby, mostly because the mother was deserted by a different husband after each child was born.
Ann knows that she can help Baby and threatens to use the Public Guardian Office to take Baby away from the abuse that he suffers from almost daily. At first, all three women are disgusted and dismissive of Ann's threats, declare Baby as theirs and throw her off the property, but later on, they think better of it because they realize that they don't want Baby's abuse to be discovered. So they hatch a plan to lure Ann over to their house for Baby's birthday party and somehow get rid of her. Ann shows up, but she's a smart cookie and is prepared for pretty much anything.
During this party, one that is clearly for adults on drugs, without a single child (or adult children) in sight, some drunk prick keeps hitting on Ann and she declares that she is happily married and isn't interested. In fact, Ann is asked about her husband several times throughout the movie and is intentionally vague, not really saying that he's dead, but won't verify his existence either.
At first, the family is nice to Ann and seems like they genuinely want to make up, but during an innocent game of darts, Ann's punch is spiked and she becomes intoxicated. When she begins staggering, they take her to the basement and tie her up, with the intention of doing away with her meddling ass entirely after the party ends. Unfortunately for them, they leave the basement door ajar and Baby makes his way down to where Ann is being held captive. Because Baby has by now grown rather fond of Ann, he helps (or at least watches) as she manages to escape. But she ain't leaving here alone, not until she gets what she came after. She bails out of the party, takes Baby with her, and slashes the tires in the family car before she leaves so they can't come after her. Told ya she was a smart cookie.
The Wadsworth women are defeated, Baby is finally in Ann's safeguard, but this chicken hasn't been cooked yet. Ann sends a picture of Baby to the Wadsworth family, all dressed in a suit, standing tall and looking all grown up. This enrages Baby's mother and his demented sisters so they decide that they must find Baby and get him back, at any cost.
They manage to locate where Ann lives and sneak into the house with knives like some kind of Manson Family hippies and prepare to kill Ann and bring Baby home. After Alba and Germaine go into the house but don't return, the mother grows impatient and enters the house herself, but when she does find her daughters, they've already been murdered. She doesn't have much time to mourn though before Ann comes out of the darkness with an ax and attacks the mother. They battle for a few minutes before Mrs. Wadsworth falls from the staircase and breaks both legs. Instead of killing her though, Ann has a much better plan. You see, Ann has been having a swimming pool built in the backyard, but it isn't quite completed yet. She drags the entire Wadsworth family out to the backyard and buries them right where the pool is being dug. At least the daughters are already dead, but Mama Wadsworth gets to be buried alive. As she begs for her life, she demands to know why Ann wanted her Baby so badly as to go to such measures to get him. She replies, "I plan to give him nothing but the deepest of love".
A few weeks pass, the swimming pool is completed, and Ann goes into what looks like a nursery that we assume has been intended for Baby, but all along there has been another adult baby there...Anns husband. He apparently has had some kind of head injury that has rendered him infantile and Ann has been planning this entire time to find him the most appropriate playmate, hence the lengths she was willing to go to in order to have Baby all to herself. Being a social worker, Ann has seen the improvement that can occur when delayed individuals, mostly children, can have when socialized with others like themselves.
The last scene is tremendously happy but has a really creepy vibe to it. Ann, her infantile husband, and Baby are all playing in the pool, one big happy family...with three dead bodies buried just beneath them. Ann was a woman with a plan, keenly executed from the very beginning.
Okay, so The Exorcist isn't necessarily a cult film because it had a HUGE theatrical opening and pretty much everyone in the world saw it when it came out and proceeded to pass out, freak out, and then run to their nearest church to repent their sins. It did follow the cult film strategy though, albeit at a sincerely rapid pace. It only took one viewing at one theater for everyone who saw it to tell all their friends about it. And before you could say "Your Mother Sucks Cocks In Hell" theaters across America began to be overrun with people dying to view what was then labeled as the scariest film ever made. And that's a hard statement to back up because scary movies were a dime a dozen and it would have to take a really scarier-than-shit movie to live up to that kind of competition. Well, it did. People ran out of the theaters screaming, and people were fainting in the aisles and lobbies, but this only made more viewers flock to the local cinema in enormous crowds, waiting in line for hours to see what all the fuss was about.
I think the truly scariest aspect of The Exorcist is that it took you off guard because it involved a child, an innocent-looking little girl (brilliantly played by Linda Blair) who transformed into the most vile thing people could have possibly imagined. Possession and exorcism weren't a new concept by any means but had been restricted to rare cultures in Third World countries and the only time it was ever talked about in the United States was by elderly Catholic priests who considered it an embarrassment to religion in general, kept it in the closet and regarded it as a simply a mental health issue that belonged more in the realm of medicine than religion. A belief that still exists today even though the topic of exorcism has spawned more horror movies now than ever before, mostly attributed to movies like The Exorcist. Ever since it was released in 1973, there have been more copycat films dealing with the topic of exorcism than anyone could possibly count.
The basic story sort of makes a circle, basically ending where it began. A tired and reclusive priest named Father Merrin is in Iraq overseeing an archaeological dig when he comes across a statue of a demon named Pazuzu. After unearthing this find, he notices dogs violently fighting, clocks suddenly stop, and is almost run over by a horse-drawn carriage. The story then travels to the other side of the world and ends up in Georgetown Washington D.C. where a famous actress named Christine McNeil lives with her young daughter Regan. Christine begins hearing scratching on the walls, and mysterious sounds in the attic, and her daughter begins complaining that her bed keeps shaking.
