Even though I was far too young to be allowed into the theater, I saw The Exorcist the first week it came out. I remember a lot of the movie but I do not remember Regan scuttling down the stairs like a crab with her head backwards. My son swears he saw the movie on DVD with this scene in it.
Sooooo. Who’s crazy?
That scene was deleted from the movie originally and added to the recent “directors cut” when the DVD came out I believe.
So we’re both crazy! I meant to ask, where in the movie does it go?
Neither. The “spider walk” scene is infamous in that it was cut from the original because the director didn’t like the way it looked. However, he included it in the the 2000 remastered version after fixing it so you couldn’t see the wires and adding other digital tweaks. Good thing he did, because for my money that’s the creepiest scene in the film.
Wiki entry here
The mom’s dinner party I believe, when they were all standing around the piano singing.
Y’know, I was probably no older than 13 years old when I saw the original back in the mid-seventies, and it scared the hell out of me then. When The Version You’ve Never Seen became available on DVD, I bought it mainly because I was curious to see if it still had that power, and, oh boy, did it ever. And the “spider-walk” was just the icing on the cake.
Incidentally, the wiki article cites the too-apparent wires in the scene as the cause of it’s deletion, but also notes “Additionally, Friedkin considered that the spider-walk scene appeared too early in the film’s plot and removed it despite screenplay writer William Peter Blatty’s request that the scene remain.” I remember reading that when it was first released; Friedkin felt it revealed the definitive nature of Regan’s condition (i.e. she is definitely possessed) far too early. To that point, it was possible to believe she was simply disturbed or mentally/physically ill somehow.
I wasn’t born when the original came out and first saw it as the DVD version a few years ago. I was pretty much OK until I got to that scene.
It’s been a bit since I’ve seen it, but wasn’t there also a scene where she just stands there and pees on the rug in front of everyone? That got me, too.