Seeing 'The Exorcist' in Ikebukuro!

The Exorcist (1973) at the Shin Bungeiza theater. Photo by Brett Homenick.

Tonight (Wednesday, November 15), I saw William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973) for the first time in its entirety on the big screen in Ikebukuro's Shin Bungeiza theater. Once again, the theater didn't specify if it was 4K or what, but the picture seemed to be a flawless DCP, regardless of however many K there were.

I mentioned in a previous blog post that I'd never seen this one all the way through from start to finish. I've caught bits of it here and there on cable over the years, and I'd wager I'd seen at least half the film that way. Those scenes were mostly of Linda Blair's possession, which, quite frankly, are the weakest scenes in the movie.

As I said in the aforementioned blog post on William Friedkin's career, I just don't think kids are scary. What's more, it's never clear to me exactly what the threat is that possessed Regan (Linda Blair, of course) presents. Other than those of an Internet troll and Darren Drozdov, her powers seemed rather limited to me. 

Max von Sydow dies in her presence offscreen, and I suppose the implication was that possessed Regan killed him. But he was a bit on the older side and could have easily keeled over from a heart attack due to the stress of it all. In fact, Regan appeared to have this odd "I didn't do it" expression on her face when Jason Miller reentered the room, making the situation even murkier. 

To its credit, I do appreciate that the film took pains to show that it was taking place in the real world. Even widely regarded horror flicks like The Shining (1980), another movie for which I've never shared most folks' enthusiasm, seem to be taking place in some alternate universe where horror-movie logic applies from the get-go.  

There's a scene in a bar early on in which Jason Miller describes his crisis of faith to another priest. The ambience of that scene was totally real -- I felt like I was in that bar in 1973 -- and I wish it went on much longer. Too bad sequences like that were cut short so that Linda Blair could debut as an insult comic.

I was mostly bemused by the decision to make Ellen Burstyn's character an actress. It really doesn't come into play at all in the movie and was more distracting to me than anything else. It also took away from the "average family" approach that it seemed the filmmakers wanted to take. Burstyn's character could have been rewritten as having any other job, and you wouldn't have lost anything. (If anything, it would have made her character more relatable.)

It's true that special effects become dated, and audiences become more cynical and jaded over time, but I still found Deliverance (1972), a film from the same time period, to pack quite a punch when I saw it around the same time in my teens. Besides, I love plenty of old horror movies for a variety of reasons, so I certainly wouldn't say I'm too hard on these movies. 

I should also point out that this was the director's cut, and it might be fair to say I would have enjoyed the theatrical cut more. I found the infamous "spider-walk" scene ridiculous, and I'd wish the movie had taken a more subtle approach to the possession. Even with all the histrionics at play, I never felt any threat or danger.