Slowly, Regan's condition begins to worsen. In front of a bunch of people at one of her mother's celebrity parties, Regan comes downstairs, rambles a little, and then lets loose a stream of green slime from between her legs. Christine and her friends look mortified and Regan is rushed upstairs to the bath. Shortly after this incident, when Christine thinks Regan is finally settled into bed for the night she suddenly hears her daughter screaming. Upon opening the door, she sees her daughter's bed violently shaking up and down with no explanation for it. She takes Regan to a doctor but he is dismissive of her despite her insistence that her daughter couldn't possibly have been solely responsible for the bed shaking. The doctor convinces Christine that the problem is in Regans' head and not her bed.
Regan is then put through every grueling medical test known to mankind, with the doctors finding no explanation for her behavior which has by now become increasingly violent. Regan is brought home because her mother has flat-out refused to institutionalize her, even though that's basically all the doctors can offer. When a few of Regan's doctors are examining x-rays of an arteriogram of Regans' brain, finding nothing wrong at all, a frantic call from Christine comes through, begging the doctors to come to the house as Regan's behavior has exceeded violence and is now completely unreal. Regan spews profanities in a deep voice, is slapped across the face by unseen hands, and is basically getting the shit beaten out of her by something that no one else can see. She's promptly sedated and the doctors continue to try and convince Christine that it's all in Regan's head, even though it clearly is not.
There are a tremendous amount of scenes in this movie that are quite disturbing. Regan is found stabbing herself in the crotch while a deep voice coming from inside her keeps telling her to "Let Jesus Fuck You" while poltergeist activity begins occurring and random objects are thrown about. Regan forces her mother's face into her bloody crotch and then proceeds to slap her so hard that she flies across the room. A heavy dresser begins moving towards Christine all on its own, a chair flies against the door, blocking help from entering and in a completely shocking moment, Regan's head turns to look backward without breaking a single bone, and with the voice of Christine's friend and film director who has recently died while babysitting Regan, says "Do You Know What She Did, Your Cunting Daughter?"
There's a side story about a detective investigating a desecrating vandalism at the local church and the mysterious death of the movie director that Christine is currently working with, but the main side story is about a priest named Father Karras who is gradually losing his faith, mostly due to the death of his elderly mother. When all else seems lost, Christine contacts this priest because she is now convinced that her daughter's condition is not medical, but rather demonic in nature. As much as he really doesn't want to help her with this situation, he agrees to at least see Regan and give his advice because he is not just a priest but a doctor as well.
Upon arriving, he sees that Regan is worse than ever. She only speaks in a deep growling voice, uttering phrases in Latin as well as other languages, Poltergeist-like activity is still happening, and when Holy Water is sprinkled on her she reacts violently and before long she vomits directly in his face. He feels that exorcism may actually be needed after all and brings this to the attention of the church but is deemed unfit to perform the exorcism himself. This brings us back to the beginning with the elderly priest Father Merrin, who is located and brought in to perform the exorcism with Father Karras as his helper. Apparently, Father Merrin has performed exorcisms before and is seen as the perfect person for the job even though he's basically 108 years old, has heart problems, and the previous exorcisms he has performed have nearly killed him.
The exorcism is performed while Regan continuously vomits more green slime, levitates, and performs amazing feats of strength, all climaxing with her head rotating completely around in a circle in a scene that will live in infamy among horror films forever.
While both priests are taking a break, Father Merrin tries once more on his own to exorcise the demon, who then suffers a heart attack and dies. Father Karras becomes completely enraged when he sees Regan laughing at Father Merrin's death, so he beats her, strangles her, and begs the demon to enter him and spare this child from any further torment. We see his eyes begin to change to the rancid green that Regan's eyes have been since her possession. Knowing he is becoming possessed himself, he flings himself out of Regan's bedroom window and down a flight of stairs where he lands in a pool of blood and dies.
Regan begins crying for her mother in her own voice and Christine rushes to her side, who then sees instantly that Regan is "back" and that the vile demon possessing her has gone. Wanting to make a fresh start now that Regan is better, albeit pretty scarred from her ordeal, they both leave Georgetown and never look back.
I'd call this the end but it wasn't. An endless amount of attempts were made at having a successful sequel, including its immediate follow-up, Exorcist II: The Heretic. Exorcist III was only somewhat of a success, but only because it was based on a direct sequel to the book by William Peter Blatty who hated the theatrical sequel with a mad passion so he wrote his own sequel and they just used this newly written sequel as the screenplay for Exorcist III. Part IV was made, but deemed a disaster by all who were involved in making it, so it was basically remade with a more predictable ending, but still sucked beyond belief. A TV series was made, and now a direct movie sequel is coming out soon, starring the original main actresses Ellen Burstyn (Christine McNeil) and Linda Blair (Regan). It remains to be seen whether it will fall victim to the "shitty Exorcist sequel curse".
This movie has more trivia behind it than I could ever possibly list, literally HUNDREDS of juicy items could be discussed. Many people associated with its filming were either badly hurt or even died. Sets caught fire, actual paranormal activity was supposed to have happened, etc. And even though the movie was banned from being shown in different places all over the world and nearly acquired an X-rating, it still went on to win two Oscars and became Warner Brothers' highest-grossing movie ever made (when adjusted for inflation). Given the amount of exorcism/possession movies that have been released since, rewatching The Exorcist these days may not have the traumatizing effect it used to have, but when it was released in 1973, nothing like it had ever been seen before and it really was absolutely terrifying!
